Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) (28 page)

“He cannot lose her,” I whispered fiercely.  I was watching Charles: the tenderness with which he continued to speak to Jane and stroke her hair.  “He
cannot
.  It would be too cruel.”

Mary opened her mouth—but then closed it again.  There was no need for her to speak; we both knew perfectly well that life is sometimes exactly that cruel.

 Time passed.  I have no idea how much, I had lost all sense of it.  Jane’s pains seemed to be coming even stronger and more quickly together, now.  But then Jane’s whole body began to twitch and her legs to shake.  I was frightened it was a further sign of something wrong—and to judge by the tightness of his mouth, so was Charles.

But Mrs. O’Neil drew a breath of something sounding almost like relief, checked Jane again and said, “Well, now.  I do believe this babe’s at last ready to be born.”

She spoke with an echo of her former brisk cheerfulness.  But I could see that a furrow of worry remained on her brow, and as Jane lay gasping and panting, wrung out by another of the pains, the midwife lowered her voice and said to Charles, “Sir—a word, if you please.”

Charles drew a step or two away from the bed, and Mrs. O’Neil spoke in a rapid undertone.  “Your wife’s done bravely well so far.  But she’s tired by now.  And I must warn you, this babe needs to be brought into the world quickly.  I do not know if you’ve been told, but the child is wrong-way round—and in those cases, there’s always the danger the cord might be crushed, or might wrap around the child’s neck and strangle it before ever it’s born.”

Charles’s face blanched further.  But before he could speak, Jane opened her eyes.  For some while, now, she had seemed scarcely aware of her surroundings—of anything, for that matter, save for the pains.  But now she looked frantically around her and said, “Charles?  Where are you?”

“I’m here.”  Instantly, Charles was back by her side, taking her hand.  “I’m right here.”  He looked up at Mrs. O’Neil, and said again, “Tell me what I can do.”

Mrs. O’Neil eyed him consideringly—but Charles must have already proved himself in her eyes, for she said with scarcely a pause, “Get behind her.  See if you can help her to sit up a bit.”

Charles did not hesitate.  He climbed onto the bed and gently eased Jane upright, holding her with her back against his chest and his arms looped around her.

“Charles, I can’t,” Jane whimpered.

“Yes, you can.”  Charles’s face was still pinched with worry, but he somehow managed to make his voice absolutely sure.  “I know you can.”

After that … after that, everything is a confused blur in my memory.  Mary and I stayed where we were, both of us scarcely daring to draw breath.  I know Jane alternately groaned and grunted, her face turning red with strain—and that Mrs. O’Neil crouched before her raised knees, almost shouting encouragements as Jane struggled to push the child out into the world.  Charles sat behind, holding her the whole time.

Then Mrs. O’Neil said, “That’s it—one last push, now.”

Jane gave another groan that ended on a scream.  There was a heartbeat of silence.  And then Jane’s scream was echoed by a baby’s loud, lusty wail.

“Well, now, nothing the matter with your lungs, is there, my bonny one?”  Expertly, Mrs. O’Neil lifted the red, squalling infant and laid him on Jane’s chest.  The midwife was smiling broadly as she looked from Charles to Jane.  “Congratulations to the both of you.  You have a fine, healthy son.”

I drew what felt like my first full breath since setting foot inside Darcy House—and beside me, I heard Mary do the same.

Jane’s hand came up to cup the baby’s small, sticky-wet head.  She looked positively radiant—every trace of pain and tiredness gone.  “A boy,” she whispered.  She smiled up at Charles.  “What shall we call him?”

Charles was gazing wonderingly down at his son.  Even from across the room, I could see that his eyes were wet.  He gave a half-laugh and tentatively reached out one finger to stroke the baby’s tiny hand.  “I’d say that you ought to have the choice of naming him.  You’re the one who has done all the hard work tonight.”

Beside me, I saw that Mary’s eyes had flooded with tears.  I know my own cheeks were wet, as well.  We got up—quietly—and tiptoed from the room.  Though the way Charles and Jane were looking at each other, I suspect that we could have marched out to a regimental drumbeat with clashing cymbals, and they would not so much as have glanced our way.

Once we were in the hall, Mary wiped her eyes and whispered shakily, “I believe … I believe I may need to revise my wish for children again after all.”

That was not the end of the night’s wonders, though.  Not quite.  The baby—actually I should write, ‘small Charles,’ for Jane did not even hesitate on the choice of a name—was washed and tidied and swaddled in blankets for Jane to nurse.  Jane and he both fell dreamlessly asleep almost at once.  And Charles—the elder, I mean—managed to tear himself away to offer to drive Mrs. O’Neil back to her home.

I think that if Mrs. O’Neil had asked for a horse and carriage weight in gold, Charles would have promised her that, too.

Mary and I went back into the bedroom, to stay with Jane while Charles was gone.  Mary tiptoed down to tell Georgiana and Edward, and found them both asleep in Edward’s armchair, but Amelia just beginning to wake.  Mary let her come upstairs—after extracting a solemn promise from her that she was absolutely, positively not to wake her mother—and I lifted Amelia up so that she could gaze at the small, bundled form of little Charles with saucer-round eyes.

Soon after that, Charles returned.  He picked up Amelia and swung her around and whispered, “Well, now, what do you think of your new baby brother?”

Amelia answered in a two-year-old’s version of a whisper—which of course is not especially whisper-like at all, but luckily Jane was so deeply asleep that she did not even stir.  “Nice.”  Amelia rested her head against her father’s shoulder and put her thumb into her mouth.  Then she took her thumb out again and said, “Can I still have a cat?”

Charles laughed, and then answered gravely that he supposed she could.  And then he looked over the top of Amelia’s head and addressed Mary and me.  “Do you know, the most extraordinary thing happened, just as I was pulling the carriage up to the house outside.  I drove Mrs. O’Neil myself—no sense in rousting Saunders out of bed when I was already awake.  But I was so anxious by the time I got back to get up here again to Jane that I wasn’t paying close enough attention.  I drove straight through a pool of mud and absolutely soaked a woman who was walking by on the pavement.  Of course I stopped to apologise.  And of all people, I discovered that it was my sister.  Louisa!”

Charles shook his head in amazement at the memory.  “I did apologise all the same, naturally.  But Louisa seemed scarcely even to hear me.  She stood quite still for quite a half-minute—simply looking from the carriage to the mud puddle to the splashes on her dress and back again.  She looked quite pale—so much so that I thought perhaps she had heard about Jane’s recent danger, and been worried.  But when I told her about small Charles’s having safely arrived, she said that no, she had had not the smallest idea of the child’s being born so soon.  And then she said that she had actually been on her way here to give Jane this.”

Charles dug in his pocket and produced a necklace—the same circlet of diamonds I had seen Mrs. Hurst flaunting at Vauxhall.  “It was our mother’s.  I gave it to Jane.  And Jane apparently gave it to Louisa, and asked her to have it cleaned at our old family jeweller’s.  Louisa had just yesterday retrieved the necklace from there, and was on her way to bring it back to Jane this morning.”

Charles shifted Amelia in his arms and looked down at Jane and the tiny, sleeping Charles.  Then he laid the necklace on the table beside the bed and shrugged.  “Well, there is no hurry.  Jane can see it whenever she wakes.”

I had to clamp both hands over my mouth to stifle my laughter.  Mary looked at me as though I had lost my mind, and towed me—still giggling helplessly—out of the room.

“Kitty, what on earth?”

“Wait a moment.”  I managed to stop laughing and struggled to catch my breath.  “I will tell you the whole.”

I did.  I told her everything, from Jane’s gambling debt to my turn as Madame Mariana, and Georgiana’s and my efforts to make my gypsy’s prophecy come true.  And it truly was a night of miracles—or else Mary is even more changed than I had thought—because she listened, and then started to snort with laughter, as well.

Neither of us told Charles, though, the reason for his sister’s very odd behaviour.  Jane may tell him her side of the story, as far as she knows it—or she may not, the choice is entirely hers.  I rather think she will; Jane is scrupulously truthful.  But regardless, I have not the smallest doubt that she and Charles will continue together as happy as they have always been.  Happier, even, now that they have their small son.

I believe I may have just had the oddest interview of my entire life.

It was just after breakfast, and Mary had gone to Darcy House to visit with Jane.  Aunt Gardiner and I were sitting together in the morning room and sewing.  Or rather, she was sewing.  I was using the excuse of crawling around the floor in pursuit of Susanna to entirely avoid darning any of the three pairs of stockings in my pile.

Perhaps Mary was right that I am changed, but I still have not made much progress in developing a liking for mending.

We heard a knock at the door, and a few moments later, Rose came in to announce that Lord Henry Carmichael had come to call, and was asking to speak with me.

I was about to tell Rose to inform his Lordship that I was not at home.  But before I could speak, Aunt Gardiner said, “Very well, Rose, let him come.”

I suppose she wanted to see for herself the gentleman who had caused so much trouble for Mary.  And she does not even know the half of all the confusion and upset that can be laid at Lord Henry’s door.

Rose bobbed a curtsey and went out, returning a few moments later with Lord Henry.  And I had a moment to wish (very disloyally) that my aunt were still ill.  Not seriously so, of course.  Just enough that she had remained upstairs this morning.

It was not even as though I could request that Aunt Gardiner leave Lord Henry and me to talk alone together.  She might not be especially strict, but she would never consent to anything so improper as that in her own home.

She did at least—after I had presented her to Lord Henry and the usual formal greetings had been exchanged—move a little distance away, under the guise of watching Susanna play with her wooden animals on the small rug in front of the window.  But I did not delude myself into thinking for a moment that she would not still hear every word that was uttered.

I sat in an agony of anticipation, wondering what exactly it was that Lord Henry
had
come here to say.  Though at the sight of him—dressed in tight buckskin breeches and a blue superfine coat, the cost of which would probably feed a family in the East End for several months—I felt anger begin to simmer within me, as well.

He seated himself in the chair opposite mine, and I said, as coolly as I could manage, “You wished to see me?”

He looked sober, at least, his gaze clearer than I had yet seen and something of his usual swagger lacking in his manner.  He said, “Only to tell you that I have kept my part of our bargain, and to say that I hope that you will keep yours.”

That made the anger explode.  “
Kept
your part?  I do not recall any part of our bargain including your luring my sister off and—”  I caught sight of Aunt Gardiner looking at me with elevated eyebrows, and managed to both check my words and lower my tone.  “And exposing her to the censure of the world,” I finished in a savage whisper. 

A flash of annoyance crossed Lord Henry’s handsome face.  “I did not lure her—or rather, perhaps I did, but only with the best of intentions.”

“The best of intentions,” I repeated.  I could feel my eyebrows climbing towards my hairline.  “Please, go on.  I am all expectation to hear this.”

Lord Henry blanched slightly at my expression; he must well and truly be afraid of losing his inheritance from his aunt.  His immaculately starched neck-cloth rose and fell as he swallowed, and then he said, “I did not mean—that is to say, it occurred to me that I had made your sister fall in love with me.  So it was up to me to make her fall
out
of love with me again.  If you see what I mean.”

I felt my jaw drop open slightly.  “Do you mean to tell me that you took Mary off and … and orchestrated that performance of kissing her solely to make her fall out of love with you?  It did not occur to you that you might simply
tell
her that there was not the least chance of your ever returning her affections in the smallest degree?”

Lord Henry’s face flushed and he looked slightly defensive.  “Whatever you may think, I have at least some of the scruples of a gentleman.  One cannot simply tell a perfectly respectable, decent girl that she is boring and bothersome and that you would like nothing better than to tell her to go and jump in a lake.  Besides, I thought the whole thing would be better if the decision to break off our acquaintance came from her rather than me.  I took her off alone, kissed her—making sure to appear as complete a clumsy oaf as I could.  And it worked, did it not?  You cannot tell me that your sister is still in love with me now.”

My mouth was still open in astonishment.  Before I could find my voice, Lord Henry ran a finger around the edge of his collar and added, in somewhat awkward tones, “I had time to consider what you said to me before.  About toying with other people’s affections.  Treating other people’s lives as … as a game.  And I realised that you were perfectly correct.  And that I had a … a duty to make things with your sister right, if I could.”

Only Lord Henry could see fit to execute that duty by compromising Mary and exposing us both to Miranda Pettigrew’s blackmail.  And yet … I do not know.

Lord Henry took his leave of us soon after.  I was more than a little apprehensive about what my aunt would say when he had gone.  But she said only, “Well.  I take it I have missed out on a great deal of excitement while I was ill in bed?”