Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (38 page)

With considerable reluctance, Darcy agreed, but stood sentry outside the door with his arms crossed glowering at the coroner and constable as if daring them to plague his wife. It was but a matter of minutes when the sheriff reappeared.

Ducking his head with even more deference than when he came, he thanked Darcy for his time and apologised for the intrusion upon his privacy.

Darcy went in forthwith to Elizabeth to help her regain the upstairs. He did not ask her what she said to the sheriff.

* * *

On the third day after their return, Elizabeth felt strong enough to join Darcy and Georgiana at breakfast. This did not actually elicit the response from them for which she hoped, for she wanted to reassure them she was just fine. They both graciously acknowledged this attempt, but it fell short.

Howbeit the swelling had ebbed and the cut upon her lip was healing, she was severely bruised yet.

Hence, breakfast commenced with Georgiana paying the one compliment she could honestly think of, “You do not look half so bad as you did, Elizabeth.”

It was not lost upon Elizabeth how dreadful she looked, for her looking-glass did not lie. Even a generous dusting of powder did not hide the contusion upon the side of her face that had turned a rather royal shade of purple. However, she had been cooped up in her room for three days and she was desperate to breathe some fresh air. She bid her husband to escort her upon a stroll after their breakfast.

He had barely turned to her to assure her he would when her face suddenly drained of colour (save for the bruise). She said she felt dizzy.

Masking his concern, he addressed her in a mild husbandly scold, “You have, no doubt, left your sick bed too hastily, Elizabeth…”

In response, she stood as if to take his advice immediately. Before she took many steps, however, she dropped like a rock. Darcy, already moving in her direction, partially caught her fall. He hastily lifted her into his arms. Mrs. Reynolds and Georgiana were at his side when Mrs. Reynolds saw Georgiana’s gaze alight on the floor with alarm.

When she followed her gaze, she caught Darcy’s attention and said, “Look there!”

There was blood pooled upon the carpet. Horrified, he saw it bespattering Elizabeth’s shoes and stockings. He clutched her tighter to him. Still in a faint, her dangling arms twirled slightly as he made a frantic half circle, uncertain whether to run to the carriage or take her to bed. His decision in favour of immediacy, he swept her up the stairs to their room.

With a great deal of pain (and an untidy mess, both of which Elizabeth disapproved of herself to present to her husband) she miscarried in her bed before the doctor arrived.

Once there, holding Elizabeth’s wrist to take her pulse met Dr. Carothers’ notion of patient examination. Few doctors took the liberty of invading a lady patient’s privacy by actually inspecting their female parts unless a baby’s head was actually protruding. Instead, he donned his spectacles for a close inspection of her bloody bedcloth.

Thereupon he went into the corridor and, with great solemnity, spoke with Mr. Darcy, pronouncing what everyone already knew to be true. Darcy inquired of the doctor if Elizabeth understood she had miscarried.

Nodding his head, Dr. Carothers asked Darcy with as delicate a sensibility as a man of his bluntness could muster, “Pray…does anyone know how Mrs. Darcy obtained her injuries?”

In the mayhem of the new emergency, Darcy had compleatly forgotten about Elizabeth’s bruises. He wrestled fleetingly with having to reveal to the doctor what -indignities Elizabeth suffered or have Dr. Carothers think he had beaten her himself.

His decision eventually fell to the simplicity of truth.

“My wife’s party was accosted upon the road from London. Her injuries occurred at the hands of the robbers.”

“I see,” the doctor said. “She was not…eh…violated?”

“No, she said she was not.”

“Thereupon this unhappy event, undoubtedly, owes to that fright,” the good doctor (a man of great science) stated. Taking off his spectacles, he leaned closer to Mr. Darcy and whispered, “Ladies are an excitable lot, are they not Mr. Darcy?”

Glaring at Dr. Carothers, Darcy said, “I cannot speak for all ladies, but as for my wife, she is not ‘excitable.’”

The doctor said, “I see,” but Mr. Darcy did not hear him, for he had turned to go in to his wife and Dr. Carothers found himself staring at a soundly shut door. Darcy walked over to Elizabeth. Howbeit pale, she was sitting upright against some pillows. He began to fluff them unnecessarily, muttering to himself.

Moving aside in mute request that he cease and sit by her, she asked him what the doctor said to cause his consternation. He shook his head, said it was nothing of any use, not wanting to relate the doctor’s exact words. She leaned back against the newly plumped pillow and gave a deep sigh, alarming him.

“’Tis me, is it not?” she said. “I fear I have failed you.”

Darcy, baffled, “How so?”

“I was too stupid to realise I was with child. I thought it was merely the excitement of being in London. Had I been mindful of it, I should not so hastily have come downstairs.”

“It was none of your doing,” he countered. “The physician says it was owing to the fright caused by the attack.”

“If that were so, I believe it should have bechanced when I was frightened, not days later. No,” she insisted, “I did not take care of myself properly. I can fault nothing but my own ignorance. And because of that I fear I have failed you.”

She produced a weak but knowing smile as if to reassure him that, although culpable, she sought no pity. However, tears welled in her eyes and as they began to creep down her cheeks, she turned her head.

“I think you are mistaken as to who has failed whom, Lizzy.”

“I was with your child and was unawares. Jane knew she was with child for Bingley. Because of my own ignorance, I am no longer with child for you.”

“For me?”

“Yes,” she said stoically, “I know I must give you a child. A son. It is my duty as your wife. My body has failed me and because of that, I have failed Pemberley” (for to her, he and Pemberley were one and the same).

“You have not failed me. Surely you do not wish to have a child just because you think it your duty?”

“No.”

That single admission allowed her to overcome her guilt, and, unable to hold back the tears, she began to cry anew. She abhorred such a display as self-indulgent. Still, she had striven hard to define her own culpability in their loss and, finally able to abandon gathering blame and the resultant satisfaction she received in cleaving it to her bosom, she grieved.

She allowed herself to keen just for the baby that was not to be.

Not entirely certain weeping was an improvement, he soothed her, “We have not yet been married a year. There is ample time for a family without you worrying that you must produce an heir.”

She ceased crying and eventually slept. Her husband, however, could find no peace.

* * *

He sat in darkness upon the side of the bed. He was angry beyond words. He was angry with the men who abducted her and angry with himself for allowing it to happen. He was even angry at the position he held if it bade her believe she was useless to him if she did not bear him a son. Never, not once, had he felt impotent. Indeed, potency had ruled his life in one form or another. Yet, a sickening impuissance engulfed him then.

He abandoned her bedside just as far as the carpet. There he paced. He begat a relentless traverse of the length of the unlit room. To and fro, he walked. A brooding man, he repined thereupon with a tempestuousness even he would have not imagined possible. The dismal contemplation of her initial rejection seemed obscenely mild in comparison.

A grimace of outright pain crossed his face as he thought of that. Had he managed to secure her love just to have his own improvidence bring her to draconian disorder? What good were wealth and position if he could not even keep her safe?

* * *

Within the month, when Elizabeth was well enough to go outside, Darcy brought her a pistol. (Not his father’s pistol, even he could not bear to look at that, and had locked the weapon of murder away.) The gun he purchased was brought to him all the way from Spain. It was light, yet powerful—easy for a lady to grip.

He went out onto the grounds and taught Elizabeth and Georgiana both how to use it.

* * *

Darcy had been undecided how to tell Elizabeth and Georgiana that the stolen jewellery had been returned by the innkeeper, not wanting to remind Elizabeth of that tavern.

The man had arrived at Pemberley alone and Mrs. Reynolds had been called. There upon his outstretched hands sat the Darcy jewellery. Nary a single piece was missing. Indeed, all were daintily wrapped in Elizabeth’s ripped stockings, secured by her torn garters, and tucked inside the single slipper that persevered the fierce struggle upon Reed’s horse.

Wisely, Mrs. Reynolds had the shoe, stockings, and garters burned. If it horrified her to see them and the violation that they represented, she could not imagine Mr. Darcy’s reaction. In fortune, for just the sight of the recovered jewellery sent him into a renewed, if silent, fit of rage.

Because he did not know how, Darcy chose not to explain it to Elizabeth at all. He simply had the jewellery returned to her without accounting. When Elizabeth espied the jewel case mysteriously returned to her dressing table, she, of course, inquired about it. Hannah told her that the pub-keeper had brought it to them of his own volition.

Another servant announced, before Hannah could frown at her, “He said he din’t want cause for Mr. Darcy to spite him.”

Elizabeth thought, indeed, no, he does not.

For Darcy was unreasonably angry yet that not one man at the alehouse had come to her aid when it was obvious that she was captive and her abductors were bent upon her ravishment. Elizabeth, however, did not hold that same sentiment. For she had seen the fear upon the man’s face and could grant his gallantry a little latitude.

Howbeit they had their jewellery and even her shoe and stockings returned, there was one possession that the pub-keeper did not carry to Pemberley. Neither Darcy nor Elizabeth ever returned to that inn to retrieve it.

For there, upon the stone floor, were bloodstains that diligent scrubbing could not remove. And in mute testimony to that day, in infamous honour over the fireplace, hung Mr. Darcy’s sword.

Her husband insisted she rest. With reluctance, Elizabeth did as he bid, understanding that was her duty as his wife. His duty, it seemed, was to brush the curls back from her face whilst she did. All this recumbancy and unadulterated cosseting were largely silent, each lost in their own introspective conflict.

Blame, of course, has been a long and dearly held tradition in the wake of any tragedy. Rarely, however, had the grappling been so earnestly for the claiming of it rather than the laying as it was at that time for them.

Because she had not spoken again of her perceived guilt, Darcy thought she had ridded herself of it and savoured it as his own alone. But she had not. She had merely concealed it, compartmentalising the loss of the baby away in a place in her heart that she saved for her most purgatorial emotions. Only when she was alone would she think of it, worry it, probe it. She had no more regulation of these examinations than a tongue prodding a particularly grievous sore inside the cheek.

Darcy worried the sore inside his own cheek quite routinely. For he agonized over not only what Elizabeth had suffered at the hands of Reed at the inn, but how witnessing the bloody retribution he had exacted might also grieve her mind.

Had it been any other circumstance, death of another by his own hand might have lent him a great deal of contrition and begging of divine forgiveness. As it was, he held no other remorse than that it had happened at all and adamantly, almost defiantly, sought absolution from no one except Elizabeth.

Of course, he knew she had to have witnessed him kill Reed. That was undeniable. And unavoidable. What she beheld of the other two deaths was a bit more ambiguous. He had taken no more precaution to shield her from his rage than turning her face to his chest. Even in retrospect, that was the single act for which he held himself accountable during his savagely exacted vengeance—that she witnessed it. But just how much she saw, and how much she inferred, he had not yet determined.

He felt he must. The beating and attempted rape were horrific enough. To have inflicted larger trauma because of his rash retaliation was unconscionable.

Quite unwittingly, he stroked her face with the back of his fingers. In was an act he invariably undertook in times of great tenderness. This alerted her to an alteration in their wordless parlance. Therefore, when he spoke, she was not taken unawares.

“Lizzy,” he said with great hesitation, “as much as I abhor speaking of it to you, there is something I must know.”

She eyed him keenly and nodded once.

“What do you remember? What did you witness me do that day?”

(Thenceforward, “that day” would be a code entered into their common lexicon.)

It was her initial inclination to insist she remembered him committing murder not at all. In not wanting to be patronised, she concluded she should not be guilty of it either. She closed her eyes and allowed those horrifying events to replay themselves. Although she thought she might, she did not envision Reed’s leering face. For some reason, she could not recall his face, nor did she try. Oddly, when she closed her eyes she saw the yellowing wall-paper of the room and upon it a faded, yet delicate, pink flower print. Queer what one notices at such grievous times; she should not have thought she even saw it.

When she answered, it was without hesitation and not about the wall-paper, “When you came through the door, I saw only you. I knew you slew him, but I did not look. I looked only at you.”

She sat up, as if for added emphasis, “Had I seen, I should not have cared.”

That bit of defiance granted him a small little twitch of a smile. Thereupon, he appeared to steel himself for some unnamed blow.

“What of the other?”

This answer, she took her time in constructing.

Finally, she said, “I know what came to pass, but you held me so tightly against you it was just a vague impression. The singular grief I feel is for you.”

In a gesture he often bestowed upon her she took his distraught face in her hands and stroked his cheeks with her thumbs, telling him, “When I allow myself to think of any of it, the one vision that comes to mind is of you as you came through the door.”

To her unasked enquiry, he said, “I remember nought but the fierce expression you bore. I have little doubt had you a weapon you would have taken the man out yourself.”

“Did you know I become angry when I am frightened?”

He smiled in recognition and said, “Yes, I have noticed that.”

“Once we were home safe, the thought of it all terrified me. At the time, I was too angry to feel anything else. I think I was not so afraid because I knew, somehow, you would come.”

“I shall always come for you.”

“I know.”

* * *

Elizabeth had decided she must instruct herself not to remember Reed’s face or that day, but this decision was hard fought. It would have grieved her husband to know that his enquiry did just what he feared it might, for it bade her investigate her memory.

Beyond the yellowing paper with pink flowers, if her recollection of that day did not reveal faces, her mind’s eye brought forth a mural of colours. She did not remember seeing Darcy’s sword obtruding from Reed’s gut. However, if she did not recall his countenance, she did recall the exact shade of magenta upon his face when her -husband ran him through.

Added to that recollection was the bulging whites of his eyes stamped with fixed black pupils. But, the colour red she recollected most of all: that which flowed from Reed, the splatter across the floor, that which filled the air and bespattered her husband’s clothes. And the smell. The stench of the bed, but mostly the scent of blood. It was odd. She had no notion until that day that blood had such an odour.

No, she did not watch him run Reed through, nor see the other two men’s heads explode. And if what she did see was gruesome in and of itself, she did not tell her husband. She would let him believe her in a stuporous shock through the entire ordeal if that gave him a single moment’s peace.

It was, Elizabeth conjectured, unusual that her mind did not suffer more than it did as a result of such an attack. Her mind did suffer greatly, but not from that act. She had disassociated it from her miscarriage. That she dwelt upon in the privacy of her heart. Reed’s demise, however, she belaboured quite consciously and with no little rancour. She did not feel truly traumatised by his brutality. Was it that she could find no more heinous retribution to the man than he, as it happened, received?

Her husband seemed to suffer her ordeal more than she did herself. She suffered for his anguish. That was what she held against that cur, Reed, above every other outrage. His act demanded Darcy do something that bade him suffer.

There was entirely too much suffering. The one person who had not suffered was Reed. His end was merciful. And just. She refused to think of him beyond that.

* * *

It was decided that even family members would be denied the knowledge that there had been more than a simple robbery attempt. It would be futile to keep word of the attack itself from circulating by reason of so many witnesses. The Darcys, however, would proffer officially that it was but a robbery. (Elizabeth refused to submit her father and especially the expectant Jane to the added distress of the indelicate matter of attempted rape.)

Her miscarriage was duly ignored. This information alone was under their compleat regulation, for the few who knew of it could be counted on for discretion.

On hearing of such a brutal robbery, Lady Matlock insisted the family (her mother-in-law could come or not) take up full-time residence in London. The lady never enjoyed country society, announcing it bestial. Thus, belabouring fear was as good an excuse as any to do what she wanted in the first place. James and Eugenia’s immediate vacating of Derbyshire was usurped by another’s arrival.

For, not unexpectedly, in a little over a fortnight Pemberley was visited by the Bingleys. It was just enough time for Elizabeth to regain sufficient inscrutability to assure Jane that the robbery was but that.

Darcy did not tell Elizabeth that Bingley, who had greater opportunity, had heard a great deal about what mayhem Darcy had wrought that day. It seemed the entire countryside, indeed, knew of what he had wrought. And Bingley knew it had not been by duel, thus, no insult was incurred. He understood that it had been an execution of sorts. As well as he knew his friend, the one thing of which Bingley was certain was that Darcy never reacted by overreaction. If he had the blood of three men upon his hands, extreme injury must have demanded it.

Though he was as close a friend as Darcy had, even Bingley hesitated to speak to him about the dastardly doings. He chose simply to repeat what he had been told and wait to see if Darcy corrected it. Darcy had remained silent. This information by silence from Darcy was not new to Bingley. He understood exactly what his friend was telling him and he did not revisit the subject again. Nor did Bingley speak of it to anyone else either, especially his wife. He knew had Elizabeth wanted her sister to know, she would have told her herself.

Elizabeth recovered her strength with dispatch after her miscarriage, but at her husband’s request had waited a month before returning to the paddocks to take up with Boots. Actually, he argued for longer. (Indeed, had she allowed it, he may well have opted to have her toted about in a sedan chair for the better part of a year.) Although she knew herself perfectly healthy, in that he was guilt-ridden over the entire event she did not argue his solicitations for four weeks. She would do whatever she could to give his heart ease, be it invoking amnesia or keeping afoot.

But enough was enough.

The first time Elizabeth appeared at the stable, John Christie immediately brought her horse to her. (“Elizabeth, will you please reconsider that horse’s name,” Darcy continually bid her.) The entirety of this task was accomplished with the boy’s gaze cast directly upon the ground. As he legged her up, young John deliberately averted his face. Clearly, it was not a genuflection. She thought him perhaps embarrassed to look upon her, having heard gossip of the abduction. She refused, however, to bear untoward distinction from an act not of her doing and questioned John about this and that until his eyes flickered to her, then hastily away.

Whether it was because he was an orphan, he was bashful, or perchance she often saw him sneaking sugar to Boots, Elizabeth had become fond of her young groom. She had heard him as he talked incessantly and softly to the horses in his charge, which was a bit of an incongruity for his voice retained the vestiges of his harsh east London accent.

Therefore, when, in that brief glimpse of his face full, Elizabeth saw a stricken expression far exceeding simple sympathy, she was taken aback. Concerned, she dismounted and drew him aside. He was taller than she was, and howbeit rangy in build, slight of figure yet. Maturity had not yet thickened his bones nor firmed his chin. Indeed, it undertook an independent wamble that announced his composure was about to collapse. Elizabeth thought Darcy correct to believe him younger than he attested, for at that moment he appeared very much a child.

Her initial attempt to cajole him into looking at her resulted just in his abandoning the mumbling he had bestowed upon his feet. Yet it was still an astonishment when he burst into tears. Before that day, she had seen him betray no emotion beyond the kindness of sugar for Boots.

“Mrs. Darcy, it was me own doin’, it was me own fault alone!” he cried out.

“Pray, just what was your doing?”

“Whot ’appen’ to yer was me own fault.”

Assuring him he was quite innocent of the miscreant doings of highwaymen, she bid him to tell her of what he thought himself guilty.

“Reed! Aye knew ’e came back here that night. The night of the fire, and Aye din’t speak.”

Elizabeth exclaimed in surprise and disbelief. Clearly expecting it, John flinched all the same. They both knew that information would have led to Reed’s imprisonment.

He began to cry again and then stopped himself. Grasping his cuff in his fingers, he wiped his nose with his shirtsleeve.

Quietly, he admitted, “’e said ’e’d kill me.” He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but dropped his head repeating, “Them ’orses. Them ’orses.”

“’Tis done,” she calmed him, reaching out. “You should have told, ’tis true. Nevertheless, who among us can predict the future?”

“But that’s nothin’ to whot Aye caused by not tellin’. Them ’orses wouldn’t ’ave died. Reed wouldn’t ’ave been able to…rob yer ’ad Aye told Mr. ’ardin then.”

Thereupon Mr. Darcy appeared in the lane, ready to accompany Elizabeth upon her inevitable, and in his mind, detestable, ride (“Recalcitrance, Lizzy. Utter recalcitrance,” he had accused her). Upon seeing the master, John turned and bolted in a full-out run of terror. Innocent of the conversation, Darcy approached Elizabeth and looked in John’s direction in all good humour.

“Where does your groom go in such haste?”

Elizabeth, still stunned, recounted what John had told her. At first, Darcy looked upon her incredulously. Then he stomped his foot in fury and whirled about to catch sight of which direction John had taken.

“He bloody well better run, for were I to catch him…”

Abruptly, he stopped himself, realising he had actually issued a curse in Elizabeth’s presence. (He never cursed. Not even in the easy but often profane camaraderie of gentlemenly company.) Elizabeth, of course, did not think her virtue sullied by hearing the word. If anything, it was good that her husband had issued a profanity then, if just because it interrupted his anger long enough to reconsider the pursuit upon which he almost embarked. She raised an eyebrow at him and he shook his head a little, possibly to avert the ridiculous picture of himself that must have crossed his mind: running after a groom, ludicrously waving his crop.

He hastily apologised to Elizabeth who had put her hand upon his sleeve to calm his anger.

“Oh Darcy, he didn’t have to tell us about it now. We should never have learnt of it had he not.”