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 every thing, 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.’
‘Will we return to Venice on our way back home?’
‘No. We will travel home by sea, I think. It will be easier than going across the mountains so late in the year. Are you ready to go back to England?’ he asked her.
‘Yes, I think I am,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I would like to be at home for Christmas.’
And once back at Pemberley, she thought, she and Darcy would have to find a way to live, a way to bear the torment of his terrible curse.
‘Then I will start making the arrangements. I will have to leave you for a few hours; I must go to the bank in Rome and that is not a task I can give to anyone else, but I will be back as soon as I am able.’
He left the room and Elizabeth heard him giving instructions for his horse to be saddled.
The rain did not last for long, and Elizabeth decided to make the most of her last few days in Italy by walking on the beach. It was very