Page 46 of Colour My World
He waited. She did not respond.
He cleared his throat. “Is there anything you would like to know of?”
“Is that why you were late?”
“Yes.”
She nodded once.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked.
“This last time,” she said, “I can.”
He grasped her hand and kissed it.
“Would you like me to play for you?”
“Yes,” he said. “From the beginning.”
* * *
Pemberley, November 1807
The graveyard stood empty. The storm had passed, but the earlier downpour had softened the edges of the freshly turned earth. The dead required no witnesses.
GEORGE ALEXANDER DARCY
1750—1807
A DEVOTED HUSBAND, AN UPRIGHT MASTER,
A FATHER OF UNYIELDING PRINCIPLE
The sculpted headstone stood stark against the winter gloom. Darcy stood before it, hands clasped behind his back, his greatcoat damp at the edges where the mist clung to the air. The words on the stone were fitting. Principled, unyielding, just.Of course, Father arranged his own epitaph.
He gazed at the neighbouring stone.
ANNE FITZWILLIAM DARCY
1755—1794
A BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER WHOSE KINDNESS
KNEW NO BOUNDS
For thirteen years, she had rested alone. Now, at last, he was beside her.
His father had never recovered from her loss. Grief had hollowed the man who once laughed freely and loved without reservation. What remained had been shaped by duty, stripped of warmth. Perhaps now, in death, he has found her again—.
“Darcy.” Bingley stopped beside him, his presence not an unwelcome intrusion. His Cambridge schoolmate had arrived atPemberley two days prior, undeterred by the treacherous roads or the brutal grip of Derbyshire’s winter.
The silence pressed down, heavy as the clouds that had not yet lifted. Water pooled in the hollow of the grave, sinking slowly into the softened earth as if even the storm had tried to bury the man deeper.
“I should hate to see you retreat to some dark chamber and, while brooding, refuse all company.”
Darcy stared at his mother’s headstone. “Would you?”
“No. But then, I have not carried Pemberley on my back since childhood.”
