Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (45 page)

He did not think again of leaving her bed.

* * *

Fittingly, the first sunlight to be seen for many weeks awoke him as it streamed into the room. He raised upon one elbow and unabashedly drew the sheet from his wife’s naked form.

She stirred.

At first, he smiled at such impenetrable somnolence, thereupon, quite involuntarily, recoiled as he gazed upon her. Not only was she thin, but well-nigh diaphanous. He had been sensible of her loss of appetite (he covertly inspected her half-eaten trays). But this.

Even lying in such close quarters, he had not seen how ravaged she had been in both body and soul. She looked so frail, his chastening was compleat.

How could he have ravished such a fragile flower with such vehemence?

A fluttering of eyelids announced her awakening. As he looked down upon her, she opened her eyes full and a happy dance of a smile began at the corner of her mouth. She, however, did not see happiness upon his countenance as he gazed upon her spindly frame. He looked nothing less than appalled. And he realised that directly.

Retrieving the sheet, she drew it up to her chin and stared sullenly at the ceiling, saying, “Could you not have contained your revulsion even a little?”

“Lizzy,” he said, drawing her close, “how you have suffered.”

Well aware that being the object of pity was possibly her least favourite pastime, he knew he bestowed it upon her at some risk.

“Are you now to return from this devastating hegira you have been thrust upon?” he asked her.

That utterance both quieted her resentment and invoked love.

“I fear my restoration demands less of me than of you.”

As she said this, she stroked him in a manner that persuaded him that however weighty was his duty, it would not be remotely objectionable. Moreover, he thought he might commence this reparation forthwith. Laying himself more against her than upon, he tenderly stroked her limbs.

“You finger me as if I shall shatter at your touch. You had no such compunction last night.”

“Forgive me that.”

Betimes obtuseness afflicted him more keenly than at others.

It became necessary for her to disabuse him of the notion of her fragility. There were several ways she could have made him witting. She could have told him outright. But she did not.

Rather, she chose to show him.

This was accomplished by embarking an assault of his body that befitted a love-starved Amazon. Admittedly, his purblindness bade him weather this siege for a moment before he understood it was, indeed, a siege. However, when enlightment came, it was compleat.

The coupling to which he found himself party had all the single-minded intensity of their tabletop savagery, but with the benefit of no glassware. Too, the additional advantage of a soft foundation should have suppositioned. But as their passion came to fruition on the floor upon the far side of the room (and halfway under a chiffonier), that luxury must be discounted.

Finally spent once again, they both lay there upon the floor in a quivering heap. It was a few minutes before he regained his breath enough to inquire (his wits not yet gifting his senses the information that his partner in love was exceedingly hardy) of the unlikely injury to Elizabeth’s health. Reasonably, but breathlessly, she assured him she was quite well, thank you.

Civilities rendered, they lay there for a few minutes more. He was unable to find any additional comment in his yet misfiring brain. Indeed, his senses had rendered no further contemplation than that the friction from the wool rug might issue a resultant rash upon his hindquarters. (He abhorred itching.)

In his silence, she reminded him, “You said you favour me coming to you.”

This prompting allowed him to re-enter the realm of the functioning mind. He agreed, indeed, yes he did.

Eventually, they made an attempt to quit the floor. But this initial effort was aborted when Darcy (perchance senses yet altered) slightly misaligned their position, reared his head and struck it forthwith upon the overhanging bureau. They lay there another fifteen minutes, before venturing upright. Upon the second, the unsteadiness of their legs suggested a duo of drunken sailors but managed, nonetheless, to deposit them atop the bed. There, limbs akimbo, they collapsed in slumber.

When she awoke, she found herself quite alone. It was unusual for him to rise before her under such circumstances, coitus most often rendering him more drained (literally) than she. Hence, she allowed herself to consider that perhaps she was not so strong as she had professed. Then, as the act that had incited her fatigue came to mind, a mischievous smile overspread her face.

Indeed, it was hard for her not to think of him without overt carnality just then.

For months, he had showered her with endless and tender attention. She had been so disquieted by recent events, she had been happy just to have that. Once it had been rediscovered, however, her passion was in high colour.

Lying in resplendent satisfaction, she could think of nothing but the man and his manhood. His manhood and its lather betwixt her legs. It was glorious to be totally witting of when he spent inside her. Not once had she thought of it an act of generation. Just one of shared pleasure. If repeated carnal infusions rendered her with child, so be it. She just wanted him near. And if in that closeness, he was inside her, all the better.

She had lounged about, mooning and musing, for the better part of an hour when she heard a whistle from outside. A very loud whistle, a skirl unlike any she had ever heard from the interior of Pemberley. Indeed, it came from outside and sounded exactly the same as the two-fingered whistle of someone calling a dog.

Holding curiosity only minutely less dear than venturing outside in the all-together, she grabbed the first item of clothing discernible in the mess of covers. Prancing to the double doors of the balcony, she peered out. Again, she heard the whistle.

Eagerness to uncover just who perpetrated such an intrusion beneath her room bade her to the stone railing and look down. Whereupon, she espied her husband upon Blackjack on the turf below. He put his fingers to his mouth and let out another shrill whistle. Her countenance accomplished the considerable feat of raising one eyebrow, dropping her jaw, and shaking her head concurrently.

Of all the many and diverse talents she knew he possessed, this was the most outrageous.

Only then did she realise he had Boots saddled for her to join him. They had not ridden since…before.

She rose upon her tiptoes to lean across the wide balustrade quite unwittingly revealing to him a bedazzling sight. It would have been her premise that she looked quite silly, be-robed in his oversized shirt and her hair an unkempt scandal. All that he saw was the sun glinting off a vision in white. One whose dark hair tousled and tumbled down her shoulder as if directing his attention to just how thin the gauze of his shirt was. The darkness of her hair and the shadow of her breasts contrasted against the brilliance of the shirt in the sun. All conspired to make the healthy glow she wore from a night of love-making even rosier.

From below, his eyes made the triangular trip down her hair, across her breasts and back to her face more than once. If he cleared his throat before he entreated her to join him, it could be understood.

“Come,” he beckoned hoarsely.

In answer, she put one bare leg over the rail as if she meant to jump down then and there. He put his hands over his face in feigned mortification. Thereupon, forsaking that tease, he urged Blackjack and Boots up the incline directly beneath the low balcony.

“Pray, would you dare do such a thing, Mrs. Darcy?”

A challenge such as that could not be ignored. So leap she did. He could just reach her outstretched arms and drew her onto Blackjack in front of him then over to Boots. Such was the nature of their ride that she threw one leg across Boots’ withers and sat astraddle.

In defence of such daring (though he truly did not look as if to protest), she said, “At this moment, I think my costume defies any attempt at propriety. Would you not agree?”

Aiming Blackjack toward a crown of wood atop a small rise at the back of the house, their little party trailed to it. Thereupon they dismounted. In a small clearing at the crest of the hill, they sat, she betwixt his legs. Drawing her knees up to her breasts beneath his shirt she wore, she let it cover her legs and rested her fingers upon his knees. There, they crept beneath the tops of his boots.

She said, “I shall never rename my horse.”

He put his arms about her and rested his chin upon her shoulder.

“I know.”

This was how they sat as they looked across at the great house, the stream, the lake and beyond. Neither spoke for some time. It was never said in so many words, but both felt as if they had crossed some darkened, fiery land and had managed to come out alive, if only by each other’s help.

They were scarred, but unbowed.

Georgiana leapt from poetess to novelist with such ease, it was unbeknownst to her family. Thus, Elizabeth was taken quite unawares when she set a compleated manuscript in her lap. It was not a thin work. Moreover, the publication of a novel entailed a great deal more fuss and bother than sending verse to a magazine. For this weighty endeavour, Newton Hinchcliffe was contacted.

Having forsaken his own purple prose, he thenceforward sought loftier service as a scribe for a news publication (a vocation that did not improve his standing with Mr. Darcy). His writing inclinations bent more in the direction of the inflammatory, but his connexions were impeccable. And as the single common trait he shared with his aunt was the allurement of subterfuge of any kind, he hand-carried the manuscript to a publishing house of repute. Not seeking to borrow future bother (which was by that time well-nigh a mantra for Georgiana and Elizabeth when it came to putting certain matters before Darcy), the Darcy women reasoned it best to wait for it to be accepted before assaulting the will of the Master of Pemberley.

* * *

It was a toe-tapping time of wait for both of them. Georgiana awaited word from a publisher; Elizabeth, her body. For, although it had been more than two years since the loss of the baby, Elizabeth had not yet conceived again. She did not speak of it to her husband, for he produced worry lines yet betwixt his eyebrows upon any allusion to her begetting another baby. As each fallow month passed, however, so escalated her fear that the difficulty of the breech birth had somehow rendered her barren. The physician told her only time might tell, and time seemed to be telling her naught.

* * *

As close as she and her sister were, Jane knew Elizabeth fretted for her unfruitfulness and, as was her nature, worried excessively upon her behalf. When she became enceinte for the third time, Jane had been disinclined even to tell Elizabeth. That, of course, would be folly, for even if she could disguise her blossoming form, she could not conceal how many children she had. Elizabeth could count.

Jane was not moved to consider such an elabourate charade because she believed her sister to be envious. Coveting was a sin and, in Jane’s eyes, her dear sister Elizabeth was simply incapable of peccavi of any kind.

It was capricious nature to blame. It had bestowed an overabundance of fertility upon her (indeed, it seemed she and Charles only needed to breathe the same air for her to become with child) and cruelly slighted Elizabeth. Jane could find no way to share her good fortune with her sister save one. As she was twice, soon thrice, -successfully a mother, Jane reasoned that her method of confinement must be superior to Elizabeth’s. But loathe was she to speak of it. For Elizabeth had always remained peculiarly silent about the loss of her baby, this pattern having been instituted from the inception of their bereavement. Jane had respected her wishes. Nothing other than her sincerest concern would have moved Jane to broach that delicate subject to her.

She prayed upon the matter relentlessly. Finally, the decision was made. However difficult, Jane knew she could not shirk a responsibility. If it might benefit her dear sister, she would yield what wisdom she held. This decided, it was with some trepidation (and a wavering voice) that Jane embarked upon the conversation.

“Lizzy, do you suppose…I know you have your own mind about such things…but, do you suppose it was not best during your confinement to have…”

Jane’s vocabulary upon this subject was even more limited than most ladies of the day, hence she (resorting to the universally accepted euphemism) gave a wag of her head in place of the unknown verb, “…uh, ‘been’ with your husband when you were with child?”

Jane sat hunched awkwardly, looking steadfastly at her knees, cheeks florid. It took her sister but a brief rumination before she understood what she meant.

Nonetheless, that is exactly what she asked Jane.

“Whatever do you mean?”

Even with the head waggle, both knew what she asked was not what Jane meant by “been with your husband,” but why it was not best.

“Well Lizzy, ’tis said that it is bad for the baby.”

“Too much jostling about?”

Elizabeth was highly amused that Jane should even bring up the subject, modest as she was about such matters.

“That,” Jane said, but added, “but it is said, if a woman’s insides are excited she might suffer a miscarriage.”

“If her insides are excited,” Elizabeth repeated. “But I did not miscarry, I was delivered of a dead child.”

Saying the words chased any humour from her.

“Yes. Owing to a fright,” Jane said.

Thereupon, sitting up very straight, Jane raised both eyebrows.

Elizabeth repeated these words too, if only to assure herself she was hearing correctly.

The physician had said that was why she had miscarried, owing to the fright of the “robbery.” But Jane did not know that and Elizabeth could not remember being frightened once during her second confinement. The tutored sat silently waiting for the tutoress to continue.

The appointed hour had arrived for Jane finally to reveal to Elizabeth the secret she had held with such dread for so long: She Knew the Reason Elizabeth Had Lost Her Baby. She held her breath (unschooled in theatrics, Jane had no idea she had just taken a pregnant pause) until she could muster courage to expel her revelation.

“I am told that if you do ‘that’ when you are with child, the baby will see your husband’s…” thereupon stumped for a noun, Jane paused, again instituted the head wag, then continued, “your husband’s…and be frightened to be born! That is why your baby would not come out.”

There. She had said it. Scientific fact.

“Oh,” Elizabeth replied, quite genuinely unable to think of any additional response.

Elizabeth was, however, certain that it was the most ludicrous supposition she had ever heard. The only births she had witnessed were Jane’s babies’, true, but those infants’ eyes came into the world quite firmly shut. Moreover, it was too dark in there for the baby to see anything if its eyes were open. Nevertheless, there sat Jane before her. And from the superior position of success, she bore the profound expression of A Woman Who Knows.

Which bade Elizabeth’s consideration of absurdity begin to waffle. Perchance it was possible. Perchance carnal indulgence did cause their baby’s death. Suddenly, Elizabeth felt a pang of guilt in the pit of her stomach. It subsided, but not with dispatch.

Not long after Jane quitted Pemberley for the day, Darcy espied Elizabeth sitting dejectedly in her sitting-room. He entered, walked to a chair, and sat.

“What is wrong?”

Elizabeth shook her head, less in denying anything wrong than in disbelief of what she had heard.

“Jane has told me that she knows why our baby died.”

It was the first time they had spoken of it for some time. These were murky waters that even he would just as soon not wade.

“As a mere mortal, I had believed it was because he was turned breech. If Jane has uncovered something of which we were not privy, I am grateful she has decided to confide in us.”

His usual laconism was dredged in more than a tinge of sarcasm. Upon some occasions, a little acrimony is understandable. Therefore, Elizabeth did not even consider reproof. Nevertheless, she felt impelled to defend Jane’s motives whilst he muttered something about Jane taking up office as Job’s comforter.

“She said she spoke only in caution for the next child we will have,” she glanced at Darcy. His brow had furrowed. “She thinks we lost the baby because we shared a bed during my confinement.”

“How might she know that, Lizzy?”

“If you think I told her, I advise you I did not. When she was first expecting Elizabeth, she said she and Bingley…did not…” she did not realise she mimicked Jane’s head wag. “I was all astonishment and told her thus. She could only fancy what I chose.”

“Why does good Doctor Jane think that proximity should cause you to lose the baby? We did not…” he wagged his head, “when you were near due.”

Taking a deep breath, she relaunched the story.

“Jane says that if a woman’s insides are ‘excited’ when with child, she will miscarry.”

“You did not miscarry.”

“True. But she also cautions, that if we…do that…” she started to smile, abandoning any attempt to relate the story with solemnity, “the baby will see your…” she wagged her head again, “and be frightened of it. Afraid to come out. And that is why ours could not be born. He had seen your…you and was frightened from birth.”

His eyes narrowed, lips tightened, nostrils flared. Substantially.

“That is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard!”

When he spat that out, he sounded somewhat defensive. It occurred to her that was this story true, the culprit in the birthing fiasco was his manhood, not her narrow birth canal. But this retelling rendered that from unlikely to ludicrous.

“Yes.”

“Then why do you repeat it. For humour?”

“No…I know it must sound ridiculous, but yet…in light of no other notion as to why ‘it’ happened, I fear I am coming to consider even the most absurd of tales…”

“I cannot speak for a woman’s ‘excited insides,’ but if that second tale was true, Lizzy, there would not be a child born in Derbyshire. Country-folk call it ‘steg month’ not ‘steg three-quarter-year.’ And for all the talk of steg widows, as it happens, husbands upon the land investigate their impregnated wives until they are met with the protruding infant’s head!”

“That is a gross exaggeration.”

“Not entirely. The country folk certainly lose no more children than the gentry. You know the man, Piddlenot, who tends the cattle south?”

She nodded.

“From his own lips I heard the story. When his good wife relinquished the herd relating herself in labour, he inquired of her if she had time for him to ‘dip his wick’ before she had the baby.”

“Even he would not confess such a thing!”

“I believe it was more in the manner of complaint. It seems she denied him.”

“Whatever did you say?”

“I cannot remember committing myself to a comment.”

“Was I that baby, I daresay the sight of that man’s privates might have frightened me from delivery.”

(It would not be unkind to say Piddlenot was an ugly man. To say that he was disgustingly ugly would be unkind, but not untrue.)

She perched herself upon her husband’s lap and sighed. It had been a dotty notion to attempt to enlighten Jane in matters conjugal.

“Have I disabused you of such an outrageous suggestion?”

“She was honestly trying to be helpful,” Elizabeth assured him.

“But you do not believe it?”

“Not truly. How could I? The story you fashioned to seal your debate was far too illuminating. ‘Dip his wick?’ I shall never look upon a candle quite so innocently again.”

* * *

Vast estates across the countryside harboured countless duties, some overseers upon them more conscientious than were others. Although it had traditionally fallen to Pemberley’s mistress to visit the ill amongst the tenantry upon their lands, Elizabeth’s self-perceived idleness eventually embraced it as her mission. Her own privilege in the face of illness and misery she witnessed was unconscionable. There was certainly no starvation, but deprivation was rampant.

The necessitous existed to varying degrees all over England. But neediness as seen from the middling vantage of Longbourn was not near so grim as that same view from the height of Pemberley. Compared to many landowners the Darcy family had a finer honed sense of noblesse oblige. (Generous to a fault, a few of similar station had remarked, their own parsimony exposed in comparison.)

If she lived in splendour, Elizabeth knew well that it was through her husband’s largesse, not her own. It would have been exceedingly presumptuous of her to suggest that the Darcy fortune be dispersed across the countryside any differently than it had for generations. Had it been hers by birth, she might have had a struggle of conscience. But it was not. And that it was not, released her to contribute the only thing she had that was truly her own—her time. And of that she gave unsparingly.

In the deadlier days of winter, Elizabeth’s weekly visits to the sick became daily. So determined was she not to be a mere condescending dilettante, she enlisted Georgiana’s assistance when she was about. The need was great. Dropsy and consumption threatened adults. Quinsy and the croup menaced the children. They brought soup, bread, and occasionally a foot-dragging Dr. Carothers to see to a particularly sick child.

“The apothecary is good enough to see to these people, Mrs. Darcy,” he told her stiffly, but did what she bid nonetheless.

Repetitious acquaintance eventually overcame Georgiana’s inborn squeamishness. (Furuncles, carbuncles, and chancres not a particular inducement to reform.) Once this vertiginous tendency was conquered, she set upon the ailing with a ferociousness none might have suspected of her. She stoked bitters, calomel, various poultices, and embrocations in a miniature portmanteau. Cobwebs she tucked in surreptitiously. It was unlikely they might happen upon a severed appendage, but if the improbable occurred, those little spider toilings were excellent to stanch the bleeding (one must be prepared).

Collywobblers, she fed asafoetida, and the dyspeptics were encouraged to belch. In so little time and with such aplomb was she issuing her advice, Elizabeth was quite astonished. Amidst all the eructation, kecking, and coughing, Georgiana and Elizabeth became quite a merry pair. And, inevitably, upon this indecorous turn of events, Darcy announced a dictum.

“It is quite inappropriate for a maiden to be exposed to…humanity so injudiciously.”

Elizabeth knew full well that this was a Janus-faced accusation. He may not have been any less pleased that his sister was cavorting about the unwashed masses than his wife, but he was most decidedly affronted that Georgiana might be exposed to said unwashed masses’ anatomies.

Elizabeth assured him, “You can be certain her eyes are protected from anything so vulgar as bodily functions. We only touch children’s foreheads for fever and pour broth into elderly women’s mouths. Surely you cannot deny those poor souls that?”