Mr. Darcy's Daughter by Rebecca Ann Collins

have been
truly astonished by its elegance and beauty. I would love to see more."
    Once
again, Elizabeth, wary of flattery, looked sharply across at her companion and,
again, she was sure there was only sincerity, despite the extravagance of his
words.
    Perhaps,
she decided, Americans were more lavish with praise. She had heard they were,
but not having known any of them before, she could not judge.
    Mr.
Carr was probably just being enthusiastic, she thought.
    As
they went upstairs, Elizabeth saw Cassandra cross the hall and called to her to
join them. Understanding her mother's meaning, Cassy followed them up the
stairs. Approaching the gallery, Elizabeth took them past the portraits of
Darcys of generations long gone, until they approached that part of the room
where the recent family portraits were hung. There, on the wall, beside the
portrait of Mrs. Fitzwilliam and the smaller picture of the young man in a
green coat, was a singularly lovely cameo-style portrait of Lizzie Gardiner. It
had been started last year, when Lizzie had stayed with her grandparents while
her parents travelled overseas, and had only recently been framed and hung. It
had a delicacy that was very appealing indeed.
    Cassy,
seeing the finished work for the first time, was amazed at her mother's clever
scheme of drawing attention to all three pictures grouped together on the wall.
She said nothing, waiting for some response from Mr. Carr, but for once he
seemed to have been struck dumb, not, as it happened, by the charming portrait
of Lizzie, but by the picture of the young man in a green coat, which hung
beside it.
    Looking
at the picture, with Mr. Carr standing in front of it, the resemblance was
quite uncanny. Cassy had no doubt of the connection between the two men.
    When
he did speak, having recovered his voice, Mr. Carr immediately acknowledged
that the portrait of young Miss Gardiner was beautiful and did the young lady
justice, but soon afterwards, he had turned to Elizabeth with the question she
had been expecting. "Mrs. Darcy, may I ask if you know who the young man
in this picture might be?"
    As
Cassandra stepped back and held her breath, her mother said, in a voice so
casual as to be astonishing, "I know very little of these family
portraits, Mr. Carr; you will understand that many of them were acquired before
I came to Pemberley. Both these portraits were brought to Pemberley from
Ireland by Mr. Darcy's parents. It is thought the lad used to work on the
Fitzwilliams' estate and I have heard Mr. Darcy say he was one Robert
Carr."
    The
words were hardly out of her mouth, when he, almost bursting with impatience,
cried, "Robert Carr! Why Mrs. Darcy, then this young man must be my
grandfather! Is anything more known about him? When was this portrait
painted?" he asked, eager for more information.
    Even
as Cassy watched, her mother explained with great sensitivity the connection
between the portrait of young Robert Carr the stable boy and that of Mrs. Moira
Fitzwilliam. "This was all very long ago, of course, when Mr. Darcy was a
boy, but Mrs. Reynolds knew it all and related some of it to Mr. Darcy,"
she explained and so, very gradually, was the mystery of the boy in a green
coat revealed to Mr. Carr.
    He
was truly astounded by his fortuitous--as he thought--discovery.
    Understandably,
for he had heard one side of the story from his own parents, but there had been
no suggestion whatsoever of a link with the distinguished Darcy family of
Derbyshire.
    "I
have always wanted to discover the story of my grandfather's flight from
Ireland," he confessed. "I knew only that he had married a young
woman from the village of Rowsley in Derbyshire, while he was working as a
groom for a family in Derby and she was the children's governess. I believed I
would have to travel to Ireland to uncover the rest. I cannot tell you how
delighted I am, Mrs. Darcy, and how very grateful to you for having given me
this opportunity. I must thank you very much