Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (44 page)

“You are right, Bingley, I have Elizabeth, or at least she is alive. However, unless you have had to endure what we have, I should think it most impolitic to make judgement to what lengths grief should be taken. I pray you and Jane never have reason for better understanding that the frequency of a tragedy does not diminish the wound when it is your own.”

Bingley was shaken. He did not fear his friend’s wrath, not really fear it. But to know something could so easily overtake a couple’s happiness, as it had for a union as strong as that of Elizabeth and Darcy, made him shiver in apprehension for Jane and the next birth she would face.

* * *

“What was it?” Elizabeth bid matter-of-factly.

“What was it?” Darcy repeated, uncertain he had heard her correctly.

“Boy or girl?” she asked.

“A boy,” he answered quietly, “named for your father.”

With studied deliberation, she replaced her teacup into its saucer. The censored subject was finally accessed. Daring not let it slip away, he asked if she wanted him to carry her to the gravesite. She nodded once, thereupon the wall of composure she had so diligently maintained shattered into a maelstrom of tears. As she fell face down upon the mattress, sobs began to rack her body. She was heaving as he picked her up and turned her to him, holding her tightly to his chest.

It was a not an unwelcome phenomenon. Anything was welcome to release her from her relentless melancholia. As she clung to him, Elizabeth had no notion that the weeping was not hers singularly.

“I could not do it. I let your baby die…” she sobbed again and again.

He soothed and shushed. In time, she listened.

In the hour they lay, a measure of healing took place. Eventually, her tears were exhausted, emotion spent. With her heaviest cloak about her, he carried her down the stairs and out of the house. The servants observing this sight stopped their chores and went to the windows in silence as the master carried the mistress up the path to the baby’s grave. Unbeknownst to him, the stone had just been set. Thus, they saw it first together.

He knelt, allowing her to place a small bouquet of winter roses at the base of the marble. Neither cried nor spoke. There seemed nothing to be said.

That first spring after Hannah came into Mrs. Darcy’s employ was a heady proposition, indeed. She had never once ventured beyond Derbyshire in her brief life. London had always seemed an impossibility. Nevertheless, when the time came she boarded the second coach with Anne, Mrs. Annesley, and Goodwin without hesitation. Albeit she did not quite release a full breath until after they had reached the outskirts of the fabled town.

She had heard tales of London from her third brother, who had once travelled there. He claimed it so harsh a place that fine people stepped over dead ones upon the sidewalk without even looking down. The streets of London upon which they travelled to reach the Darcy house were quite wide and inviting. They bore no dead bodies that Hannah could see. There were, however, a few darker concourses leading away from this main avenue that might possibly contain these reputed corpses.

She narrowed her eyes as they passed each shaded street, telling herself she did not want to spot one. She peered quite conscientiously in want of not, regardless.

Interrupting her inspection, Goodwin asked her just what she was trying to spy. That startled her from her contemplation, and she shook her head stupidly. She could not recollect Goodwin ever initiating a conversation with her.

Those were to be the first and last words she heard from him for a time; the disembarkation in London sent them all into a tailspin of activity. Within this household maelstrom, a comeuppance occurred, the recipient none other than the houseman, Mr. Smeads.

As Hannah held Mrs. Reynolds in less than close affection, it was of no great surprise to her that she was even less enamoured of the son. For a reason unbeknownst to Hannah, London staff literally smirked upon invoking his name.

It appeared Mr. Darcy was unhappy with him for some misdeed. Hannah asked Goodwin if he knew what had come to pass. Goodwin answered in the negative (a grunt, meaning either “no” or “I refuse to answer,” which one Hannah could but surmise). If Goodwin’s curiosity did not coincide with her own, she found more willing mouths amongst the chambermaids to tell the history of the bedcloth.

Admittedly, it was Hannah who, much in want of repaying such salacious information, told them about the coachman Reed and that Mr. Darcy had thrashed him and cast him out. She was a little guilt-ridden for enlarging this tale from a single strike to a thrashing, but her audience was so in want of Reed being thrashed, she feared she simply could not disappoint them. (And she would have repaid the rather rude look Goodwin gifted her for gossiping by her sticking out her tongue at him, had not her conscience already been grieving her.)

Having situated herself in the good graces of the London staff with her tale of Reed, Hannah basked in the fineness of the city house. In time, the newness of her -adventure wore off and she begot a bit of homesickness. But if she busied herself inside and did not look out upon the bustling streets, she could convince her mind she was not far from home. If she did look up from her chores and out the window, however, it was a tremendous task to retrieve her attention from the fine carriages and distinguished-looking people.

At first, her sleep suffered from the excitement, but her appetite was unaffected. As at Pemberley, the town help partook their meals just a little less grandly than did family. But at Pemberley, Hannah remembered longingly, no one stood about checking to see how much food one had taken upon one’s plate. In Derbyshire, people partook until they were full, period. One might think Mr. Smeads fancied their dinner had been pilfered from his own plate, as parsimonious as the man was with a potato. She huffed about it diligently, but in silence.

If Mr. Smeads was an impediment to Hannah’s culinary consumption, he had no weight in other matters. For she was lady-maid to Mrs. Darcy and it was Mrs. Darcy and no other who gave Hannah instruction. Hannah had not taken up any airs even in so high a position as she held whilst in the country, but town affected her pride. Was it born of the very impressive coach in which they rode, or the looks that coach affected from passers-by, she did not question. She knew only she felt quite the fine lady in London, the distinction lessened just by her country frocks. And that small consternation was put to rest upon the trip to the dressmakers with the Darcy ladies.

Whilst they were fitted, Hannah sat in a straight-backed chair observing for a time. But the expected hour turned into two and she rose to stretch her legs by wandering about the shop.

There was a drapery in Lambton. Or more accurately, a shop that sold fabric. But Hannah had never seen, nor even imagined, a place such as the one they now visited. Great bolts of fine fabric lined one wall; another appeared to bear nothing but lace. She fingered one of the prettier pillow-laces, saw one of the clerks frown at her, and put it down, suddenly certain she had been found out a fraud. Clearly, that was what she must be. For her life seemed far too chimerical not to be a fairy tale. In such a store as she was, in the employ of Mrs. Darcy, and in London.

The clerk continued to frown at her so decidedly, Hannah lifted her arms and looked about herself wondering just what manner of disorder she had caused to invite such a look. Finally, the clerk said, “Ahem,” and motioned toward the activity. Mrs. Darcy was calling Hannah’s name and in her idleness, she had not heard her. Penitent, she hurried to her mistress.

Mrs. Darcy and Georgiana had dressed and stood waiting for her to move betwixt them. The dressmaker told her to stand upon the stool and two assistants started to unbutton her dress, at which Hannah grabbed her bodice to wrest it from their unexpected assault.

“Aye don’t ’low no diddlin’ with me corset buttons!” she exclaimed.

Realising Hannah had never been helped from her clothes before, Mrs. Darcy assured her it was all quite proper. Hence, Hannah dropped her hands and reclaimed her regard for her position.

Mrs. Darcy had the frowning clerk retrieve the lace that Hannah had fingered, announcing it would adorn Hannah’s new dress. As a matter of convenience, Mrs. Darcy suggested Hannah select a half dozen muslin fabrics to be transformed into day dresses (and one black worsted, for Hannah did not own a mourning dress and death occasionally struck when one was unavailed of a seamstress).

Hannah no longer had any doubt of her gentility. It was one conceit to be lady-maid to the wife of the most illustrious person in Derbyshire, quite another to be the same in London.

When they returned home burdened with hatboxes (Hannah had two new bonnets herself ), her exalted state of mind led her to order Smeads a little too disdainfully to have the boxes carried upstairs. His response made her reconsider whether she would want him to tell his mother how she had spoken to him. She hastily picked up two boxes, as if she intended to carry them up all along.

Tossing her head gaily, she trilled, “If you please.”

Smeads frowned at her much as had the clerk in the store, but he did have a man carry the boxes for her. Hannah thought, with practise, she might just be able to carry off this hoax of position. Perhaps she would never, ever be uncovered as the country charlatan that she knew she was. It would have seemed there was no word or deed that could have disturbed her happiness once she had thwarted Smeads even in so small a deception as the bandboxes. London invited a smugness in her demeanour she began to believe was unchristian. Hence, summer’s end saw Hannah’s pretension of grandeur fall away as well.

She would have returned to Pemberley just as she had left it, a happy country girl of great luck, had not such violence and outrage transgressed their party.

* * *

The closest Hannah had been to evil was witnessing a thief swipe a shoat. Or so she would once have said was anyone interested in hearing what passed for evil to Hannah. At the moment he levelled his gun at her, she had seen evil personified in the face of Tom Reed.

It was not a great leap to believe that man of the devil even before he stole Mrs. Darcy. When Hannah looked down the sight of his gun, her eyes first focused on his. It was possible they glowed yellow. It seemed an eternity before the black hole of the business end of the gun barrel became clear. But when it did, a mad scream, shrill enough to shimmy the leaves, reverberated through the trees. And, then, in that heartbeat, ceased. Hannah could not recollect from whence it had come.

If her scream had been frightened from her mind, she most surely wished the rest had been with it. She, Anne, and Miss Darcy stood in the road and wept. They had no choice but to cry. They could not will themselves otherwise.

Hannah did not stop crying until they had reached Pemberley, only stifling her tears in occupation of tending Mrs. Darcy. She had thought that such tribulations had been conquered until Mr. Darcy banished her once the bath had been drawn. That was the absolute nadir, she had believed then. But times yet to be endured showed her she only thought she understood grief.

* * *

When her lady’s baby was dead-born, Hannah stayed in the room as long as she must. But the strain of the hours spent, the pain endured, and the recognition of pain to come was more than she could bear. Mrs. Bingley repaired to Mr. Bingley’s embrace. Hannah, however, felt frightfully alone.

When she came onto the landing, she saw Goodwin standing opposite. His weight was resting upon his hands and those gripped the railing with white knuckled ferocity. Even so, she started to walk toward him. But he turned away.

In time, she would wonder why he had turned. Was it to deny her, or to deny his own sentiments? At that time, she did not think of it. She blindly and loudly ran down the stairs heading for the door. Possibly, she sought her mother, but it was just a feeling, not a conscious thought.

Had Mrs. Reynolds not caught her and hugged her to her bosom, and had Hannah not felt the tears upon the old woman’s face, she was uncertain how far she might have fled, for her mother had been dead six years.

When Jane’s second child was born, Elizabeth, as she had before, went to Kirkland Hall for her sister’s laying-in. Yet in self-proclaimed ward and watch of his emotionally fragile wife, Mr. Darcy joined the small party of relatives awaiting the birth.

It was a fecund environment, for Bingley’s second sister, Mrs. Hurst, had finally wrested enough of her husband’s attention from drink, food, and the hunt to have a lap-full herself. Ever vigilant for future worry, she flittered nervously about Jane, collecting her every murmur of discomfort as a knell for her own anticipated suffering.

Jane, even when in the midst of full labour, patted her sister-in-law’s hand in reassurance, “There, there, Louisa, all will be well.”

If the happy circumstances of wedlock and motherhood for Jane and Louisa chagrined Bingley’s elder sister, Caroline, she did not overtly betray it. For during the parturient watch at Kirkland, Caroline Bingley paid Jane every attention and lamented her every twinge of pain. However, the very vehemence of her professed devotion persuaded Elizabeth that Caroline’s fondness for Jane was less than genuine.

For unmarried yet, Miss Bingley sluiced about her company—consisting of three married men, two expectant women, and Elizabeth—in full husband-hunting regalia. Bedecked she was with a cherry-coloured, tabby dress, all furbelow and brocatelle (announcing more de trop than au courant). With every passing year, it appeared she added another adornment to her already festooned-to-the-gills costume (at some point Elizabeth fully expected her accoutrements to keep her from heaving about at all). Ever in the want of social opportunity to promote herself, she appeared for all the world ready to pounce upon the first titled, or at least landed, nabob who accidented through the door.

All her folderol went for naught. With Jane in confinement, the balls that Bingley loved to accommodate had ceased. What few gentlemen were about were out for a little sport in the field and none ever seemed to be bachelors (or even had sickly wives). Indeed, the entire length of Jane’s pregnancy must have been interminable for a bedizened poseur like Caroline Bingley. Pretending affectionate concern whilst enduring a seeming disinterest over an ever-lengthening spinster-hood must have been a dogged test for her, indeed.

As the time drew nearer for Jane’s delivery, Caroline took up an impatient pace to and fro the room even before Bingley instituted his own measured, if nervous, stride. Caroline’s abrupt little steps sounded to Elizabeth less of familial solicitude than social frustration. Ever benign, Bingley, however, saw it differently.

“Caroline is so very fond of Jane,” he announced. “Perhaps not as much as yourself, Elizabeth. But as dearly as a sister.”

At this little treacling colloquy, Darcy looked over at Elizabeth. She had been slicing dessert, but stopped and stood poised with a cake knife in her hand. They both looked at the devoted Caroline, who hummed as she inspected her nails. Then Darcy’s gaze leapt back to his wife, possibly expecting to see Caroline’s trepanned cranium creating a crimson stain upon the carpet at their feet.

Surprisingly, Elizabeth was not considering mortal retribution for Caroline Bingley. Nor did she intend to gainsay Bingley’s misapprehension of his sister’s heart. Although Elizabeth believed Caroline was cold as charity, she had begun to feel some sympathy for her. If she had found no one to love her, it was because she had no love to offer. It was likely she might eventually find a titled husband in need of her funds and a match would be made. It was a shame, really. Caroline’s mission was a needless one, for she did not own the usual argument in favour of affectionless matrimony, that of being poor.

Jane’s labour was brief and fruitful, and mid-morning Sunday, she did, indeed, produce an heir. Fittingly, the boy-child would be called after his father. Little Charles was blonde as was Eliza, and, in proof of Bingley’s pronouncement that he was the heartiest child that had ever been born, screamed loud and long.

“Well, I will agree he has the finest set of lungs of any child I have ever heard,” said Darcy, slapping Bingley upon the back.

Mr. Hurst inquired if there was to be any sport at all that day and Louisa took to her bed in exhaustion of Jane’s ordeal. Caroline clucked at the baby several times then sat in a side chair, finding ample entertainment in playing with her multitude of bracelets.

Jane was weak from the birth, and Elizabeth was anxious to have her rest. However, she could not, for Bingley insisted upon carrying his new son about. Although not as roundly soused as when Eliza was born, he had sustained far too much fortification for there to be no worry of him dropping little Charles. Working in concert, the Darcys finally corralled Bingley in a sitting room long enough for Elizabeth to rescue the baby.

“I say Darcy, have you ever seen such a handsome manikin in your life?” Bingley slurred.

Wresting his attention, Darcy assured him that he had not, whilst Elizabeth fled with the youngling. Elizabeth repaired the baby to his mother’s arms, jesting about Bingley’s inebriated celebration of fatherhood. Notwithstanding her seemingly good spirits, Jane fretted yet that memories of her dead-born child might be reawakened. Inevitably, Jane’s countenance betokened her heedfulness of such a possibility. Hence, Elizabeth felt compelled to reassure her such was not the case. In the course of the many repetitions of this declaration, Elizabeth began to believe it herself.

Looking upon the red, squirming newborn, it was not of loss and death she pondered, but of all the possibilities of life. So engrossed was she in revelation, she peered into the newborn’s face with a keenness that was neither immoderate nor cursory. This was scrutinised by those about her with well-nigh the same intensity as she looked upon the babe.

All of which engendered several misconceptions.

Firstly, that she was unsettled by the birth; secondly, that she was unawares that everyone was eyeing her so closely; and lastly, that when she said she wanted to take leave for Pemberley, it was because of her disquiet, not theirs. All these misty, inchoate suspicions that all was not well in the household of Elizabeth’s emotions were most unfortunate.

The ride home was oddly silent. This muzziness about why she wanted to take leave led her husband to believe it was because she was despondent. Elizabeth, however, worried why everyone looked upon her so peculiarly. Darcy spent the entire trip in quiet despair over his wife’s seeming melancholia, Elizabeth in bewattled contemplation of why all and sundry seemed to believe she was dicked-in-the-nob.

By the time they arrived at Pemberley, the incessant wambling of the coach and his irredeemable wretchedness had rendered Darcy both morose and ill. All the jouncing about had simply made Elizabeth, well—randy.

* * *

Instead of following his wife upstairs, Darcy went to the wine cabinet, filled a glass and sat glumly at the end of the fully set great table. He partook first one sip, and then another. He tossed off his jacket, tore loose his collar. Gradually, his stomach was becalmed, but not his unease.

He had been considering returning to sleep in the bedroom of his bachelorhood. This not because he did not want to lie with Elizabeth, but because he did.

However, lying beside her each night yet not in her embrace was becoming not only more difficult, but physically excruciating.

It was not that she denied him. She had not. He had not asked.

Connubial pleasures seemed an unconscionable request by one nagged as relentlessly as he by the reasonable fear that another baby might kill her. Given the choice of her life or her passion, there was little indecision. He would rather remain celibate and childless than lose her.

Alternatively, he could use withdrawal, that time-honoured test of a gentleman’s mettle. He understood it successful if used diligently. Could he trust himself to withdraw from the lush confines of her womanhood at the very brink of achievement?

Each and every time?

As a matter of life or death, he probably could.

That was not certain enough. It would not do. To insure her safety, he must not chance what was probable. They must abstain entirely. He must not only be strong, he must be impervious to the temptation. Thus, he sat in an uncharacteristic slump pondering these harsh truths in the same large chair from whence he presided, with considerable stature, over their supper parties.

The light was dim. The central candelabra had only a few candles yet burning, the rest had flamed out. He slouched there in the shadows, staring into the glass in his hand as if it were a quartz sphere. Finding his fortune untold, he emptied it, reached for the decanter and filled it again.

Elizabeth was barefoot; hence, he did not hear her walk up behind him. When she put her arm across his chest, he was so surprised as to slosh some wine from his glass.

“My intention was not to catch you so unawares,” she apologized, then asked, “Shall you retire soon?”

“In a bit,” he said as he set down his glass.

With a spontaneity he had not witnessed for some time, she plopped down upon his lap. Her legs draped over the arm of the chair, and she dangled them fetchingly.

Very fetchingly.

As he buried his face in her hair for the first time in months, a small little soughing sound came from the back of his throat. Not understanding that it was a moan born of a superb attempt to frustrate lust, not an announcement of its unleashing, she pressed her lips against his throat. This time his groan was more pronounced and convoluted in motive.

“Did I ever tell you how very much I love your neck?” she asked in what could only be described as a purr.

Not trusting his voice, he could do no better than give a shake of his head. His voice might have been suspect, but nothing else about him was. For he tangled her hair about his fingers and slowly drew her head back, determined to expose the lips that issued that exceedingly seductive utterance. Thereupon he, perhaps unwisely, endeavoured to cease their seduction by kissing them deeply. All the while, her fingers ploughed furrows in his hair.

Good intentions losing a hard fought battle with proud flesh, he drew himself from their kiss long enough to hear his own ragged breath. Elizabeth used this fleeting respite to tug his shirttail loose, sneak her hand beneath it, and up across his chest. Seeking to belay its tantalising waltz, he grasped her hand through his shirt and held it still. He knew if she did not cease, there would not be enough blood remaining in his brain (he was quite certain it had all pooled in his groin) to say what he knew he must.

“Lizzy, I fear if I give in to desire…”

“You do not fancy my father will call you out…?”

“I am quite serious, Lizzy!”

She became quiet. And still.

“Another baby might take your life,” he said solemnly. “I simply could not bear it if…”

He started to say more, but fell silent. It was not a great leap for her to understand what he was telling her. Had he been able to look, he might have seen her countenance reflect that she, indeed, did know precisely what he meant and all that it implied.

Carefully considering all that he had said, it was a long moment before she spoke. “I think you must agree that a choice of that nature should be mine and mine alone.”

She stood up, facing him, her hips and hands resting upon the edge of the table. Thereupon, she reached out, gently stroking his cheek with the back of her fingers as if to soften what she said.

“Surely, even you, Mr. Darcy, do not possess such wanton hubris as to question God’s will?”

Not really expecting an answer, she waited a moment regardless, and then looked into his eyes.

“I should sooner die than not be a wife to you.”

He, however, could not hold such a gaze, so much was at stake and she gave him so little choice. As he thought of that, his hands found her thighs, then slid to her hips. Those his embrace engulfed and he pressed his face against her abdomen.

The only warning he issued that a decision had been reached was the nip he took at her stomach. Thereupon, he stood up full. Her gaze devoured the length of that not inconsequential sight.

Had the choice been celibacy, it would have had to have been endured. But if their love was to be relished, time was a-wasting.

One swipe of his arm cleared away the crystal, rendering the table a jackleg love-bed. He pressed her back upon it. So hastily was she upended, her head barely missed a rather ornate candelabra. (It only escaped the carnage by taking a precarious tottering trip down the length of the table.)

She said, “Should we not go upstairs?”

“Yes.”

That was in apparent concurrence with what they should do, but not what they would. For he did not release her.

Instead, his hands slid beneath her gown, glided over her again, and then drew her to him. By the time that he struggled his inflamed member free from his nether garments (the rigidity of his arousal and tautness of his breeches had rendered him temporarily trapped), he was in such a state of heat that prudence for possible infirmity of her innards did not come to mind. Which was perchance fortunate, in that once he obtruded them with a substantial degree of vigour, the moan she elicited was not misidentified as pain.

Rather, that sound from her was as familiar to him as her voice. Hearing it again inspirited him well-nigh to the point of pain himself. Upon such a fevered union, the rather sturdy Chippendale table began to tremble. What little crystal that had -persevered through the initial assault of his long arm began to fall. Even so, the crescendo that ensued was from their passion, not the breaking glasses. However, that was not clear to a servant who transgressed onto the scene until it was too late to go undetected.

Without a pause, Darcy managed to choke out the gruff command, “Begone!”

Whoever had been there hastily retreated. As they were in great distraction, neither participant of this exceedingly well-explored act of passion cared to conjecture it might have been anyone other than old Morton.

Indeed, it was only after this fit of fever was spent that they discovered mahogany was not comfortable. He drew her back down off the table, her bottom sliding rather smoothly in their common pool of perspiration. With Elizabeth atop him, they sank back into the relative comfort of the armchair. Technically, they had been sated, but affection reigned yet. They continued to kiss until her wine-saturated gown was -discovered to be a bit sticky. With a groan that this time was unmistakably exertion, he gathered her in his arms and carried her upstairs.