Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (100 page)

At long last, he espied her.

His relief was so intense, he very nearly grasped a granite column for support. But he did not. He did what he always did. He reclaimed his countenance and his bearing before anyone had a chance to notice he had lost them. Thus restored, he watched his sister silently and from a distance.

She knelt next to a bed and held a soldier’s hand in hers. Thereupon, she lifted it against her cheek. So reverently did she attend this task, it occurred to him that she might have joined a convent. But her sleeves were rolled back and her hair was tucked under a handkerchief tied at the back of her head. No blue faille, no wimple. If she were a nun, it was of no order known to England.

Wiping her hands upon her long dirty apron, she rose. Then, methodically, she made her way across the line of beds. She looked at several patients, offering a word here, patting another. Once she stopped to summon a surgeon. Thereupon, she returned to her place and took the soldier’s hand in hers again.

Eventually, and reluctantly, her gaze lifted from the soldier at her side. Her eyes expertly took in the ward, evidently in quest of any new emergency. The fidelity of her assessment was stolen when her eyes chanced upon her brother. No disrespect to her dedication; he was hard to miss, standing tall and comparatively pristine as he did midmost in a palliasse-strewn room filled with bodies of filthy, suffering men. Indeed, she shook her head as if in disbelief.

There was an initial stand-off, for he stood in paternal self-consequence awaiting her to come to him. But she did not. Once he realised she would not, he closed the gap
betwixt them himself in several long strides. With the understanding that she had won a considerable concession, she rose and turned to him. Her countenance, nonetheless, was somewhat belligerent.

He had not come all that distance to be thwarted by a less than inviting mien. Folding her in an embrace of far greater vehemence than either could recollect sharing, he made himself not scold her. Words of love and reassurance poured from him with such ease, one would have never guessed it was the first time he had said them to her. He did not query her except of her health, for she looked tired. She shook off such inquiries and initiated a truly terse exchange.

“Pray, did you come for me or Geoffrey?”

“Fitzwilliam?”

“He is here.”

“Wounded?”

“Yes.”

“Badly?”

“Yes.”

Upon inquiry as to where Fitzwilliam lay, she looked at her own hand and said, simply, “Here.” In her grip, she still held the bandaged man’s hand.

Fitzwilliam was unrecognisable. An involuntary gasp escaped Darcy, for he had not steeled himself for what he would see. Fitzwilliam’s head was swathed in bandages, obscuring most of his face. His leg too looked ghastly, wrapped and bloodied as well. Georgiana knelt again and talked to him in a whispered voice.

“Darcy is here, Geoffrey. All is well.”

Darcy could see Fitzwilliam nod feebly; he moved closer and knelt. Advised by Nurse Darcy to put his lips near Fitzwilliam’s ear, Darcy did as he was told. At the sound of his voice, he raised his hand and Darcy grasped it. They spoke only a few moments. Most of those were spent offering impotent words of reassurance to each other.

He rose, cleared his throat, and then busied himself asking Nurse Darcy the exact nature of the colonel’s wounds.

“His sight is questionable…” Her voice shook, so she calmed herself before continuing, “His eyes are burned in some manner, maybe by a cannon—no one knows.”

Thereupon, she pointed to his leg and whispered, “’Tis desperate, I am afraid.”

Now that his sister was found and a determination made of Fitzwilliam’s condition, he was of the opinion everything was manageable. Provided, thenceforward, that he was the manager.

“The filth here is insupportable. He must be moved.”

Her face brightened at the possibility, “Do we have the means?”

In any other circumstances that would have been an absurd query, the Darcys had the means for anything they so chose. At that moment, he had only an exceedingly unworthy mount, but it was, technically, a means. They counselled about it.

Darcy talked of fashioning a drag upon which to lay Fitzwilliam. (It would be undeniably crude, for Darcy had not fashioned anything for himself since he was a child, but they could not throw him over the saddle.) Georgiana bid a surgeon’s opinion. He announced it not only crude, but also unfeasible. He said if they attempted to move Fitzwilliam in such a manner, he was more than likely to die.

“Every day you do not move him will better prepare him for when you do,” but under his breath he muttered, “if the man lives at all.”

Hitherto of no particular regard of surgeons, Darcy’s disdain was unmitigated by this one questioning his plans. Somewhat imperiously, he insisted that a hospital such as this would not aid in anyone’s recovery.

“And what do you suggest as an alternative?” Darcy inquired.

Clearly exasperated (and a bit imperious, himself), the surgeon said, “You move this man, it is at risk of his life. Forgive me, I have many others to whom I must attend.”

Having abused the surgeon’s good-will irreparably, Georgiana glared at her brother. He, however, was unmoved. He cared little for a lowly surgeon’s good opinion. Nor should she. Employing questionable logic, he endeavoured to convince her to leave Fitzwilliam at the hospital and venture home. If she would go, he would stay. But she would not have it.

She said, “As long as Geoffrey is not repaired, I shall stay with him. I did not come all this way to take leave of him when he needs someone most.”

He looked at his sister queerly for a moment, but only a moment.

Ultimately, they reached, if not an agreement, at least a meeting of the minds. He would find a way for them all to repair to England together, otherwise no one would leave. It was only within that conversation that Darcy learnt (for if horses were scarce commodities, maps were even more so) that Lille was but a few miles away. Lille and Cousin Roux’s villa. And Cousin Roux’s teeming stables.

The answer to their dilemma was at hand! He kissed Georgiana’s forehead and told her he would be back from Roux’s villa with a waggon as expeditiously as possible.

His every thought since leaving Pemberley had been to find his sister. As frantic as he was, he had thought little of how they would return home, presuming only that it would be the same way whence they had come. He had not begun to consider taking a wounded man with them. Allowing his sister, or even Fitzwilliam, to stay in that appalling ward was unconscionable. If he had to, he would move mountains and kings to get them both home.

He located his detestable excuse for a horse and, with more precision than elegance, turned him toward Lille. So cheered had Georgiana been by the notion of getting Fitzwilliam home, he dared not tell her there was a possibility that Roux’s house might have been pillaged. It was with that apprehension foremost in mind that he travelled the distance to his cousin’s villa.

But that did not discourage his plans. He would borrow a waggon, load Fitzwilliam and Georgiana. Thereupon make haste for Calais. If he had to, he would purchase a schooner. He would christen it
The Elizabeth
. All would be well once they were upon their way to England.

So grand were his schemes, it would only gradually occur to him that his sister’s reason for coming to battle was, indeed, for love, but not for any of the suitors he had feared.

“Was Fitzwilliam a suitor?” Darcy wondered ever so fleetingly, thereupon dismissed it.

Certainly, such esteem was not returned. Unsuitable suitors, or unrequited love— neither were what he would have chosen for her. Sequentially, he began to chew upon a particularly tough nut. For he had to admit to himself that if he was so blind as to
not recognise his sister’s regard for Fitzwilliam, he could not truly account for Fitzwilliam, either. It was all too confounding.

In the face of life and death, Darcy’s pragmatic mind put the impracticality of romance aside and concentrated upon something more in his control. A waggon.

W
hen the war erupted, Georgiana and the
corps d’elite
of nurses were unceremoniously dumped into a semi-demolished house. Thereupon, they were influenced to ready themselves for work. As soldiers were hauling branches to fashion cots and litters, Georgiana tore bandages and continually stole looks at the gate to the courtyard, consumed with fear for what she would soon see come through it. She relaxed her guard somewhat when their first patient was a soldier who had no more complaint than a belly-ache from being reconnoitred beneath a heavily burdened crab-apple tree.

As she sat ripping cloth into narrow strips, it dawned upon her just how far from Derbyshire she was. And the entire endeavour had begun with a very sudden scheme. She had toyed with the idea upon overhearing the raging discussion in her brother’s library. But she did not believe it feasible until she saw John Christie stalking angrily away from Pemberley. He did not tell her, and she dared not inquire, what had angered him into leaving. His demeanour suggested some sort of bad blood.

When she saw it took no more effort from him than to simply walk down the road to go, she suddenly heard herself calling out to him to wait. Not surprisingly, John had been disinclined of her company, so she resorted to the bribery of expeditious transportation. The decision to take her life upon her own course was made in that good time.

The magnitude of the change in her circumstances was apparent to her from that first night. As someone who drifted off to sleep upon the comfort of silk sheets and by the tinkling of a music box, Georgiana was kept awake as much by the clamouring noise that accompanied their accommodations as the smell. She lay her shawl daintily atop the batting cot and reminded herself such accommodations might be the best she enjoyed for some time. Thus, she practised not noticing the noise or the lumpy bed. Of lice, she dared not ponder.

Had it not been for John’s friendship and his coincidental decision to take leave of Pemberley, she was certain she would not have had the courage to do what she had. Getting to Portsmouth had been relatively simple. Getting to the continent had been difficult, but hardly the severest obstacle she faced.

Forthwith, the whimsical start to her nursing career was hastily forgotten. That soldier with the collywobbles was soon usurped by scores of others. These were grievously wounded. Thus, he was remanded into service as an orderly by Georgiana. Now that she had not the time, she handed him a stack of fabric with the admonition to start tearing bandages. For having been the recipient of barked orders from the onset, Georgiana had mindlessly found a stronger voice herself. And mindlessness would be her only retreat.

Field nurses were desperately needed, but that did not keep the overworked doctors from overworking the ones they had, perchance knowing there was nowhere for them to flee from service. That they were in such need was fortunate for Georgiana, who could diagnose the croup but, at first, had no notion as to how to mend gunshot victims.

Fortuitously, she found a medical niche. It was one of her gifts. She had always needled delicate, lovely screens. All her life, everyone had told her she handled a needle with greater finesse than did any other lady. Hence, the surgeons learnt to call upon Georgiana when it was time to sew wounds together. The needles were similar in curvature to her embroidery ones, but heavier. She had only to alter her technique slightly to accommodate the weight of the catgut through skin. Her stitches were universally admired, when there was time. But ordinarily there was not and she soon abandoned her small, neat stitch for a longer one that embraced speed.

The sight and smell of blood eventually became mundane. It was a very specific moment in time when she realised that as fact. It came the minute of the hour of the day when she, with no qualm, put her knee in the back of a struggling man to still him so she could sew his oozing cheek—his oozing
gluteus maximus
cheek—she knew it was all routine. She also understood fully why she had to claim to be a wife to have this duty, for whatever their need of assistance, as an innocent she would never be given leave to witness the intimacy of the soldiers’ bodies.