A Summer Shame (13 page)

Elizabeth left the room shaking her head, curious over the cause of Lydia's excitement. Certainly the letter from their mother was a catalyst, but could not account for the flurry of sewing the girl was accomplishing. Meeting Jane in the sitting room, the elder Bennet daughter was sorting the garments by amount completed. Elizabeth set aside her embroidery sampler and picked up a little cap that needed a hem.

"Do you think we will complete this tiny wardrobe before the baby is born?"

"I hope so. I sure hope so, Jane."

The rest of the evening progressed without incident but Lydia declined to come down for dinner. Mr. Darcy worried that this was another show of strong will, but Elizabeth patted his arm as they sat to dine.

"She was a regular tornado today, dear, sewing for the baby." It was a small fib, but not completely inaccurate as Lydia had sewn one garment for the baby.

"Good, good. Is she coming around, then, do you think? You have selected a wet nurse?"

The first course of hearty stew was plated and the temperature nearly scorched Elizabeth's mouth. She blew out a few quick breaths as she laid her spoon down. "We have a candidate who will move in later this week. She has a babe of six months. She will be good fit. I believe she can easily manage our new arrival.

"I should tell you that Captain Tompkins has invited me to visit his farm while he is in port once more. I intend to select a horse for Jane." Darcy cooled a mouthful of stew and continued eating. "I thought you ladies would like to accompany me," he said as he used his napkin.

"Thank you, sir, but I don't require my own mount." The extravagant cost to keep such an animal ran through Jane's head and she did not care to come to rely on such luxuries.

"While I respect your wishes, I shall procure another horse for my stables that will suit your height. It would please your sister to have you join us on our rides to see more of the countryside before we all must return to London and then Pemberley."

Jane shifted in her seat. She had not decided where she would go after her visit to Scotland, but back to London and the Ton was not an option. Not after all that had happened. "I thought I might consider a position when this business is finished. Perhaps as a companion."

"Jane!" Elizabeth exclaimed, but before she could begin questioning her sister's sense about seeking employment, a breathless messenger entered the dining room.

"A fire. Blaylock, sir." The young boy was followed by Mr. Harper, who apologized for the interruption then started to lead the boy away in a rough manner.

"No, Harper, unhand him." Darcy stood from his chair immediately, and walked over to his wife who had worrisome tears in her eyes. She lifted her hands and grasped Fitzwilliam's, holding them close to her heart as she leaned her head against his arm.

"Mr. Hamilton," Jane said softly, studying her plate.

"I will be back as soon as I can. Mr. harper, round up every able bodied man and start heaving over. See that Paladin is saddled, I leave at once!" Mr. Darcy barked orders as his long legs allowed him to quit the room quickly.

Left alone for a few moments, Elizabeth fingered the fine white table cloth and inspiration struck. She rose from her chair without the assistance of a footman and called down the stairs to the kitchens for Mrs. Buchanan.

"Yes, miss?"

"Gather every scrap of cloth we can spare. Fill the wagon from the cider press, I doubt the men will think to take it. Jane and I will be leaving shortly."

"But, the master would not like for you to go ma'am. Tis dangerous, best to let the men fight the fire." Mrs. Buchanan's tone was warm and motherly.

"We won't fight the fire, Mrs. Buchanan. We are going to help the injured. Jane, do you still keep that soothing mint balm you make for burns and bruises?" Jane nodded. "Go fetch it and any other medicines you have. I'll collect our supplies and meet you back here in five minutes' time dressed to leave?"

Jane nodded, over the initial shock of the disaster and ready to be of help. She wasn't sure how they would get to Blaylock House, but she was sure Elizabeth would find a way, she always did.

The cries and chaos overwhelmed Elizabeth as she managed to steer the small wagon up the drive to Blaylock House. The home was still ablaze and most of the staff were covered in black soot, sitting on the lawn, trying to tend to wounds and injuries with limited ability. As soon as the wagon came to a halt, Jane and Elizabeth jumped down to immediately begin assisting, unnoticed by Elizabeth's husband for nearly half an hour.

When he finally did notice, Elizabeth was tending a maid who had a nasty gash on her arm from escaping the fire through a broken window.

"Elizabeth Darcy, what are you doing here?"

"You will require stitches, and we will need some laudanum for that. Wait here while I fetch some?" Elizabeth offered the young girl an open smile as the patient merely nodded. "Husband, I am here to help."

Darcy pinched the bridge of his nose, exhausted from his earlier efforts to help save the last few souls they could from the raging inferno. "Pray tell, HOW did you get here? We used all of the carriages and wagons."

"You forgot the cider press wagon. It's small, but Zanzibar managed to pull it, didn't you boy?" Elizabeth nuzzled her animal as she approached the wagon. Darcy laughed until a hacking cough overcame him, and concerned, Elizabeth eased him to sit upon the ground.

"My husband, what have you done? The smoke can kill you! How many times did you run in?" Elizabeth stymied her anger and refused to view the crumbling timbers of the house, still falling.

"Only twice. Graham ran in another time after me, he burned his hands quite badly." Darcy pointed towards the grassy hillock where Mr. Hamilton sat, tended by Jane.

The shouts and wails made hearing Mr. Hamilton very difficult, and Jane Bennet almost did not recognize the large, charming man as he sat collapsed on the ground, his hands dangling in the air over his bent knees. She had to kneel and move her head close to his to hear what he had to say.

"She was right there. Right there. I tried, but I couldn't hold on. The metal was scorching hot." He held up his blistering hands in answer to his own one-sided conversation. Tentatively, Jane reached to touch Mr. Hamilton's forehead as he blabbered on and on in a nonsensical manner, but he was not feverish.

"Sir, Mr. Hamilton, it is me, Jane Bennet. How did your hands become so burned?" Jane reached into her gown's pocket to pull out the mint balm. He hissed as she gently began to apply the cream, the minor numbing effects slowly taking away some of the sting.

"Ain't your fault, Master. Ye did all's ye could. Had to drag 'im out we did!" A man with a thick accent began to talk to Jane.

"Drag him out? He had gone back in?"

"Aye, the young lass was trapped, and he wished to save her. Poor dear only eight years old, but she be with the Good Lord now."

Jane's breath caught at the tale of such heroics, but as she observed Mr. Hamilton, the devastation of such failure weighed heavily upon him. Shouts and more shouts of a different tremor than the keening wails rippled through the masses. The Darcys were organizing the people to take turns and ride a wagon or even the carriage, back to Starvet House for the night.

Jane, Elizabeth, Mr. Hamilton, and Darcy were one of the last groups to ride back, just as dawn began to crown the day with the first of her rays. Blaylock House sat as a hulled out shell of brick and stone, still smoldering in the middle. Jane and Elizabeth lay in the back of the cider press wagon, their supplies exhausted and the two ladies feeling the same, as the men sat up front.

"Five generations of my mother's family lived in that house. Gone. All gone."

Darcy clicked his tongue and Zanzibar started to pull the wagon steady and true. "You did always hate the gloomy decor. We will rebuild Blaylock House in the style she deserves."

Graham Hamilton gazed down at his bandaged, throbbing hands and did what few men were strong enough to do. He wept.

By afternoon, the staff of Blaylock House were attended to, quartered with the staff of Starvet House or with a few tenant families that were relations and Elizabeth Darcy collapsed in her bed, thoroughly exhausted. Her rest was short lived when not two hours later, the screams of Lydia Bennet woke everyone resting above stairs, including Mr. Graham Hamilton.

Elizabeth and Jane rushed to their sister's suite to find a panting Lydia, squatting on the floor and holding a bed post.

"It hurts! It hurts!" She paused in her panted speaking to groan through another contraction. "Help me!"

Jane hustled over to Lydia and wrapped her arms under the younger girl's shoulders to give her support while Elizabeth left to find Mrs. Buchanan. The house was eerily quiet as almost everyone had been up the whole night. Rushing down the hall of the servant's area, Mrs. Darcy didn't care what example she was setting by running. Reaching the housekeeper's private room, she knocked profusely until the older woman opened the door.

"Gracious alive! Has Mr. Hamilton worsened? Is it fever?"

"No, 'tis Lydia. It's time."

Mrs. Buchanan fretted and flustered, wiping her hands on her gown as she spun a few times looking around her room. The woman's lack of sleep weighed heavily on her mental processes, though in a few moments she spied what she was trying to puzzle out. A quick jot of her pen and she had two messages for the doctor and midwife to hurry.

Giving the messages to the errand boys, Mrs. Buchanan woke up more maids and started the kitchen staff on boiling extra water. Elizabeth left feeling the preparations were well in hand and returned to Lydia's bedroom. She met her husband and Mr. Hamilton in the hall, one bewildered and the other wearing a face full of shame.

"I say, I did not know you had another sister in residence, Mrs. Darcy. She sounds like the devil be whipping her personally in there. Has anyone fetched the doctor?" Mr. Hamilton stood in the hall, frustrated that his bandaged hands made his otherwise stocky Scottish build feeble and unable to even open a door.

"Come, Graham. We'll talk in my study." Mr. Darcy pecked his wife on the cheek before leaving her, the only show of affection he dared to do in company.

"We'll see her through this, sir." Elizabeth gave her husband her fiercest look of determination and felt lifted when he gave her a weak, but confident smile. As soon as the men left the hall, Elizabeth opened the door to see Lydia disrobed to just her chemise and Jane trying to coax her to the birthing chair.

"So soon?" Elizabeth rushed forward to help Jane, who shrugged as they lifted poor Lydia away from clutching the now heavily scratched bed post.

"I'm not sure, but I don't know what to do," Jane whispered. Elizabeth too was at a loss as neither of them had attended a birth before this. As Jane and Elizabeth managed to get Lydia to the chair, the two ladies quietly tried to work out which one of them would check Lydia's nether regions when Mrs. Buchanan arrived.

"Oh look at you Miss Lydia! Bringing a dear life into this world! Now there's a good girl, you close your eyes and push through that pain, one, two, three, four . . ." The older woman rolled up her sleeves and without ceremony reached below to check Lydia's progress while brightly talking to the soon-to-be-mother.

As Lydia rested between contractions, Mrs. Buchanan turned to accept a towel from the maid and wiped her hands. "Mrs. Darcy, Miss Bennet, may I have a word with you in the hall?" She nodded to the two maids who stepped up to pat Lydia's brows with a cool towel while the other one spoke calming and cheerful words.

In the hall, the two pale faced ladies held each other's hands as they waited to hear the wiser woman's observations. Mrs. Buchanan shook her head slowly. "The babe is early and not turned right."

"Turned? The baby turns inside?" Jane's eye widened in horror.

Mrs. Buchanan realized while she had attended scores of births in her four decades on earth, these two young women had nary an ounce of experience for a woman's lying in.

"A babe moves all abouts in a mother's womb until the time nears for the delivery. Then the head comes down, lodging in the woman's hips, ready for the pushes. Miss Lydia's babe be feet first, and those babes be the longest and most painful to arrive."

Elizabeth took in a few calming breaths and asked the question both she and Jane wished most to know. "But they will both survive? Babies do deliver, as you say, feet first?"

The rosy lips of Mrs. Buchanan pressed firmly into a thin line. "It be in the Lord's hands now. You ladies might get some rest, Miss Lydia has a long time ahead of her and will need you for the final hours. Millie and Susan will assist me until the midwife and Doctor Simpson arrive."

Trembling, Jane followed Elizabeth to her suite of rooms in an unspoken bond of sisterhood. Neither wished to undress, so in their day gowns they merely cuddled on Elizabeth's four poster bed like they had for most of their lives at Longbourn.

"Lizzie, what if . . ."

"Pray, Jane. That's all we can do. Pray."

In the early hours of the morning not long after midnight, the maid Susan roused Elizabeth and Jane out of their sleep. Groggy, Elizabeth blinked a few times then shot out of the bed as she remembered Lydia was in labor.