Chapter Text
The world is grey.
When she wakes up at Pemberley in the morning, the sky is iron, the air is stifling, the walls are bleak. She gets dressed—well, her maid dresses her. Her maid is grey—well, the maid’s eyes are grey, and she hardly talks. To be honest, Elizabeth hardly talks to the maid either.
Then Elizabeth goes down for breakfast, and the food has no taste. It is strange. Food tasted good before; she remembers how ravenous she was, at Longbourn, her childhood home, eating in the morning with her parents and noisy sisters. After a brisk walk, coffee tasted like luxury and strength, bread smelled like kitchen and laughter, butter and honey.
And there is butter and honey at Pemberley, of course. And much more—an elegant display of much more—but nothing feels real; everything seems to be drowned in grey tones. Maybe it is the season. February. February is a bad month—always. It is the month where people starve because winter provisions run out. It is the month where lovelorn maids hang themselves in the attic. It happened once—not at Longbourn but at Lucas Lodge; Elizabeth was only thirteen, but she understood.
February is the month where she is eating breakfast, at Pemberley, alone.
With three footmen and her husband. Who does not look at her. Or maybe he does. But she certainly does not look at him.
Though, nobody could say that Elizabeth Bennet (Darcy) is not always perfectly polite.
“Would you like some more coffee, Mr Darcy?” she asks, with a smile.
Of course, she must look at him now. “No, thank you,” he answers.
She smiles again. Then she eats.
The world is grey beneath the windows’ panes. The air is grey in the room. She can hardly breathe.
“I like red,” she says. “I wonder where all the red has gone?”
She thinks her husband is looking at her. “It is winter,” he murmurs.
She just says, “I understand.”
She finishes eating and goes back through the grey, silent halls of the grey, silent mansion.
**
“Elizabeth, you have changed,” Jane said, when Elizabeth visited her, three months ago. Jane lives far away. She has a husband. Not Mr Bingley. Jane is with child.
Jane is far away.
Jane lives behind a wall of grey mist. Elizabeth cannot see her; she thought Jane could not see her either, but clearly she could. “Elizabeth, I think you are suffering from melancholy,” Jane said.
She did not say, “You have a melancholic character.” Elizabeth does not have a melancholic character. She did not have one before, at least.
Jane’s voice makes ‘melancholy’ sound like an illness.
Maybe it is.
**
Elizabeth thinks about Jane’s words, those words from three months ago, after breakfast, when she is back in her room. The room is grey. It is really not, of course. The colours of the walls were beautiful, Elizabeth seems to remember.
She wonders where all the colours have gone.
Maybe she lost some of the colours when her father died. Elizabeth was left with Jane, her mother wailing, and two sisters she despised. (Lydia is gone.) No, no, the word ‘despised’ is correct. Elizabeth despises her sisters—three of them at least—because she can see their mother in them.
But Jane was still there, and Jane makes everything better.
Then Jane gets married.
To a man she really does not love that much. But they are going to be thrown out of the house by their cousin, so, yes, Jane gets married.
The colours get a little dimmer.
Then there is the incident. Elizabeth’s reputation is ruined, et cetera, you know the story; she has to marry Mr Darcy.
She does not want to marry him. But she must.
On their wedding night, they fight. He says marrying her is a degradation. That she is beneath him, in every way. Elizabeth should fight back, she should answer, but she does not. She does not have it in her any longer. She just sits on the bed while he berates her. Finally, he stops.
He waits for her answer.
“Very true,” she says.
He just stares at her. She does not look at him.
Then they arrive at Pemberley. This huge, empty building, with nobody in it. Except her husband. And an army of servants.
Elizabeth despised her mother and her sisters. Now, her husband despises her.
How God must laugh.
**
It is on that day, Elizabeth’s first day at Pemberley, taking a stroll in the empty park, where she does not meet anybody, that she realises the colours are all gone.
**
It has been ten months.
That day, after breakfast, Elizabeth visits the tenants. She talks to Mrs Reynolds. She does what she has to do.
Dinner. They eat, at the long, empty table. Elizabeth is very polite. She talks a little. She smiles. She does not know how to act otherwise. When he asks how she finds the soup, she says it is delicious and that they should thank the cook. She asks whether he has had a good day; her husband says it was a productive one. Elizabeth nods, and smiles, and says she is glad, and then her thoughts wander.
To nothing.
When she returns, he is staring at her. He is worried.
He is very worried.
It does something to her, that look. It pierces the fog for the duration of one beat of a heart.
Then it goes back to grey.
But still, at night, she wonders.
She remembers his look. It was a strange look. Worry, yes, but not only that. If she listened to her intuition, she would even think she saw something like despair.
Despair is strong. Despair is…not what Elizabeth expected. She lets her mind wander for a while, pondering. Then she decides she was wrong.
Two days pass.
Everything is still grey.
**
Elizabeth is breakfasting on Tuesday when her husband enters. He puts something near her plate.
Flowers.
They are very red. Deep red. Red like blood, red like velvet, red like beautiful mysteries lurking behind theatre curtains. The red is so strong she almost gasps.
She raises her eyes to him. “You said you missed red,” her husband explains. “Those are from Lady Harden’s hothouse. I rode there yesterday.”
She does not say anything, just gazes at the flowers.
“I…I thought you might prefer poppies. I think I heard you once say how much you liked poppies, but they are impossible to find in February,” he explains. “Well, maybe in London. I sent a letter. I shall have news, soon. Next week, I think.”
She looks at him, her eyes sincere.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
He does not say anything after that.
The footman goes to fetch a vase. Elizabeth drinks her coffee, eats her eggs, looking at the flowers the whole time.
“Do you want the flowers to be put in your room?” her husband asks, after she has finished.
“No!” she says, a little too quickly. Truth is, she hates her room. She cannot breathe in her room. She does not dislike the breakfast parlour. The parlour is nice, with high ceilings and large windows, opening—on the grey out of doors, but opening nevertheless.
“No,” she repeats, smiling. “I like it here. I think I am going to stay and read in here today.”
He gives her a wan smile and observes her for a moment. Then he nods, and leaves.
**
She wonders, for a fleeting moment, how he was before.
How he was before the death of his sister.
But mostly, she just looks at the flowers.
The world is grey, and red.