Sally O'Rourke - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt poor Eliza’s equestrian education, Fitz,” Faith abruptly cut in, “but the caterer from Richmond is in the ballroom, screaming about your ban on electricity for tomorrow. The poor man insists it’s not possible to serve hot guinea fowl to two hundred guests without his precious microwaves.”

Darcy sighed and pushed away from the fence. “I’ll take care of it,” he told the blonde.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, turning back to Eliza, “you’d like to go up and see your room now. I’ll ask Jenny to show you the way.” He paused and then added, “We can continue our discussion later, if you still want to continue…”

Eliza’s eyes sparkled mischievously and she gave him an enthusiastic nod. “Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world .”

They all started walking back toward the house. But before they had proceeded ten paces Faith linked her arm possessively in Darcy’s and led him out ahead of Eliza, pointedly excluding the visitor from all further conversation.

“The florist is here looking for pots or something,” Faith rattled on to Darcy. “She says you promised they’d be ready.”

“I told that woman yesterday that Lucas would have the planters at the gatehouse.” Darcy sounded genuinely annoyed. “Will you point the florist down there while I see to the caterer?”

“Poor darling,” Faith crooned. “Of course I will. Anything I can do to help.”

After a few seconds of eavesdropping, Eliza tuned out the mundane discussion and followed silently behind them. As she walked she attempted to accord some level of credence to any part of Darcy’s bizarre tale. But aside from the seeming sincerity of his delivery and his own professions of bafflement over what had actually happened to him, she could think of nothing solid on which to ground a belief that he could have simply blundered into another century.

“Hope you like roses.”

At the end of a richly carpeted upstairs corridor hung with dark ancestral portraits Jenny Brown flung open a door and stepped aside. Looking into the large, antique-filled room beyond, Eliza saw that the decor was entirely themed around roses. From the rose-patterned wallpaper and carpet to the curtains at the windows and the intricately carved roses on the wooden bedposts, everything was roses.

Stepping into the Rose Bedroom Eliza saw that her bags had been placed on a blanket chest at the foot of the bed with its embroidered rose-colored satin coverlet. “Incredible!” she gasped, overwhelmed by the scene, which vaguely reminded her of the bedroom set from Gone With the Wind .

“Yeah, kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?” Jenny was grinning as she walked to a pair of tall French doors. She opened them to reveal a broad balcony overlooking the lawns and fields of Pemberley Farms. “You can see most of the estate from up here,” she reported.

“They say Fitz’s great-great-great-grandmother, Rose, used to sit here and watch for her man to come riding across those hills.” Turning back to the amazing bedroom Jenny switched on a small bronze lamp, illuminating a deep alcove that Eliza had not yet noticed.

Hanging on the wall of the alcove, above an ornate copper bathtub, was a lifelike painting of a slender, dark-haired woman, her full, sensuous lips seemingly on the verge of smiling.

Eliza thought that the subject of the portrait was the most exquisitely beautiful female she had ever seen, especially dressed as she was in a marvelously revealing gown of rose-colored silk. “Is that her?” she asked in awe.

“The grand lady herself,” Jenny confirmed. “They say when the master’s horse was sighted Rose would step into a bath filled with rose petals.” The handsome black woman smiled and pointed. “She’d be sitting naked right there in that tub, waiting for him when he reached her door.”

“Hmmm, sounds kinda kinky!” Eliza laughed.

Jenny joined in with her laughter. “I think that all depends on your point of view,” she said. “You see, my great-great-great-grandmother was the one who had to pick all those damn rose petals. But the times do change, don’t they?” Jenny continued. “Now Artie and I are guests here at Pemberley, and we stay in whatever room we choose.”

“Do you ever choose this room?” Eliza asked, smiling.

Jenny shuddered theatrically. “Honey, I get the hives when I walk into this room. You’re welcome to it.” She threw herself backwards onto the satin bed coverlet and crossed her ankles. “You’ll have to pick your own damn rose petals, though.”

“Point me to them gardens,” Eliza laughed, falling onto the bed beside her. “This is so bizarre,” she giggled, looking around at the roses that surrounded her on every side. “I came down here to talk about some old letters and I feel like I’ve fallen through the looking glass.”

“This room will do that to you, sure enough,” Jenny chuckled. “They say you should stop to smell the roses, but this bedroom is a definite case of overkill.”

“What do you recommend we do now?” Eliza asked between spasms of laughter.

“Well, Alice,” Jenny giggled, “if you’re up to it, this might be a good time for us to go find something for you to wear to the ball tomorrow night.”

“The ball,” Eliza gasped, choking on her own laughter. “Do you know I’ve never even been to a single ball in my life?”

“Girl, you have been deprived !” squealed Jenny.

Twenty minutes later, their giggling finally under control, Jenny and Eliza stood together in a huge, air-conditioned and cedar-paneled attic room, looking through long racks of neatly labeled antique clothing of all types.

“This is incredible,” Eliza said, indicating the contents of the vast wardrobe room with a sweeping gesture of her arms. “Did the Darcys save every piece of clothing they ever owned?”

“No, these things didn’t belong to the Darcys, the vast majority didn’t anyway,” Jenny replied. “Sometime back around 1960 Fitz’s grandmother discovered a trunk filled with antique gowns. She decided to see if she could restore them to their original condition so they wouldn’t be lost to history. When she succeeded, the word got around. Folks started bringing her other old things, men’s clothing included. And before she knew what was happening she had a collection.”

Jenny rolled out a rack of exquisite ball gowns from the early nineteenth century, all looking as fresh as if they had been newly made. “After his grandmother died Fitz’s mother kept the restorations going,” she explained. “When she passed away, the collection went into moth balls. A few years ago Fitz set up and funded a foundation for the ongoing preservation of the collection. He had this room built, hired a full-time curator and two seamstresses just to keep all this up, as an homage to his mother and grandmother. Mostly the clothes are lent out to museums and schools now,” Jenny added, holding up a shimmering blue silk gown and passing it to Eliza for inspection.

Eliza examined the dress appreciatively, once more slightly revising her early opinion of the enigmatic Fitzwilliam Darcy. She realized with a start how he had happened to know so much about Regency-era clothing that first day when they had met at the library.

“Mr…. I mean Fitz, seems to be quite an extraordinary person,” Eliza said, hoping to draw an unguarded opinion from Jenny. “Is it really possible for one man to be rich, handsome and as genuinely nice as he appears to be?”

Jenny put down the gown she was holding and her voice turned suddenly serious. “I have known Fitz my entire life,” she said without a moment’s hesitation. “And he’s probably the best man I’ve ever known.”