Amanda Grange - Mr. Darcy, Vampyre

‘Did you not think I would notice that you never grew old?’ she asked. ‘Or were you going to say that your family was naturally blessed with long life?’ she added mischievously.

He laughed.

‘I knew you would notice eventually, but I thought I would have perhaps fifteen years with you before you became suspicious. That is more than five thousand days, over a hundred thousand hours, greater than two million minutes, and every one of them precious. But it was selfish of me.’

‘Not at all. I am flattered you wanted me so much,’ she said happily.

He kissed her softly on the lips.

‘Then I cannot regret it,’ he said. ‘I cannot regret anything, because everything in my life has led to this perfect moment with you.’

They lay there in companionable silence until the sun went behind a cloud, then they gathered up the picnic things and they returned arm in arm to the hunting lodge. Elizabeth played the piano. It was an old instrument and out of tune, but she found the familiar activity pleasurable and Darcy liked to listen to her.

Afterwards they settled down to write letters, Elizabeth to Jane, and Darcy to Georgiana. But as Elizabeth took up her quill she remembered something she had forgotten and turned to him in consternation.

‘When I was in the Prince’s carriage, I wrote a letter to Jane and threw it out of the window in the hope that one of the local people would see that it was sent. It said that I was being abducted and begged Jane to ask my father to enquire after me.’

‘Only you could have thought of such a thing at such a time!’ said Darcy with admiration.

‘If the letter arrives, my family will worry,’ said Elizabeth in some perturbation of spirits.

‘I will send the servants to look for it at once. Where was it?’

Elizabeth told him as well as she could.

‘If it has already been posted…?’ she began.

‘We will worry about that later. But for now, we will see if it can be found.’

He walked across the room to the fireplace and pulled the blue bell rope that hung next to it. The familiar jangling noise reached them from far off and soon one of the lodge servants appeared, quiet and respectful.

‘Mrs Darcy dropped a letter in the forest,’ Darcy said, giving the man directions. ‘Find it, if it is to be found. If not, make enquiries in the village. Bring it to me as soon as it has been discovered.’

‘Yes, Old One,’ he said with a bow, and departed.

‘Old One?’ said Elizabeth, her eyes widening. She put down her quill in surprise. ‘Then they know you for what you are?’

‘Yes, they do.’

‘But they don’t mind,’ said Lizzy wonderingly.

‘No,’ said Darcy. He walked over to the desk and took a seat beside her, sitting down on the battered but comfortable chair. ‘I did them a service once, long ago, when I saved the life of the head man of their village. He was travelling between two villages, arranging a marriage, when he was set upon and attacked by bandits. I drove them off and then saw him safely back to his village. He thanked me for my actions and invited me to make a home here, and when I accepted, he set his people to serve me. For many years I lived here and protected the village from attack. The hills and forests hereabouts are mostly safe now, but they were riddled with bandits at the time.’

‘There is so much about you I don’t know,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You are not the man I thought you were.’

‘I wish I was. I would like nothing better than to take you to Pemberley and for us to live out our lives as you wanted, as you expected… as you had every right to expect.’

The mood had become more sombre. The subject they had so carefully avoided had risen despite their best efforts to keep it down and now it would not be denied.

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Elizabeth, looking at him sadly.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I only know that I want us to be together.’

‘You no longer want me to go away?’

‘No, I could not bear it if you did. But you, what do you want? Do you still want to come home to Pemberley?’ His voice was controlled but she could hear the emotion underneath. ‘I will release you from our marriage if that is your wish. You did not know what you were marrying in the church all those months ago in Meryton.’

‘The church,’ said Elizabeth, remembering. ‘How were you able to enter it? And how are you able to wear the cross I gave you?’

‘It is not my weakness,’ he said. ‘Every vampyre family has a different weakness. For some, it is garlic, for my uncle the Count, it is that he has no reflection. My family’s weakness is that we cannot be out of doors during sunrise or sunset. At those times of day, we become translucent and so we cannot pass amongst humans unnoticed, and if we remain out of doors at those times for too often, then a part of our solidity fades, never to return. And so, as it is not my weakness, I can enter a church and wear a cross, though it chafes me. But you have not answered my question. Do you want to be free of the marriage? A way can be found for a man of my wealth.’

There was something so vulnerable about him as he looked at her that she reached out her hand to him and he took it fervently.

‘No,’ she said. ‘We are meant to be together. I would like us to return to Pemberley, as we planned. But can we truly live there? Won’t your neighbours in Derbyshire notice you never age?’

‘I have ways of disguising it. Just before my neighbours begin to notice that something is amiss I leave Pemberley, and a few months later, it is given out that I have met with an accident or succumbed to an illness. Later still, I return to Pemberley as the new heir, sometimes apparently the nephew of my previous self, or the cousin. This time I was the son.’

‘Did no one wonder why they had never seen you as a child?’

‘One of my Fitzwilliam cousins had a little boy of the right age and so he visited me from time. The servants and neighbours accepted him as Master Darcy, who had been born abroad and whose mother had sadly died in childbirth. His frequent absences were explained by extended visits to relatives, attendance at school, and then at university.’

‘Did no one notice you were the same man?’ asked Elizabeth.

‘The similarity has always been put down to a family resemblance and nothing more, particularly as the prevailing fashions have helped me to disguise my appearance. It has been usual for men to wear wigs until very recently, and a man in a dark wig that tumbles to his waist in a mass of curls will always look different to a man in a short powdered wig. And recently the fashion has been for no wig at all.’

‘I suppose a similar ruse is used to hide Georgiana’s agelessness?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘How difficult your life must have been,’ she said in sympathy.

‘It was not the greatest of my difficulties,’ he remarked. He glanced at her sheet of paper, which was as yet empty. ‘Will you tell Jane?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I have always confided in her about everything, but this… I cannot decide. Does Bingley know?’

‘No.’

‘Will you tell him?’

‘Perhaps, in time, if you tell Jane.’

‘For now, I think I will not mention it. I will tell her that we have been travelling round Europe, but that we mean to be home soon, and leave anything else for another time.’

The blissful interlude could not last. They both knew they would have to face the world again and when the weather changed, with rain falling outside the window, they knew the time had come.

‘Annie said that you sent the retinue back to Venice,’ said Elizabeth as she looked out at the rain.

‘Yes,’ said Darcy. ‘It seemed the safest place for them at the time.’