“Quite the contrary, William. Surprisingly I do not feel 'uncomfortable,' but merely do not wish to burden you with my affairs unnecessarily. It is all past now, but I yearn for the honest relationship I sense building between us to continue. I know you are aware that I had a mistress. Previously I was unperturbed by your reaction to the fact. I do not suffer from embarrassment or the fear of disparagement.” He laughed, opening one eye to peer at Darcy. “My towering self-esteem and arrogance is not a façade! If you thought less of me for living immorally, I honestly did not care. But, you see, this too has changed. Oh, I am still arrogant and likely will be until the day I die, but your opinion now matters. Quite annoying actually, but there you have it.”
He closed the eye, smiling dreamily. “Jharna was the wife of my mentor, Dr. Kshitij Ullas, and daughter to a marvelous friend, Thakore Sahib Pandey. She and I were friends but nothing more until after Kshitij died, well after in fact. Jharna and Kshitij were a rare find in that they truly loved each other. He was far older and a widower for many years when he married Jharna. It was an arranged marriage, as most are there, Jharna given as partial payment when Kshitij saved Pandey's life. Of course, all this transpired long before I came to India. By the time I met them they were the parents of two young boys, happily married and in love. Jharna was supremely fortunate in that she had a wealthy, influential father who doted on her and a husband who arranged for her to be cared for after he died.”
He sighed. “Hindu women have few rights, William, even worse than here, and their religion precludes them from enjoying life after being widowed. If not for a supportive family, Jharna would have been banished. Should have been, according to many, or encouraged to commit sati, suicide that is, when he died. Instead she retreated to a secluded house Kshitij prepared for her and lived as a recluse raising their sons. Our relationship evolved gradually. My love for Kshitij and grief upon his death brought us together as friends comforting each other. Two years passed before either of us realized our friendship had progressed into love. What we felt for each other, the relationship we lived was wrong on many counts from both our cultural beliefs, but nothing has ever felt so right at the same time. I begged her to marry me and come to England, but she refused. Jharna was a Hindu and her place was there. I understood this, respected her bravery and viewpoint, but the immorality of our situation distressed me. Not for what other people thought, but for my personal principles. Maybe it was weakness on our part or perhaps superior strength of conviction. I do not know. It never bothered Jharna so much. She was one of those rare souls who accept the whimsies of life as freely as the trees accept the wind and rain.”
“I wish I could have met her. She sounds remarkable.”
“That she was.”
“Tell me more.”
George looked at Darcy's trusting face, eyes full of affection, and he smiled. And he did tell him more, then and in numerous conversations that would span the future time they shared.
While the friendship and familial bond between Darcy and George flourished rapidly, aided by these solitary intervals, Lizzy's attachment was delayed. She liked him instantly at the first words out of his mouth when entering Darcy House and his compassionate care for Darcy's shoulder. Her delight in his humor was instantaneous. However, true affinity and devotion was longer in coming due to the plain fact that they passed little time alone together while in London or at Pemberley during the summer. This began to change as the fall months progressed with fewer people to entertain and divert attention. Gradually their conversations deepened, the two upon rare occasions alone for a pointed engagement.
One such incident occurred one morning as Lizzy lumbered with mildly waddling gait down the peacefully quiet second-floor hallway toward the coolness of her parlor. Breakfast was over and Darcy was already gone on a jaunt about the estate while Georgiana was with her tutor. The persistent heat combined with an ever-increasing physical burden sapped her strength, necessitating afternoons at rest and any household chores requiring her concentration be done early in the day before weariness consumed her. Thus she was heading for her parlor where a stack of papers and ledgers waited on her small desk.
Her attention was captured as she passed the yawning expanse at the top of the grand staircase. George stood in the foyer focused on one of the three gigantic tapestries that lined the southern wall below the window embrasures. With a smile she diverted from her pathway, carefully navigating the marble stairs with hand tight on the banister, and silently joined him in contemplation.
“I cannot recall how many times I lost myself in staring at these, attempting to trace the interwoven lines and memorize all the names. Do you know we actually were tested on our family tree?” He turned to Lizzy with a grin and she shook her head. “Oh yes! You would think our tutors part of the family as vigorously as they enforced our ability to readily trace our ancestry. I was always gifted in rote memorization, but Alex was pathetically inept, poor soul. The first time, I think we were maybe eight or so, I told him to just toss in a ream of Alexanders and Jameses and Henrys and Roberts and he would fool the tutor.” He laughed. “I was wrong, of course, and we both received lashes across our knuckles.”
“The first time I visited Pemberley, with my uncle and aunt, we breezed through the foyer and I confess I was struck more by the ceiling and sculptures. It was the following day that William, Mr. Darcy as he was to me then, brought us here for a closer inspection at my request. I think he was a bit embarrassed, not wishing me to think him unduly proud of his home. He was trying so hard to impress me with his humility, you see, not realizing that I was already in love with him. He steered me to the opposite side, away from the tapestries, but I noticed them anyway.”
The tapestries under discussion were enormous, masterpieces of weft-faced wool hung from four-inch-thick rods of polished oak. The first, woven in shades of forest green and gold, was ancient, tracing the Darcy family from Baron John D'Arcy in 1335 to the late 1500s. The second tapestry, maroon and silver, resumed the lineage, noting the elevation of Conyers Darcy to Earldom in 1682, a peerage that became extinct when Robert Darcy died childless in 1778. The Pemberley line of Darcys had long since diverged from the noble line when a second son, Frederick Darcy, had taken his inheritance and settled in Derbyshire to raise sheep in the mid-1400s. While the noble antecedents dwindled, the Darcys of modest wealth and prestige multiplied and financially prospered. The majority of subsequent lines were left unrecorded as the family proliferated and disseminated, but the uninterrupted chain from the current Master of Pemberley to that distant baron was explicit.
The final tapestry, navy blue and copper, was half filled with spidery lines and stitched names with dates. They stood gazing at the recent decades' entries with soft smiles elicited by the memories evoked.
“What were your thoughts?”
Lizzy laughed. “That I was woefully inadequate to ever imagine my name woven next to his. That the Bennets would be hard-pressed to trace their ancestry five or six generations, let alone nearly five hundred years! That Mr. Darcy must be thinking the same exact thing and wondering what insanity possessed him to propose to me in the first place. So many false and unimportant thoughts.”
“And here your name is,” he pointed to the embroidered Elizabeth Bennet now linked with gold filigree thread to Fitzwilliam Darcy, “and soon your child will be added. Families are all the same, Elizabeth. Filled with scoundrels, lovers, saints, sinners, noblemen, and paupers.”
“Do you not experience a sense of overwhelming pride to belong to such an auspicious heritage?”