Chapter 1

Posted on Saturday, 14 April 2007

Elizabeth Bennet had tears in her eyes. They were rogue tears, large drops of salty defiance that snaked their way down her cheeks. She brushed at them furiously. Elizabeth Bennet did not cry. It was as simple as that, and everyone who knew her could attest to that! But it was only those who truly knew her, who knew this assertion to be quite the falsehood indeed. Elizabeth Bennet did cry… only when she thought no one could see her, only when she could no longer keep her tears captive behind the steel gray of her eyes, behind the dancing mirth, behind the teasing sparkle. Elizabeth Bennet was a closet crier.

Of average height, average looks, with nothing spectacular about her whatsoever (or so thought she), Elizabeth was what would have been referred to as a classic beauty in any other age but ours. In this… modern age… she was normal, lofty in her carriage perhaps, prudish in her manners certainly, and… a bit out of place. You see, she dared to dream of Romance, something that was certainly lacking in the modern world of one-night stands and cohabitation. She dared to dream of men who would fight for her honor and virtue in a world where lack of virtue was undeniably all the rage. Elizabeth had an over-abundance of virtue, and in this modern world, it was killing her.

Thusly dreaming, she dared envision a place with such a history, such a reputation, and that place was England. So, deciding that 25 was as good an age as any to disrupt a smoothly running life, she left for what she told her family was an “indefinite period.” They had expected her back in a day or two, a week at the most. To move out of the country at such a tender age was unthinkable. Jane knew better.

Jane was one of the few who knew that her sister cried.

“I’m coming with you.” Jane plopped herself into a hard seat at the Connecticut airport.

“You can’t. You’re getting marred next month… I’ll be back for that.” Elizabeth had not considered her elder sister’s wedding when she had planned the move, she had not thought at all, just acted on impulse. She sounded slightly guilty now, yet still determined, unwavering.

“I’m not getting married.”

“You’re not… why?”

“Oh, Lizzy, you’ll laugh at me. Don’t ask. Please.

Elizabeth didn’t ask, just looked forward, accepting that her sister would tell her when she was ready.

“Lizzy, I’m still in love with Charles… I can’t marry Zach if I’m still in love with Gerard.”

“Thank God! I hated Zach!” Elizabeth turned to her sister, her lips curving into a warm smile. “And now you can help me pay rent! How did he take it… Zach?”

“He didn’t. I mean, I haven’t told him. He doesn’t know I’m here.” Jane would not look at her sister. “I couldn’t tell him, you understand. I just couldn’t break his heart…”

Elizabeth did understand. She knew her soft-hearted sister would never intentionally hurt anyone. Jane, it seemed, was a dreamer as well, and the faintly remembered face from college had prompted her to take an action which would indeed bring pain to someone she rather cared for.

The sisters did not speak the entire journey to England. They were simply content to be near another who understood and accepted them; they were simply content to be making a change.

Changes don’t always mean improvement, however, and the Bennet sisters found little improvement in their new country. Jane had been by Gerard’s house. He had not remembered her as she had him. “It is a blessing in disguise,” she told her sister. “Now I know, and will be able to forget him as well.” But Jane did not fare well after this disappointment.

Elizabeth, for her part, had met no man who would defend her honor and virtue, no man who valued Romance. Oh, she went searching for it. Her job suffered; they were on the verge of firing her. But she simply could not keep herself out of the old estates, the old castles, the huge, sprawling country houses. She would drive miles to spend all day at an estate where nature and man seemed at perfect harmony with one another, where the furniture curved gracefully like the necks of swans and ceilings soared above marbled flooring down long, history soaked corridors lined with the portraits of men and women now long dead, but who called elegantly to her with their eyes.

She visited small country farms and found there a still-lingering sense of family and anticipation, exhilaration and contentment. These emotions washed over her, making it harder and harder for her to leave each ancient dwelling, harder and harder for her to leave the past and live within her own world.

One day, she disappeared. Jane was frantic, distraught, and finally elated when she received a call from a Mrs. Reynolds.

“Yes, yes this is she. Yes, yes she is. Oh God, do you know where she is? Is she okay? Is she hurt? Sick? What’s wrong with her? Oh God, I’ll be right there. Wait… where are you? Near Lambton? Pemberley… alright, alright. I’ll be there as soon as possible. Thank you so much thank God thank you so much.”

Elizabeth lay in a sprawling bed, her eyes closed, dreaming, far away, a tear running down her cheek.

“Lizzy?” Jane asked as she crept closer, Mrs. Reynolds standing in the open doorway to the old bedroom.

“She’s running a fever. She’s been in and out of consciousness all day. The doctor has been to see her. Of course the master won’t mind if she stays here for the time being. He’s away at the moment, and stays gone for quite some time. He and his best friend, Charles Bingley. In and out, in and out. Such strange hours and habits.”

Jane certainly heard the name of her love mentioned aloud and in direct reference to the owner of this palatial mansion, but her main concern was her sister, so she shoved it aside for future consideration. She heard Mrs. Reynolds mention something about leaving the two alone, then heard the door shut behind her. It was late, past midnight. She would take Elizabeth home tomorrow. But it could not hurt to indulge in stranger’s hospitality for one night. Thinking such thoughts, she climbed in bed beside Elizabeth and fell fast asleep.

Elizabeth heard the sound of voices in the hall. Male voices. At first she thought it a foggy dream, but they were distinct, rich, and very real. They drew her from her bed. Her head spinning, she opened the bedroom door as she heard the voices passing and looked upon the broad shouldered backs of two tall men, one light-haired, one dark, both dressed in casual clothing. They were whispering and joking, and Elizabeth followed them. Quietly she followed them, softly, her feet padding swiftly down the hall towards their retreating backs.

Jane followed Elizabeth, though Elizabeth never noticed, so intent was she on the two men she herself followed. They went up a flight of stairs and entered a room on the right. Elizabeth waited outside of the door, curious, hesitant, unthinking in her dream-like state, intent on simply moving impulsively forward. She opened the door to an empty room. The men were gone. There was a window, closed. A closet, abandoned. A bathroom, unoccupied, as was the four poster bed in the middle of the huge room. The furnishings were sparse, and the room felt more lived in than the rooms the tour guide Mrs. Reynolds had showed to her earlier in the day.

There was nothing in the room but the bed and a mirror. The mirror was a large, standing one; it rested on curled mahogany feet and was framed by rich, elegantly carved wood. Elizabeth stared at herself in it. Her reflection looked strange. She wondered if it was like the circus mirrors that distorted you, making you short or fat, or only half a body. But it was not that, not that at all. This mirror showed herself, but different. Her shoulder length hair curled and twisted down her back, spilled over her shoulders, growing in the mirror’s reflection. The shape of her eyes changed minutely, tilting, widening, the eyebrows thickening slightly. Her skin, a sun-kissed olive lightened, paled and glowed in the moonlight spilling in from the window, taking on an ethereal quality; her reflection glowed. Her manicured fingernails shortened into a natural, maintained, elegant curve and then she felt it. A strange shifting inside of her, almost painful. She slammed her eyes shut tried to breath as the pain increased, and knew she must search out her bed. She no longer cared about where the men had gone to, no longer cared about the strange mirror.

The room opened up before her where the mirror had once been. She must have turned around in her blind anguish, searching for the door. She took a step forward and felt cold, as if she had plunged head-long into an icy river; currents of frost swirled around her and cloaked her in darkness. Staggering, she took one more step forward. If she could just make it to the bed…

And the pain was gone. As quickly as it had come upon her, it had melted away. She opened her eyes, found the entrance from the abandoned bedroom into the hallway, and made her way back to the safe womb of her own temporary bed. The hallways were different. The air different. Everything was darker, more silent, more still than she had ever seen, heard, or felt it before. She did not stop to care. She was asleep before she could pull the blankets over her completely, asleep before she could notice anything was wrong.

Jane had followed Elizabeth, calling her name over and over. But her sister had been in a trance of some sort. Sleep walking, Jane supposed. As Elizabeth looked distractedly into the mirror, the eldest Bennet girl watched her younger sister, and when the youngest Bennet girl moved forward, the eldest followed unquestioningly, she too in a trance of sorts. They moved together down the hallway, Elizabeth unaware of Jane behind her, and Jane unaware of anything but Elizabeth. The sisters crawled into bed together, one lost in a dream, the other lost in the safety of her sister. They slept soundly. As deep as death.

The sun that rose over Pemberley sent sunbeams shinning into Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy’s room, penetrating the half-drawn window hangings and alighting in yellow lines across his unclothed back. He awoke with a start as his bedroom door slammed shut.

“Darce, Darce! Wake up, damn you! Right now!” Charles Bingley was obviously worried, though what is was that had him upset enough to burst into Darcy’s room at the crack of dawn was more than the master of Pemberley wanted to know, frankly.

“Go away. I’m sleeping,” was the brilliant, sleep induced reply.

“Good God, Darcy!” exclaimed Bingley, pulling the tousled sheet off of his friend’s bed. “Get the hell up and look at my left hand!”

Darcy groaned, pushed himself to a sitting position, rubbed his eyes of sleep, and opened to the sight of Bingley’s hand, golden hair glinting off the back of it, right in front of his face. It took Darcy a moment to register what was essentially wrong with the picture his friend presented him. The fingers were all there, one, two, three, four, five. Yes, on first and second inspection, all were there. It was a smooth, even skin tone, not unusual to the one his friend always possessed. He was not bleeding anywhere.

And Darcy noticed the ring. It was a simply ring, gold in color, obviously expensive, and obviously at home on the ring finger of Bingley’s left hand. Had it been marked as so, it could not have been more obtrusively a wedding ring.

“I… do not remember your having a wife, Bingley… what is the meaning of this? What trick are you trying to pull? And why wake me up so early to do it?”

“It is no trick man, and if it is, the trick is on me! I went to bed immediately after… arriving last night, as did you. When I awoke, the ring was there! And my head hurts quite awfully, and I keep seeing things in my head… memories that shouldn’t be there.”

Darcy was quite sure his friend had gone off his rocker, but considering the discovery they had made but a year ago, anything was possible. Closing his eyes, he covered his face with his hands, only to feel a small cold band cut across the tip of his nose. Surely not, he thought, not daring to open his eyes. He then realized he was suffering from a raging headache as well, and faint and poorly painted scenes flashed across his mind’s eye. He ran his right fingers over his left-hand knuckles.

“Darcy…” said Bingley hesitantly. But Darcy already knew what Bingley was going to say. He opened his eyes. There, on the second digit of his left hand, was a gold wedding band. He snapped his eyes closed once more, confusion scattering his thoughts. Silently, he arose from bed, grabbed a shirt off of the back of a nearby chair, and tugged it over his unruly dark hair. Opening his eyes, he strode from the room, one purpose driving his feet down the hallway.

He had a wife. He hadn’t had one yesterday, and he did not exactly remember a marriage ceremony taking place in the wee hours of the night, but something had definitely changed. A face floated vaguely before him, but he could not remember a name. So that is what he went in search for, name, a face, a wife.

He knew what room she was in when he passed it, and not a moment sooner. Bingley followed him down the hall, but he paid no attention to the scurrying golden man behind him. He grabbed the door handle forcefully, ready to yank it open and demand to know her identity and where she came from, but stopped.

Instead, he gently eased the door open, wincing when it squeaked mid-swing. There were two small shapes huddled on the bed in front of him, and he instinctively walked to the left side of the bed where the tip of a dark head laid strikingly against the white coverlet of the pillow. Pulling a chair close to the bedside, he sat and stared. She was small and dark with fine feature that promised great beauty under the guidance of a smile. At the moment, her brow was furrowed, her forehead was shiny as if she were fevered, and her skin appeared sickly pale and sallow.

“Elizabeth,” he whispered, the name coming unbidden to his lips. He knew it was right, just as it was right that he had never seen her until this very moment. Perhaps he had… memory was confused, reality quite fuzzy.

Bingley was bent over the bed, gazing upon the second shape that inhabited the bed. The second female form was a blond beauty, taller, perhaps, than her sister, yet not as refined. Or so Darcy thought, though it was clear Bingley was enthralled by the sight of her. “My God, she’s an angel.” He frowned, his eyes slanting and his mouth puckering. “Of course she’s an angel. She was an angel the day I married her!” It was as if a flood gate had opened up with Darcy’s oldest friend, and a deluge of new memories assailed him, drowning him in a certainty of his presently married status. Darcy waited for the same conviction to wash over him, but it did not. What did come, however, was a fierce protectiveness, a worry that clutched at his very heart, and the desire to wipe away the sweat from her brow. He did just that, pushing a tendril of dark, curly hair out of her closed eyes. She moaned and turned her head in her sleep, as if in response to his very touch.

The other girl chose that very moment to awake. She cried out in alarm at the sight of a large, smiling man looming over her on the bed, then, after a moment’s deep contemplation, broke into a sincere and joyful grin. “Charles,” she said, somewhat happily, somewhat apprehensively, as if she were trying out the name on her tongue. “Jane,” he whispered back to her.

She took a quick survey of her surroundings and asked, “How did I come to be here? In this bed?”

“I don’t know love. Shall we go back to our room?” He stood and held out a hand to her. Arising quickly, she fell back to the bed quickly as well, touching a hand to her head.

“Oh, I’m afraid I’ve a slight headache.”

“Come, Jane, I’ll take care of you.”

She put her hand in his and they left the room smiling, rather obscenely, at each other.

Darcy, for his part, could not understand how either of the golden individuals who had just left the room had not given a single thought to the sickly woman lying in the bed. Especially since Darcy had the distinct feeling that the two women were very important to one another.

Elizabeth turned again, moaning loader this time, and as she turned her head towards him, her eyes eased open. They stared at one another, both trying to guess into the other’s very soul. Slowly, Darcy leaned toward her. He would kiss her. He had to kiss her. His lips touched her softly, slowly, and then with slight pressure. Pulling away, he murmured her name, and wandered how it was he knew but did not now the woman before him. She brought a hand to his face, lightly brushing her fingertips there, and he took it, studying the ring there on her finger, and realized the stone encircling this band were an attempt to match the color of her very gray eyes. He smiled at her, his heart unexpectedly full.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice low and raspy, “Who are you?”

Chapter 2

Posted on Monday, 16 April 2007

Elizabeth hurt all over. Her head was pounding; her arms and legs felt as if they had been smashed with a jackhammer, even her scalp tingled uncomfortably. She could not remember getting terribly drunk the night before, but she must have! Otherwise she would not have awakened in a strange bed, in a strange house, with a strange (but very handsome) man staring concernedly at her.

His kiss had been unexpected, but hardly uninvited. The longer she stared at him, the more sure she was she knew him, that he was somehow important to her, yet she could not seem to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. “I’m sorry. Who are you?” she said, immediately regretting it. It hurt to talk as well, her lungs and throat felt as if there were on fire, and surely that was not her voice that had escaped her lips. Or was it? She could not quite remember, but she was fairly certain she was an American. And the lilting, raspy voice with the very British accent that had come from her but a second ago did not fit what she… knew (?) to be true.

“It… it’s me… Darcy… Fitzwilliam,” replied the handsome stranger. “Your… your husband.” The statement almost sounded like a question to Elizabeth, a question tinged with much apprehension. His hand holding hers tightened and he searched her eyes even more earnestly than before.

Her husband? Why could she not remember a husband? Matter of fact, all she could remember was this lingering sense of loneliness, sadness. Surely she wouldn’t be sad with such a man to care for her. Which was wrong then? The loneliness or the other emotions this man produced? The British accent, or the memory of the American? It was too much. In fact, the pressure of the situation combined with her severe physical ailments was absolutely too much, and Elizabeth passed out.

“Lizzy! Elizabeth!” Darcy cried as he watched her eyelids flutter down over her dark eyes. “Oh God. Mrs. Reynolds! Send for the doctor, right away!” He hurried into the hallway to shout his command, once, twice, three times, his pitch growing higher and more urgent with each word. Soon the household was in a frenzy as a young stable boy was sent quickly for the doctor’s house, and Darcy strode back into his wife’s room and sat once more in the chair beside her bed.

He had not had a wife yesterday, yet he had a wife now. It was not, he thought, a bad thing. Unless of course she happened to… but he would not think like that. She would get better. Had she been sick yesterday? Last night? How was he to know? He had not known her then! What was the meaning, the cause of all this? Surely it all had to do with the mirror. The mirror, of course. Placing a light kiss on Elizabeth’s forehead, he left her room took the stairs three at a time, and re-entered his mother’s old room on the third floor.

Bingley had been restless a month ago, tired of living in the city, tired of his sisters, tired of life in general, which was really very odd for his perpetually peppy friend. He had come to Darcy knowing full well that if anyone could share in his cynicism and general gloominess, it was he. They decided to go to Pemberley, it was always nice there, relaxing, refreshing, rejuvenating. What they found, however, was a disaster. Georgiana, Darcy’s beloved younger sister, gone missing.

“Last I saw her, Mr. Darcy,” Mrs. Reynolds sobbed, “Was in her mother’s old sitting room.” Anything she said after that was lost in the utterly undecipherable wails of her bereavement. Darcy and Bingley both bounded upstairs to the room and found nothing but a bed, a large chair, and a mirror.

Darcy sent men to search the grounds, the town, all roads to and from Pemberley and Lambton. And he slept in the room. He slept every night where Georgiana should have been but was not, where she was last seen.

And then she just reappeared. Darcy awoke one night to his shoulders being shaken gently. “Fitzwilliam! Fitzwilliam, wake up.” It was Georgie’s voice, Georgie’s small hands, and her smiling face. “Fitzwilliam, I have something amazing to tell you!”’

And it had been amazing. Amazing did not even begin to describe what her experience had been.

“Wickham was here. He snuck into the house, and into this room. He said things to me, tried to get me to run away with him. But I remembered you warning me about him, so I kept asking him to leave, to get out, but he kept coming closer and closer. Every step he took towards me, I took one back, but he kept coming until my back was against the mirror.” Here she looked over her back, throwing a glance towards the mirror’s cool surface. “It was cold, and… not quite solid. Wickham lunged for me, and as I fell against the mirror, I… fell. Into the mirror, Fitzwilliam! Our house is on the other side! Only… strange people in rather odd clothes live there. There is a Mrs. Reynolds, but it is not our Mrs. Reynolds. I fell sick after falling through the mirror, and the other Mrs. Reynolds put me to bed until I was well again. When I did feel well, I left the room at night to go this room… but on the other side of the mirror. And I came back! Oh, Fitzwilliam, it was the most remarkable thing!”

Darcy told his sister never to mention her experience to anyone; he was afraid she had gone mad. For his part, he only told Charles of his fears for his sister. But his mother’s room was still a mystery. Georgiana had never exhibited such flights of mad fancy before. Why would she start now?

He stood one night, shortly after his sister’s return, in front of the mirror, pondering its draw, its mystery. Reaching out to touch its surface, his hand met liquid, not the solid glass he expected. He rushed to Bingley’s room and woke him up, dragged him to the third floor sitting room that had once belonged to his mother. Together, they stepped through the mirror’s surface and into the other Pemberly. Mrs. Reynold’s had been there to greet them.

“Welcome, Master. We’ve been waiting for you to come. I assume the young Miss got home safely? I was not expecting her. She won’t need the mirror. Darcy women usually don’t… just you stubborn males. I see you brought a friend.” She eyed Charles Bingley up and down. “Well, he looks as if he needs a bit of magic in his life as well. He’ll do.”

Mrs. Reynold’s would not tell them anything. She wouldn’t speak about the mirror, about herself, about Pemberley, or anything at all. She simply answered every question with the enigmatic phrase, “Darcy men, so fickle in love. None of ‘emd ever find it if it weren’t for old John Darcy and his good heart.”

All Darcy knew was the old John Darcy and his good heart apparently had something to do with the unexpected wife that was now lying, sick, in a guest bedroom of his own house. The guest bedroom. That will never do. She is my wife. The doctor will wonder.

Darcy stepped once more through the mirror. Or he would have, had it not, remarkably and unexpectedly been solid. “What the hell?” He whispered into the silence of the room. He tried again, but to the same outcome. “What the bloody hell?!” Putting his hand on the mirror’s cool, hard surface two more times, he left the room. Elizabeth was sick. She would be needing him. He would speak with Bingley later. And perhaps Mrs. Reynolds.

Chapter 3

Posted on Thursday, 11 October 2007

Elizabeth woke up in a different bed than she had been in before; it was larger, darker, more familiar, and more unknown to her than the other had been. She slung her legs over the side of the bed and rubbed her eyes, trying to clear the fog in her head. From the other side of the room a groggy-eyed ghost starred at her. She moved toward it, slowly, finding the soles of her feet to be shockingly sensitive to the plush carpet beneath them. The sensation moved up her body as she moved closer and brushed her fingertips against the cool surface of a mirror. It was no ghost, but her very own reflection that stared through pale skin and dark eyes at her. She lost herself in those eyes, darker than they should be, the skin paler, the hair that framed the face curlier. It was the transformation of a few hundred years, and as she watched her mental image of herself meld with the one in the mirror, she forgot the memories of things that hadn’t happened yet, and wouldn’t happen for centuries.

“Elizabeth?”

She slung around at the name pronounced in a deep voice, and the connection with her reflection broke, forgotten as well. She fell to the floor.

“I seem to be fainting an awful lot lately,” she whispered as she woke to two curious, worried eyes above her. “I’m sorry.”

“The doctor will arrive soon. Don’t move.” He pushed her back into the pillow as she rose up onto a forearm; he moved to pass back and forth at the end of the bed. Her eyes followed him, watching him, wishing she knew this man who was so very concerned about her. Abruptly, he stopped pacing and crawled onto the bed beside her. “Elizabeth… you aren’t…. I mean, you are not… indisposed are you?”

“Indisp…oh! No! I… I don’t think so. I don’t know. I mean… I don’t know. I don’t know anything!”

“What?

She sobbed. “I know I’m Elizabeth because you call me that, but who are you? And who is Elizabeth? And why am I sick? Am I… am… am I indisposed?” The last melted into a fit of tears and chokes.

The Doctor had proclaimed her to be suffering from no more than severe exhaustion and a slight head cold.

Her memory loss was unexplainable. Had she suffered any hits to the cranium as of late? Any stressful, traumatic situations? Was there a history of mental illness in her family? Well, besides her mother… “No, no there’s not.” Then all she needed was a bit of rest, quiet, and a sunny day or two. The whole county knew of Mrs. Darcy’s infatuation with the outdoors.

“And perhaps you, sir, should stay more often at home?”

He had been gone an awful lot lately. But where? Searching for something. But what? Well, there was no need searching for it anymore… but why?

Why was his head this confusing jumble of convictions and lost information? Did it matter?

Elizabeth was asleep when the doctor left; he had given her something to quiet her. Darcy paced back and forth in the library, trying to connect all the random contradictions in his head. But it was no use. He found that if he just stopped thinking, things made infinitely more sense. It was around the time of this particular revelation that there came a pert but hesitant knock on the door. “Yes?” he inquired.

“It’s me, and Jane,” came Bingley’s voice from the other side. Darcy opened the door and his best friend and wife stepped into the library, hand in hand. “We talked to the doctor on his way out. Jane wanted to check in on her, but he said not to disturb her while she’s resting. Said you’d tell us the ins and outs.”

“Oh, Fitzwilliam, what is the matter with her? Nothing serious I hope. I should be with her right now.” Jane removed herself from Bingley’s side and stepped toward Darcy, a helpless look in her eye.

“You musn’t, love,” Bingley answered. “The doctor said to let her rest. What good can you do watching her sleep?”

“I can be there in case she wakes up!”

Darcy thought the slightly stubborn look taking hold of Jane’s features was somewhat familiar. He imagined Elizabeth must look at him the same way when her own intentions are frustrated; he imagined she looked at him that way often. The chuckle that escaped him warranted confused glares from the couple before him. He sobered his features. “She has slight memory loss. We can’t know for sure what caused it, or if her memory will ever come back. We are to treat her delicately; there are to be no traumatizing surprises.” Like being married when one thought one’s self single.

Jane’s tears were immediate and proved impossible to stop. Bingley ushered her from the room, leaving Darcy to ruminate on his own. But Darcy did not intend to think for long. After all, thinking made things fuzzier; it was much easier just to accept and… and live. Opening the door, he stopped thinking, simply gave in, and let the “memories” pounding at the gate of his mind flood through. He left the library and made a confident path to his shared bedroom, stopping for a moment only to steal a bouquet of fresh flowers Ms. Reynolds had recently arranged in a second floor vase. Leaving a trail of conspicuous water drips on the carpet behind him, he strode into his bedroom, pulled a chair from the side of the room, and settled himself in to stay by the side of the bed, and its current invalid inhabitant.

He wanted to wake her, to take her riding, running, laughing to all his, their, favorite haunts. Would she remember them? Forgetting the rule about “traumatizing surprises,” Darcy climbed into the bed and gathered her into his arms. As he laid her head on his shoulder, he felt her stirring. Elizabeth turned in his arms, her dark eyes looked up piercingly into his.

“Hello, love. Are we feeling better now?”

“You again,” she responded in a level tone. “Sir, as I feel quite weak at the moment, and am unsure of my ability to remove myself from this bed and, indeed!, your embrace, I feel you must be the one to remove yourself. Then perhaps, once removed, you might begin to explain to me all that I certainly seem to have forgotten.”

Darcy frowned. How could he explain what he was not quite sure he understood himself? He gently left the bed, pacing the dimensions of the room in search of words; Elizabeth’s eyes followed him relentlessly, sharply, cutting into him with their fierceness.

“You are Elizabeth Darcy, and consequently my wife, which means I have every right to be in that bed by your side.” Though his words were forceful, he made no move to make good on his “right.”

“You stay right where you are, sir! How do I know that you are truly who you say you are? How do I know that I am truly who you say I am? I require proof.” Though she could not say why. Half of her wanted to simply accept that this handsome man pacing before her truly was her husband, half of her wanted to argue with him. It was a strange and contradictory compulsion, and sadly, she gave into it.

“Proof? You demand proof of this, besides my obvious ardent emotions for you?” with a single wild look in her direction, containing all the said ardent emotions for Elizabeth to read quite clearly, Darcy stormed from the room. “Jane! Bingley!” He strode down the hallway, calling the pair until the scurried into his sight.

“What is it man? Where’s the fire?” asked Bingley.

“Where is Elizabeth? Is she okay?” queried Jane.

“Elizabeth is in our room, refusing to believe that we are married! She’s insinuating that I’m lying about her identity, and demands proof!”

“Oh.” Jane’s amazement was silent but heart felt, and she wasted no time in making her way to her sister’s bedside.

Bingley simply chuckled. “Proof, eh? And how will you manage that?”

“The marriage license, of course… where… where did we get married again?”

Bingley’s chuckle turned into a full-fledged laugh that bounced off the high ceilings of the hallway. “Good God, man! If you can’t remember that, no wonder she’s chosen to forget all about you!” Had Bingley not been Darcy’s oldest friend, he might have ended up with his neck against the wall, and Darcy’s fist in his eye; however, he was merely the victim of a scathing look, and a few choice words not meant for the ears of the faint-hearted, before he stormed down the stairs, and out of the house. Bingley reconsidered his words and decided that they had not been sympathetic at all, and that perhaps he should stay out of Darcy’s way for a time to come.

“Mr. Bingley?” Mrs. Reynolds appeared from around a corner, her face tight, her eyes as dark and steely as the end of a musket. “Mr. Bingley, I thought I just heard Mr. Darcy’s voice. Is he close? I need to speak with him… and you… and your wife, if at all possible.”

Bingley thought hers an odd request, but replied, “Yes, Mr. Darcy was very recently here, but he has on… urgent business. Something about a marriage license, I believe. Is there anything the matter? Mrs. Darcy, is she yet well?”

“Yes, for the most part. But that is what I would speak to the master and you and your wife about. It is quite urgent.”

“Yes, well, I will tell Jane, and I suppose we will just have to wait until Darcy returns.”

“You’re right, of course, Mr. Bingley. But when he does return, if you would please convene in the old Mrs. Darcy’s room on the third floor?”

“The room with the…” Mrs. Reynolds request was odd, and he intuited, dangerous, but he somehow knew she was not to be trifled with. “Yes, I believe we can do that, Mrs. Reynolds. It is not urgent I hope. I have no clue as to when Darcy will be back.”

“No. It can wait. I do not think he will be gone long. I will be awaiting your company on the third floor.”

Bingley thought he should have suggested she do other, more housekeeperly things while waiting for the master’s return, but refrained from saying so. Instead, he contemplated the room on the third floor, and the mirror that stood alive there. His friend had never told him the story of it, only shared with him the secret it held. He supposed that if something like that looking glass could exist, then the fact that he had a wife today when he had no wife the day before was not impossible. Matter of fact, his memories of a solitary, bachelor life were slowly fading, to be replaced by ones of a blonde beauty smiling and serene in the midst of a flurry of dark-haired harridans. Her sisters? Yes, he reassured himself: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia. He smiled to himself, comfortable in the knowledge that, if Darcy couldn’t, he could remember, or was it create?, his wife.

Darcy entered his study late that evening to find Bingley sitting by the fire in his own favorite chair. “That’s my chair, Charles.”

“Darce, you must see about getting your wife better, for she is taking away mine.” He did not let Darcy even start the retort that was pushing past his lips. “Your esteemed housekeeper, the austere Mrs. Reynolds wishes to meet with us in your mother’s room. You, Jane, and I. As soon as possible.”

“What?” It was certainly not what he had expected upon arriving home this evening.

“It has, I believe, something to do with the mirror.”

That was enough for Darcy. He wasn’t sure, but he had guessed while driving his horse hard over the hills, that the mirror in his mother’s room might have something to do with their unexpected wives, and perhaps with his own wife’s inexplicable memory loss. “Is Jane with Elizabeth?” Bingley nodded. “Lets retrieve her then, and see what Mrs. Reynolds has to tell us.”

Elizabeth was holding steady, and had been awake for most of the afternoon, talking with Jane, or rather listening to Jane talk, about their childhood, their family, their own close relationship. She was sleeping now, a sleep of mental and emotional exhaustion and physical restlessness. “I’ll be with you both in a minute,” Darcy told Jane and Bingley, closing the door to the hallway behind him.

At first, he stood staring at his wife from the doorway, unsure of his right to enter fully into the room, the claim her space as his own as well. But then she moved, rolled from her side to her back, and he saw the frown between her eyebrows and heard the sigh that escaped her sleeping form. He approached the bed and stopped by its side, looking down at Elizabeth.

At that moment he was sure, completely clear, on several issues. First, he had not been married the day before. And second, just as certain as the one before it, he had been married for a year, and to the lady currently sleeping in his, no their, bed. He was insane, he was sure of that, and he could remember but couldn’t remember all at once, that was a certainty as well. But the most compelling and true thing that came to him in that moment was his love for her, whether she believed it or not, whether he believed it or not, it was there as surely as his heart was beating. He just hoped whatever it was his housekeeper had to tell him would clear up these contradictions and leave his life sane again, one way or another.

Chapter 4

Posted on Sunday, 21 October 2007

“You are, Mrs. Reynolds, much more of a worrier than I had ever taken you for!”

“And you, my dear Mrs. Reynolds, do not seem to understand, nor to appreciate the gravity and complexity of this particular situation!” Mrs. Reynolds frowned at her mirror image, whom was shaking her head and heaving a sigh.

“The girls came! They girls always come! There is no amount of time, or distance of travel that ever keeps them. You know this.”

“That they came is not the issue, as you well know! That the one did not adapt, did not fully change, is the issue. We are only lucky that she seems to have lost all memory; she has no memory of her former life as well as her new one.”

The mirror Mrs. Reynolds put her hands on her ample hips. “And why is this a problem. She may not remember now, but she certainly does not remember then.”

Mrs. Reynolds mirrored her reflection’s gesture. “It will cause problems between them; it will not be an easy path for him now.”

“Since when did the course of love ever run smooth? Why is Fitzwilliam to be allowed an easy answer to affairs of the heart when no one else is? So he’ll have to fight for her! If I know him, I know that he will!”

“But he might not! Therein, my dear, lies the problem. The shift cannot be reversed, you know. The girls cannot go back. If she has not completely shifted then… well… you know the implications.”

Mirror Mrs. Reynolds looked thoughtful. “Yes, yes. They might all be having memory problems now. Nothing connecting. Well, damn. It is an unfortunate occurrence. Do you have any idea why she did not take?”

“I would have no idea! You are the one who identifies the girls, who decides if they’re receptive or not, if they’re right.”

“Are you insinuating that I chose wrong? That she is not the one?”

“I would never insinuate that.”

“I think you are insinuating that, and how dare you! I’ve been watching over Darcys for 67 years!”

“Yes, and I’ve been watching over them for almost two hundred years before you were even conceived of!” They Mrses. Reynolds, when they grew upset, always talked in italics, and they were both becoming aware of voices moving down the hall to the thump of heavy boots.

“Well, dear, have you composed your lecture? Do you know what you’re going to say to them?”

“Well, as far as I can tell, the truth.”

“The truth! But--”

She was cut off by the entrance two tall men and an elegant though tired-looking lady. Scowling, the Mirror Mrs. Reynolds stomped out of the mirror’s scope, and into the unseeable boundaries beyond.

“Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley, Mrs. Bingley,” recanted the Mrs. Reynolds on the proper side of the looking glass.

“There is something you wished to speak to us about,” stated Darcy with one eyebrow high above the other in a rather perfunctory tone.

“Yes, I believe you should all take a seat… and that I will start from the beginning.” They did as she bid, never thinking once that it was the servant now giving orders. “Your family, Mr. Darcy, is quiet an old one. The first Mr. Darcy was a knight…”

George Darcy was tired of the smell of blood, tired of the feel of hard steel formed to the palm of his hand, and tired of the sight of misery and hardship. Forsaking the crusades, forsaking the holy call to battle, he rode his horse homeward with one final goal, one final victory in mind; he would win himself a wife. It wouldn’t he figured, be an overly difficult task. He was handsome, or so the women said, he was rich, that was for certain, and he was not without his charming qualities, though hardened a bit by fighting.

It would be easier than he had thought, this winning a wife. Once home on English soil, women fawned over him, pursued him as if they had no pride. They disgusted him with their forwardness and lack of wit, courage, and intelligence. A year passed, and then many more, and Darcy still had not taken a wife, and began to believe that he never would.

Until he met a fairy. Ireland had seemed a good idea. A dangerous, unknown realm where he could find liking for a less domestic way of life. Riding past a village he did not plan to stop at, he thought he saw a woman running amid the trees. He stopped, searching keenly through the up-thrust bars of living wood that created a natural tent above the forest floor, but she was not there. He removed his gaze from the forest to nudge his horse into movement, and there she was, standing in front of him, looking at him without a smile, but as if she knew him. Her curly dark hair tumbled down her back in a soft wave, and her eyes sparkled with mischief. She wore naught but a simple white shift embroidered simply in a soft gold. Her clean, white, bare toes peaked out from under her skirt and amidst the dew-heavy grass of the hills.

“Who are you,” he asked.

“Hm. A good question,” she said in the tones of a cultivated English lady. “I am yours, if you will have me.”

The smile she shone on him propelled him off his horse. He smiled back. “I do not know you.”

Her smile grew sad. “Not yet. Would you like to, though?”

And his answer, instinctively, somehow was yes, very much so.

She led him into the forest, and to the banks of a crystal clear lake. “Look there,” she said, pointing to the surface of the water. “Look there, at you, and then at me. What is reflected there, is not so much us, as our love. If you take me, then you take a magical, almost cursed creature. For I, nor none of my line can ever find happiness within the bonds of time. I am from… I am from elsewhere, elsewhen, really.” She smiled at him, now, not his reflection. A question in her eyes that she was quick to give voice to. “Will you take me into your life, and into your time? I would like very much to spend the rest of our time together, instead of apart.”

Darcy did not know why, but he knew she was everything he had been searching for, and that she was real, and that she, and he, was certainly not insane. “Yes, I’ll take you. I must. But how?”

“Reach for me,” she said, disappearing into the mist that was quickly descending upon the forest. Her reflection remained, smiling, but fading. Without thought, he plunged downward, kicking, propelling himself against his lungs, his body’s need to rise, not delve deeper. He embraced the darkness that rose up to meet him, and the pressure that he felt sure would expand and expand and explode his very chest dissolved into nothing.

When he awoke he was in a giant bed, soft and warm with a roaring fire somewhere within hearing distance. There was also a fire in the bed with him in the form of a small, very warm, very feminine body. He was holding her hand, and when he looked at their entwined fingers, he noticed, first, the rings that adorned them, the simple, gold wedding bands. He looked at her face and was not surprised to see the face of his fairy. “Miranda,” he said, just as there was a sharp rap at the bedroom door. A house maid walked in without waiting to be admitted entrance.

“Oh, you are awake. My master found you two out in the cold, both out solid. You’ve been asleep for some days now. Master was afraid you’d not wake up and he’d have two corpses on his hands.”

“Whose house are we at?”

“Reginald Conaughly.”

Reginald Conaughly, it turned out, was a boisterous man, who assumed the couple to be newly weds, enthusiastic newly weds who had been thrown from their horses and knocked unconscious by the rocks onto which they had fallen. They healed quickly, and as a wedding present, he gave them a very old, antique mirror when they left his home to travel back to England.

The first night George Darcy shared his bed in his home with his unexpected wife, she showed him a tiny hand mirror, with a surface as smooth, clear, and perfectly reflective as the lake they had looked into the night they met.

“My mother refused the hand of a powerful man, a man practiced in the black arts. He cursed her, thinking he could not be the reason she rejected him, but blaming her own over-weaning vanity as the cause. He vowed that she would never find love, if she did not find it in him. He gave her this mirror, saying that in it she would always see the man she would choose, but that a distance much bigger than human life would separate them forever. She looked in the mirror, and indeed saw a world beyond her own, and a man she would never have, or thought not to ever have. She slept with this mirror under her pillow, and one night, pulling it out to look on her love, a tear dropped onto the mirror’s surface, and rippled the hard glass into water. She touched it, and her finger sunk below its depths. In this way, she sent her heart and thoughts through the malleable surface of the glass, and to my father.

“This mirror is how I found you,” she divulged, handing the small mirror to her husband. “And it must be how our children find their loves. Remove the casing,” she instructed, moving away from him and towards the full-length mirror Mr. Conaughly had given them as a wedding gift. The frame of the hand mirror was removed easily enough, and Miranda took the small circular piece of reflective glass in her own hands, pressing it against the similar surface of the much larger mirror. To George’s astonishment, Mr. Conaughly’s mirror began to change, to deepen and lighten. The glass became clearer, and the point underneath his wife’s palm quivered and glowed. It was all over in an instant. George touched the mirror’s surface when Miranda removed her now empty hand.

“It won’t work for us,” she told him. “We’ve already found each other. But it will work for him.” She smiled at her husband and placed a hand over her belly, letting him know that two were soon to be three.

Darcy and the Bingleys did not know what to say. Darcy and Bingley because they were attempting to take in all that now explained their escapades of late, and Jane because she could not readily believe the obvious rantings of an old woman.

“Does this then explain why everything connects, but doesn’t connect? Why I’m so sure but confused?” Darcy stood and paced the room, waiting for Mrs. Reynolds’ answer, but trying to think one out himself as well. He was not to get an answer, for Jane interrupted.

“Does this mean… does this mean that I’m from another time and place?”

“Yes, my lady, it does.”

Jane’s eyebrows pulled together and she pursed her lips. “How interesting. I have no recollection of it…”

“And all for the better! You see, you were meant to be born in this century, but that long ago curse separated you from Mr. Bingley here.” Mrs. Reynolds nodded in Bingley’s direction. What life you were living before was not your true one, but only a shadow, a remembrance of what you would have had had you been born now… instead of later.”

“I lived… later?” asked Jane with obvious curiosity.

“Yes, but not very well. You were very unhappy. If you had not been, you would not have found Pemberley, or the mirror for that matter.”

“Hmph,” came an obviously disgruntled disembodied voice. Mrs. Reynolds’ threw a sharp look towards the mirror, as if warning it. Nobody noticed.

“Mrs. Reynolds, if it is a Darcy family curse, why did it obviously affect Jane and I?”

“Oh, it happens that way sometimes. Jane and Elizabeth were sisters, though it was really Elizabeth the curse was working to effect, the bond the two sisters share was close enough for the curse to pull Jane in as well. Had it affected Elizabeth, and not Jane, she would have been born in this century, and met you all the same, but since she wasn’t the mirror pulled you toward friendship with Darcy, so that it could rectify the situation. For every great evil in the world, there is a great good working against it.” Mrs. Reynolds said this with a profundity that belied a great attitude of power and wisdom. Again, there was a “humph” from the general direction of the mirror.

“And why does Elizabeth not remember me, know me the way Jane and Bingley know each other? I do not pretend to be fully convinced of the actuality of our union, but I am at least aware of who she is, who she should be! She is my wife dammit! Whether it happened a year ago or today, she is mine!”

Mrs. Reynolds face fell, and she asked Mr. And Mrs. Bingley to leave, which they did quietly and quickly. “Fitzwilliam,” she said, in the tone of a woman who had seen this very same great man before he even stood above his father’s knee. “The mirror works differently each time. For Sir George Darcy and his wife, they knew both times and remembered everything. You father had to insinuate himself into your mother’s time and society to convince her to leave it and follow him. For them there was no instant recognition of love as there was for George and Miranda. Jane and Bingley are amiable and malleable enough to throw away whatever life they had before for completely acknowledge memories of each other; the mirror is able to fully bend time and mind to bring them together.

“Mr. Darcy? Can you remember your trips beyond the mirror’s surface, to Elizabeth’s time?”

He thought hard and was rewarded with flashes of illumination, too blurry to piece fully together. There were loose suits that hung about the body comfortably instead of clinging as he own did. There were cravats that hung down and across the chest rather than wrapping tightly around the neck. There were girls in pants rather than dresses, a country-side full of people with little boxes that made flashes of light, and a Mrs. Reynolds who looked rather like the one before him, but who wore blue coloring about the eyes and red on her long fingernails. The image of the two very different Mrs. Reynolds was almost enough to make him laugh, until another vision flashed. It was a girl with dark hair collapsing in the garden. He had seen her from the window of his study in that other world. He had wanted to go to her, but had at that moment, been subject to Bingley’s cry of “My God, Darce! It’s Caroline!” They had both run from the room, about to be entered by what Mrs. Reynolds called “pesky tourists,” and usually, they would not be seen, but everyday brought a new red-haired frustration in the modern day form of Bingley’s sister. Neither man was fond of these interactions, as the modern Caroline Bingley was more forward, more cut-throat, and more determined than her 19th Century counter part.

“I can,” he answered. “I can remember. I do not think Bingley will be able to.”

“I think you are right, Mr. Darcy.”

“Would everything be okay if I had gone to her? If I had gone to Elizabeth when I saw her faint in the garden, would she have willingly come with me through the mirror, willingly shifted from her century to mine, memories and all?”

“I cannot say. Perhaps. Perhaps not. I do know, however, that the very fact that she was able to pass through the mirror means that she is the right girl.” Another “humph” from the mirror caused Darcy to glance its direction, but in vain. “You will just have to convince her of that.”

“Do I tell her? Do I tell her where she came from? Show her the mirror? Or do I ask the others to keep quiet?”

“That is on your own conscience. She is your wife. A fact I think you ought to remind her of, and in a… softer way than is your wont.”

Darcy scowled and “hmph”ed himself.

“If you do not have the memories that Bingley and his Jane seem to have, Mr. Darcy… may I suggest you begin to make some?”

A decent suggestion if he had ever heard one.

She didn’t suppose he was a hateful sort of spouse, but he obviously was a selfish one. The matching rings adorning their hands, and Jane’s assurance of their married state was testimony to the fact that he had a right to share her bed, but that he would share it, without consent, knowing full well that his wife did not even remember her wedding night was surely indicative of a mind used to getting its own way.

Feeling much better than she had the day before, Elizabeth slowly inched away from the mostly naked form laying next to her, and tumbled from the bed, making a soft thud, and muttering a muffled “ow” as she hit the floor. She looked up from her recumbent position to see a darkly handsome face peering concernedly down at her.

“Did you fall out?” He reached down and scooped her up, pulling her back into the bed before she could protest. “Are you hurt? Bruises? Bumps? No cuts, surely.”

“I’m fine. I promise. I… I need to get dressed.”

“And do what? You’re sick.”

“I’m not. I feel much better, thank you. And I would love just to walk, to see what lies beyond these walls, what—what are you doing?”

“I’m checking you for bumps, bruises, or cuts. You appear to be fine, but one can never be too sure.”

“I assure you, sir, I am quite alright! Wha—what do you think you are doing now!” she exclaimed pulling, or attempting to pull, from his embrace.

“I’m administering medicine to whatever bumps, bruises, or cuts that might think to appear after your little fall from bed. You’re in a fragile state, and you can never be too careful.” He let go of her as she yanked herself finally from his ministrations. He laughed as she stood flushing in front of him. She paced the space in front of the bed for a bit, agitated, before speaking to him.

Finally, she stopped and looked him straight in the eye. “I know I am your wife, but… but I do not remember any… any intimacies we might have shared.”

Darcy didn’t quite remember those either, but he wanted to, and was willing to make new memories.

“I wish to get to know you. I must have married you for a reason, and perhaps if I get to know you, I will remember you, remember my reason.”

Indignation welled up inside of Darcy. Looking at him, she could not possibly conceive of any reason she might marry him? Looking around at the obvious comfortable and elegant luxury that surrounded them, she could not think of one tiny thing that might have compelled her to accept a proposal from him, Fitzwilliam Darcy!?

“Yes, you must have had some reason for marrying a, a what? A reprobate? A monster? A dullard, like me?”

“No!” she admonished. “It’s just that I do not know you! Did I marry you for love? Did I marry you for money?” she waved her arms around at the bedroom, it’s furnishings, its decorations. “Was our marriage arranged? Did you want to marry me? What do I know of any of these things? I don’t know who your family is, where this beautiful house is, who works here, what you do, who you associate with, if you read or ride, or play billiards or chess or both!” She was almost hysterical now, and her obvious discomposure cooled somewhat Darcy’s temper.

He remembered his decision to tell her the truth upon waking, about the mirror, the curse, everything. But he did not now think she would be receptive to the rather wild ideas at this particular moment. Instead, he found himself saying in a more than necessarily cold voice, “I am sorry.” Though he thought she needed to apologize as well. “Perhaps we should get to know each other again. Would… would you allow me to court you?” The question popped from his mouth before he even realized he had thought of it. It was absurd, a husband courting his own wife, but if he must…

“No.”

“What?!”

“No, I will not allow you to court me. I do not wish to be courted by an entire stranger!”

Darcy had no answer for her, but bolted out of the bed and stormed into the adjoining dressing room, slamming the door behind him. Elizabeth collapsed onto the bed in front of her in a puddle of tears.