The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (34 page)

She nodded and agreed, and he dismissed her. As she went out, she noticed Master Fitzwilliam, soon to be
the
Mr. Darcy, passing by with a folio. She did her best to hide her tears from him. Thankfully, he seemed not to notice.

1807

“So,” Darcy said after the considerable silence that followed her tale. “Wickham is my brother. I had but one strand of hope left that it was not true. And, I suppose, if he had not attempted an elopement with Georgiana—”

“—I would have said something immediately, of course, Mr. Darcy,” Mrs. Reynolds, again in tears, said. Elizabeth put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. The atmosphere in the room, though tense, was not damning. In fact, Darcy was quite cool in his own tone, not dismissive of her at all. “Immediately. Or perhaps I failed and should have said something earlier.”

“None of us had that foresight. It seems fate saved us all from a sin of biblical proportions. Excuse me, God saved us from this sin,” he said, as Grégoire crossed himself. “Georgiana knows about Grégoire, but not Wickham. I cannot imagine how to tell her, but I must do it.”

“Darcy—”

For once, Darcy held a hand up to his wife. “I must do it. There is also the other person who knows nothing—Wickham himself. This matter must be settled with him first, as I have no idea of his reaction.”

He sighed and continued, “Though I cannot say I am pleased
with this news of my own father's failings, I cannot find fault with the carrying out of your duties, Mrs. Reynolds. For you did not know of Wickham's plans for Georgiana any more than I, her legal protector as well as brother, did. You pointed me in the direction of Grégoire at a time when I was content with life and ready for such a blow. I have gained at least one brother in this.” He looked at Grégoire and smiled wanly before turning to Mrs. Reynolds. “I am sorry to put you through this inquisition. Now at least you are freed from the responsibility of such a secret.”

“If you wish me gone, Mr. Darcy—”

“Very much the opposite; in a way, Father was right, and I am grateful. I modeled my life after the good in him and am now reaping the results. I would not want to imagine it otherwise.” He smiled. “Please see that Grégoire is situated in whatever accommodations he chooses. My only insistence is that, while in my house, he eats three full meals a day. He is very clever about his monkish habits, so keep an eye on him. Somehow we will have to find common ground between his heritage as a Darcy and his leanings as a Cistercian.”

Grégoire flushed and put his head down, but he did not look entirely surprised at this. More significantly, he probably did not realize that Darcy had established him as a family member in front of Mrs. Reynolds, who would tell the servants to do so as well. Despite his own inclinations, the master had embraced him as a Darcy, and he would be treated as such. And oh, the little monk did look much like his father—unlike Wickham, who favored his mother.

Now the only obvious question was whether Darcy would show the same sympathy for George Wickham, unknowing in
his parentage, and embrace him as a brother as he had Grégoire, however reluctantly. On this, Darcy remained silent.

THE MADDOXES—ALL THREE of them—were sitting down to dinner when the bell rang. Since the summons obviously was for him, the doctor walked past the servants, who were busy serving the meal, and answered the door, peering out into the lamplight of the Town's evening streets. “Hello?”

“Doctor.” It was the madam of one of the houses he used to visit. He was quite aware of which house and had politely informed them, upon his commission, that they would have to find another doctor, so her appearance was a surprise. Besides, she had always sent a man instead of coming herself.

“Mrs. Dudley,” he said with a bow. “I regret to remind you that I am no longer—”

“This is not about that,” she said, climbing the steps and moving close enough to whisper to him. “This is about Lilly.”

“I must also remind you, I am not a midwife.”

“She has delivered,” Mrs. Dudley said. “Three days ago. And now she is in a terrible way. I know you are not supposed to, and I will understand if you do not wish to be associated—”

“No,” he said. “Let me get my things.”

He hurried back and called for his doctor's bag and his coat, one of the shabbier ones. “A patient,” was all he said, but from his clothing, the patient was obviously not the prince. Doctor Maddox excused himself and kissed his wife good-bye before joining the madam in her carriage. “Describe her symptoms.”

“She has a fever and is bleeding a lot. We called the midwife back, but she could do nothing. And Lilly is in great pain.”

He nodded. He had already made his diagnosis, but he would not announce it until he saw the woman. They traveled across Town, to lodgings near the old house, and Dr. Maddox followed her up a set of very creaky steps to a tiny room where Lilly lay on the bed, barely covered, with some of her blanket spotted with blood.

“Miss Garrison,” Doctor Maddox said with all his doctorly formality, rousing her from her resting state.

“Doc?” Her eyes, somewhat unfocused when he brought the lamp up to see her properly, seemed to look him over as if he had arrived from heaven.

“Yes, Lilly,” he said, and took her pulse and put his hand against her forehead. She had a raging fever, but the rest of her body was sweaty and cold. “Tell me where it hurts. Anywhere other than your feminine region?”

“So proper,” she said. “No. Just—yeh know.”

“Yes. If you wouldn't mind me doing a small inspection—”

“Plenty a men 'ave seen it, doc. Yeh know that.”

“That does not prevent me asking permission,” he said. Opening his bag, he removed his spectacles, which were monstrously expensive and did not work quite as well as his own eyes, but he used them exclusively when he had something he
wanted to see clearly without getting in close range. He pulled up the blanket and asked the Madame to hold up the light so he could see. The smell itself was overpowering, so it was not hard to make his diagnosis. The problem was how to do it. He looked at the Madame grimly, but she did not seem surprised.

It was Lilly herself who sounded annoyed at the delay. “Out with it.”

Maddox took the spectacles off, replaced his normal glasses, and pulled up a chair by her side. “The tissue in your canal is torn from the birth, and it is infected.”

“From that terrible look on yer face, yeh might's'well just say it.”

He did not like this part. “Childbed fever, Lilly. The result of a great struggle to bring a child into this world.”

She must have known, even with some of her senses left from days of pain and fever, that there was nothing he could do. Infection could hardly be prevented, much less cured. Still, it was horrible not only to know that but also to watch the clear reaction on her face, the way she didn't question him for a magic pill or at least something to
help
.

Uncomfortable in the silence, he said, “Is there anything I can do to see to your comfort? I mean, is there anything you would like?”

“I'd like yeh to box George in the head, but I s'ppose it'd get yeh killed, and yeh deserve yer nice life with yer pretty wife.”

The doctor managed a wan smile.

“S'ppose I should name 'im George, what after 'is pop. But I'm so tired.” She closed her eyes. “Stay with me?”

“Of course.”

“Yeh got this real calming voice, doc.”

“You want me to read to you?”

“S'ppose it would be nice. Anything but the Bible, aye don' want ta hear 'bout Hell.”

“All right.” Fortunately, he always had a book in his bag for long visits where he was stuck with an unconscious patient. Plucking the current one out, he cleared his throat and began to read, “'The double sorrow I do tell, of Troilus, who was the son of King Priamus of Troy. In love, how his fortunes befell, from sorrow to happiness, and after out of joy—'”

The hour fell late, and his voice was hoarse when he felt the hand he held go limp and cold. “'What, is this all the joy and all the rejoicing? Is this your advice? Is this my happy situation?'” He looked up and closed his book somewhere in Book Three of Chaucer's lesser masterpiece.

He took her pulse and called for a priest. One was ready, in fact, in the other room, and as the holy water was touched upon her brow, Dr. Maddox removed his glasses to dry them from his tears. He finally managed to bring the blanket over her face and paid the priest. Exhausted, he was closing up his bag when he noticed the madam standing by his side and pointing into the next room. There was a figure there.

“Who—Caroline?” he squinted. The figure in the dark was unmistakable. Only one woman would have a proper gown fitted to the last months of her term and wear it to such a place. Unmistakably, emerging from the shadows in the unlit next room was his wife, bearing a cooing infant in her arms, wrapped in her own shawl. She looked up from it only to gaze at the scene before her. Finally, Maddox had the courage to mumble, “You shouldn't be here. It's—”

“—not proper?”

“I was going to say 'sanitary.'” He stood to greet his wife, who presented him with a newborn with a small amount of brown hair, half-asleep but still murmuring softly. He looked at the baby and said to it, “You've no idea.” To what, he didn't clarify. He was suddenly tired, and not just because of the hour. He barely had it in him to question his wife as to what she was doing in this awful place; she must have gotten a look at Lilly. It was unhealthy for her here, physically and mentally, so he saved his questions. “Let us go.”

“We are taking the child.”

“I don't—I don't know where the orphanage is.”

“I meant it more generally,” she said, and with enough indignation that he had not the means to fight her, she walked off, child in arms. He was helpless but to follow her into the carriage.

“You cannot be serious,” he said.

“Daniel, you know very well I am quite capable of being serious.”

“But—if—,” he struggled for the right words. “To state the obvious, you only have a few weeks—”

“Then I will have another infant. Oh dear, he's going to cry. We'd best find a wet nurse. And at this hour!”

“I imagine people will be awake in a few hours.” Now slightly more settled into his side of the carriage, he looked hard at the infant in her arms and at the look on her face, which he could not decipher. “What—what brought this on?”

“Is that a yes?”

“You know I would not refuse you anything in the world,” he said. “But—I have to admit, I was not expecting—”

“Nor I, but—look at him.” The look on her face, for this
moment more important than the child itself, was absolutely and utterly
motherly
. “How can this child grow up in an orphanage? To do what with his life? Be a beggar or a thief or a dockworker at best? To never know parents?”

“Well I admit some sympathy to his situation—”

She looked directly back at him. “Can you stand two infants instead of one?”

“It is not a matter of 'standing.'” He settled back into his seat, thoroughly perplexed. “It just—I don't know. I hadn't considered it. I was so focused on… Lilly.”

“Was there any hope when you arrived?”

“No,” he said sadly.

“Would there had been? Had three days not passed?”

“If she had given birth in a better place, not gotten infected, then perhaps—but beyond that, there was nothing—” but, he didn't want to have this conversation with his very expectant wife. He didn't want to tell her that a queen of England had died of infection of torn tissues and there was nothing a doctor or surgeon could do for it. The idea of losing Caroline alone was terrifying. And now to be left with two children, instead of one, assuming they both survived? What would he do then?

But this was not about what he wanted—it was about what
she
wanted. He knew better than to deny a tense, expectant woman anything—especially the woman he loved, the woman who was constantly surprising him.

Despite the rising sun, they made their way home, and Caroline took the boy to the cradle meant, hopefully, for their future child. Fortunately, it was large enough for two. She set him down, and he slept comfortably, immune to the world around him.