Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (79 page)

Barren. She despised Lady Catherine speaking of her womb, fallow or otherwise (or for that matter, Darcy’s loins), but the word “barren” was painful. For that was the fear that haunted her.

Repetition of the accusation against Darcy echoed annoyingly in her head. It brought her disquiet. Initially it was not under even the briefest of consideration as to whether Lady Catherine’s allegation was true or not. Of course, it was a falsehood. However, vindictive as she was, Lady Catherine was never known to bluff.

Her design may have been to inflict injury, but she must truly believe herself privy to an infidelity by Darcy to say it. Intrigues and liaisons abounded even in the country. Was some rumour about? But everyone knew Darcy despised men who dishonoured their wives. Did they not?

However, she did not understand just how Lady Catherine might profit in telling her such a lie, or for that matter, such a truth. The answer was the same for both. Nothing. The only possible thing she could glean was grief. For Lady Catherine that alone might be motive enough to send her upon a trip across three counties.

Scheming shrew! No, she refused to allow herself to be drawn in by Lady Catherine’s ploy. She refused to be baited. Her trust in her husband was implicit. Questioning his fidelity would play right into the evil provocateur’s scheme. Indeed, when she uncorked Lady Catherine’s temper by marrying Darcy, she had loosed a serpent. The more she thought of it, the more irate she became and angry tears welled up in her eyes.

Which made her even more irate, for she hated that she cried when she was angry.

Seated in the library, Fitzwilliam had, unbeknownst to Elizabeth, been waiting for Darcy to return for the better part of an hour when he heard the unmistakable skirl of his aunt’s voice.

Having no more inclination than the average person to bask in the glow of his aunt’s trying company, he tarried, feigning great attention to a very boring book. Once Darcy’s hitherto grey funk had lifted, Fitzwilliam had once again become a fixture about Pemberley. Howbeit unspoken, his attendance bespoke a return to the norm. The reclamation of Darcy’s hearing did not alleviate his solitary treks, but it was accompanied by better humour and appetite. Of this, all were roundly relieved. Darcy’s disturbances bid house-wide disruption. Fitzwilliam could not bear to witness Elizabeth’s distress, regardless whence it came.

However, during these abundant visits it had not been betrayed once, in word or action, the yearning he suffered for his cousin’s wife.

Under Fitzwilliam’s stern regulation (a family trait, it would seem), it simmered quietly beneath the confines of his heart. Only upon the occasional witnessing of some covert touch or look betwixt Darcy and Elizabeth did it begin to seethe. Because of this, he chose to frequent Pemberley only as a sort of test, as if to prove to himself he was stalwart enough to do it. This reasoning, of course, allowed him to gaze upon Elizabeth and avoid further introspection. For had he examined himself more closely, even he would have had to admit he had entered into a pattern of self-torture.

It might have been easier to eschew Derbyshire compleatly. There was ample opportunity to find the company of other ladies had he stayed in London. Whatever
he was of a mind, be it circumspect courtship or a little helmet polishing south of Bond, town was thick with ladies, by turn virtuous or of accommodating morals.

Marriage should have been a temptation for Fitzwilliam. Although he was but a second son, his family was illustrious. Therefore, he was considered an exceedingly desirable match for a lady who had her own fortune but sought prestige. His chief reluctance in taking a bride was the eternal vexation that she would not be Elizabeth. For that lady and no other had the beauty, vivacity, and wit that he believed was the absolute perfection of womanhood. Elizabeth had not only withstood near ravishment and bandits, she was the only lady who hitherto had dared to stand up to his exceedingly intimidating aunt. It was unconscionable to take a wife when his mind had seized upon another.

Elizabeth’s bravery in the face of his aunt was that of legend. Even Darcy simply avoided Lady Catherine when he could. Perchance as then. His aunt’s intonation was of a sort that carried. When she was in ill-humour (which was not infrequently), it was even more distinct. Hence, if he could not make out all of what she said, he could certainly hear the contempt in her voice from down the passage-way. Unsure as to just whom she spoke so uncivilly, curiosity got the best of him and he entered the corridor just in time to see her as she stormed out. From the doorway, he realised upon whom Lady Catherine’s considerable truculence was directed. Albeit she was turned away, it was unmistakably Elizabeth who appeared to be standing alone in the drawing room. Fitzwilliam saw her knees begin to buckle and made a mad dash for her. She righted herself before he got farther than the doorway.

From thence, Fitzwilliam gazed upon the woman he had loved from afar. Courageous Elizabeth. Weathering a vicious assault from the dowager supreme of Kent, she was in desperate need of comfort then. No other decision could be made. He went to her.

Hearing someone else enter the room, Elizabeth turned toward the door. The subtle expression of disappointment she birthed gave him a twinge, for it told Fitzwilliam she expected Darcy. Tears had just begun the trip down her face. When she caught sight of him, she immediately turned her face away and blotted her cheeks with the back of her hand, feigning composure. For Fitzwilliam, her tears invoked the agonising recollection of her abduction. The abduction for which he carried guilt yet. And his self-reproach had ebbed not at all. But that horror was in the past; the distress Elizabeth suffered then was immediate.

He crossed the room, “Pray, is there anything I can do?”

Her face turned from him, she shook her head. He reached out and took her trembling elbow, turning her to face him.

“I shall never forgive my aunt.”

She opened her mouth to respond but began to cry instead, stamping her foot in frustration.

“It is absurd to be in such disorder at Lady Catherine’s hand,” she said. “She is an irredeemable shrew.”

Suddenly, the realisation that she had maligned not only Darcy’s aunt but Fitzwilliam’s as well claimed her and she covered her mouth in self-censure.

“Forgive me, Geoffrey. I am not myself.”

“There are those who have invoked far more perverse invectives than that against my aunt, Elizabeth, and with much less provocation. She is a tyrannical ogress.”

“You heard what she said,” which was a statement of fact.

He nodded, “A little. I cannot imagine what compels her to such evil.”

“It can only be the ghastly fear that someone, somewhere might be happy and the unrelenting need to put an end to it,” she said bitterly. Then, “Oh! You must think me mad, for you always seem to witness my worst humiliations.”

Her mortification was obvious, but Fitzwilliam was uncertain how much of her disconcertion was from his aunt’s cruel words, or his having overheard them.

“Why did she call, Elizabeth? I heard her speak of Darcy. Where is he? What did she say of him to distress you so?”

She looked worriedly at the door as if in fear that Darcy might happen upon her. Deferring to her want of privacy, Fitzwilliam closed it upon her behalf. He returned and immediately implored her to confide what had made her so desperately troubled.

Reluctantly, she began the story, “She told me that Darcy…”

Abruptly, she grasped Fitzwilliam’s coat sleeve, “Do not speak of this to Darcy, please. He must not know!”

“He must not know what?”

“Any of it!” she said, and thereupon she burst into tears once again.

Her misery wrenched his heart so violently he drew her to his chest as if to relieve the pain. He did so quite unwittingly and some small portion of his consciousness reminded him it was he that was to comfort her, not contrariwise.

“There, there,” he soothed.

In her wretchedness, Elizabeth clung to the comfort of his lapels with a renewed round of weeping. Perchance (and he was to wonder this relentlessly in days to come) he was caught up in some chimerical state, some illusory trance. Certainly he was usurped by some phenomenon not of his control. For there was no other reason he could account for why he said what he did then.

“Elizabeth dearest, I love you. I would do anything to ease your distress.”

At that, the weeping halted. Fitzwilliam stood perfectly still, endeavouring to decide whether should he drop his hands from her, or continue to pat her back and pretend he did not say what he had. The choice was made by Elizabeth, for she drew back and, having ceased to cry, commenced to hiccup. Abandoning all hope that she did not hear, he clung to the slim prospect that she might have possibly believed the love he just professed was familial.

But alas. Her countenance announced a confounded incredulity that did not suffer the suggestion of anything but a compleat acknowledgement of the extent of the imprudence of his declaration. Having spoken the unspeakable, Fitzwilliam dared not try to appease his affront with added comment (God only knew what other confession he might blurt out!), hence, he opted for silent, abject mortification.

Not surprisingly, Elizabeth endeavoured to fill this deafening void, but each time she tried to speak, she hiccupped.

Finally, she managed to say, “Water!”

Provoked from his self-imposed inertia, Fitzwilliam rushed to the sideboard, sloshed some water from the pitcher into a glass and hurried it back to her. She downed it by gulps, but when she opened her mouth, she hiccupped again. And again he repeated his trip to the side-board and she gulped the second glass.

Again she hiccupped and managed to say, “Perhaps some wine?”

He duplicated the water brigade with that of wine and she upended it before he could say, “I do not think you should drink that so hastily.”

This absurd ruckus did circumnavigate the entire subject of Fitzwilliam’s unprecedented declaration of love. Thus, once satisfied she was situated non-weeping and unhiccupping into a chair (with another glass of wine in her hand), he undertook a stiff, formal, kind of bow.

“If I cannot serve you in any other way, you can be sure of my secrecy of your meeting with Lady Catherine today. Darcy shall not hear of it from me.”

“No,” Elizabeth said, “Darcy shall not hear of it.”

It was not a leap of imagination to believe she did not refer only to Lady Catherine’s visit. Fitzwilliam took a leave so brisk, a small sheaf of papers scattered to the floor in his wake. He did not, however, stop to pick them up.

So distracted was Fitzwilliam and so hastily did he depart, he did not see Georgiana standing just beyond the doorway. Had he looked her direction, he might have seen her expression of profound disorder. One remarkably similar to the one he bore.

Q
uite tardy of all the brouhaha, Darcy entered a house so laden with portent it was almost visible upon the walls. When he asked, everyone was quite unenlightened as to why Fitzwilliam had departed without waiting to speak to him, almost in the dust of Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s carriage.

Elizabeth explained simply of his aunt, “She did not stay when she learnt you were not about the house.”

Having long disavowed any interest in his aunt’s pursuits, Elizabeth believed Darcy thought little of her precipitous visit or post-haste leave-taking. Elizabeth’s still trembling hands did not escape his notice. She insisted that it was due to her extended afternoon amongst the rose beds without her hat (and did not offer she had belted down several glasses of wine). As if all that was not intrigue enough, Georgiana too seemed oddly out of sorts. She kept her gaze lowered to her plate through supper and quit the table without touching her food.

It was understood that Georgiana was never a hearty partaker, but when alone with her brother and sister-in-law she was usually, if not effusive, at least a cordial conversationalist. Had Elizabeth not been quite so intent upon hiding her own disconcertion, she might have noticed Georgiana’s.

Even in the absence of that heedfulness, Elizabeth knew it must all seem quite odd to her husband.