B006O3T9DG EBOK (34 page)

It was late evening. The sun struck a crease across the opposing wall. Within that shaft of light stood his wife’s escritoire. It was of delicate design, quite suitable for a lady. That day its outline loomed ominously as it was heaped with several stacks of bereavement cards yet waiting to be read. The missives would no doubt contain sentiments that touched that part of their hearts that were still raw with grief. Nonetheless, Mr. Darcy felt it a duty to read each and every condolence. It was a small facilitation, one chore he was happy to spare Elizabeth.

Setting aside her chair, he drew a taller one to her desk and began to sort through them. He opened those from friends; those from mere acquaintances he set aside. (It was difficult enough to read genuine words of sympathy; he refused to spend emotion upon those written by rote.) As he took each in hand, one arrested his attention. It was from the pen of the mistress of Howgrave Hall. He recognised Juliette’s hand immediately. At first he set it aside. Then, he retrieved it, but did not open it.

Pensively, he flicked the card with the fingernail of his middle finger.

Understandably, he had eschewed all thought of the ball at Howgrave Hall for it did nothing but remind him that he had not been home when the calamitous event beset them. However, the card stirred his memory. Those recollections came to him, not hastily, but as if waves lapping at the shore, one over the other. In his mind, what occurred that night at Howgrave Hall all moved as if in half-time.

As he recalled it, he and Lady Howgrave stood at the top of the staircase. A footman bearing a note ascended. There was nothing particular about the footman. Perchance it was in the way the man walked, or the expression upon his countenance, Darcy could not say why, but he knew that the man bore a missive from Elizabeth. His own thoughts were lost to him. As the man handed him the letter, Lady Howgrave continued to speak. Darcy did not hear a word she said. Once he had the note and read it, he folded it neatly in half and placed it in a pocket in his waistcoat. He recalled little else between that moment and when he arrived at Pemberley.

The odd sense of something left undone influenced him to open Juliette’s card. It contained nothing of note. Lady Howgrave extended sympathy upon their loss. Despite such brevity, it was enough to prod him into recalling the specific words she had uttered to him that night.

She had said, “He beats me.”

How could he have forgotten such an admission? As he bethought it, more than just her words came to mind. He also recalled her gaze. It was peculiar. Although she bore the same expression of barely contained ennui that she always had, something was amiss. Behind her impeccably powdered countenance lay something unrecognizable to him. As it came to him then, he determined that it looked remarkably akin to fear.

The flood of tears that erupted from her that night had been forgotten. In Darcy’s mind, he had already made his away. It was possible that she had wept, but as that was uncertain to him, it did complicate his belief in her sincerity.

Her embarrassing disclosure seemed to have been borne of desperation. Had she reached out to him seeking his aide in escaping her husband? Why she approached him rather than her many paramours, lady-friends, and benefactors he could not imagine. Allowing a moment for reflection, he reasoned it out. No doubt their prior intimacy gave her leave to confide in him. Howgrave meant to stand for re-election. If such information became public, an unholy scandal would ensue.

At one time Howgrave had his sights upon becoming the Prime Minister. Of late, just keeping his seat in Parliament was a trial. With anarchy at hand, a great deal of power and money flew about. There was chaos enough in England. Voters would be difficult to lure even without the stench of marital disgrace.

Juliette’s overture left Darcy in a very precarious position. Law and society were at odds. It was a matter of class. Whereas a poor man would be gaoled for beating a horse, a gentleman could take a stick to his wife with compleat impunity. It had been his observation that if a man would take a cane to his wife, his scruples were compleatly compromised. Other malfeasances were certainly at work. Power was a true pestilence in the hands of those disposed to abuse it. He had seen that in his own home. Indeed, Smeads looked to have crowned himself feudal lord of his own little Pemberley fiefdom.

It was a quandary. Lady Howgrave had not asked for his service in furtherance of any design. She had issued a statement.

Their conversation the night of the Pemberley ball had left him annoyed. Unwittingly or not, her intimations had offended him. At the time he had set her remarks aside, attributing them to the worst sort of oblivion. She had led a pampered and narcissistic existence. In her vaunted circles, those who bore children hardly delighted in them. Juliette’s life had been dedicated to entertaining men who held no respect for their wives. What did she know of marital devotion or filial pride?

At this turn of self-righteousness, his conscience did not remain unbothered. He did not like to recall their connection, Granted, when he came to her, he was unmarried and unattached (and his loins ached with all the considerable heat of youth). She had been charming as well as beautiful, yet he did not seek her companionship. In truth, she had been no more than a receptacle to him. He sought only to soothe his fevered blood. It was never an
affaire‘d amour
. And if it was not, it was to be despised as unbefitting a gentleman—whatever his justification was at the time.

Such reminisces were abhorrent. He quitted thoughts of the impertinent past for those of the pertinent present.

He wanted to believe that Juliette’s sudden eruption over her husband’s misuse was but a ruse, born of the wiles of a woman bored by her husband and the shallowness that surrounded them. But he could not. Her disconsolation appeared to be quite genuine.

Regardless, if he was to trouble himself by a lady’s unhappiness, he would see to his wife first. Her dispiritness was far more alarming.

———

“
Withdraw
,” Elizabeth had urged.

He had been most unnerved by his wife’s sudden request. (As much as he wanted to oblige her in all ways, at that particular moment her wants were unattainable.) Their unions had always been anointed by compleat achievement. He had no greater pleasure than when they reached fulfilment together. However difficult, he would honour her wishes, mollified by the notion that given time, her opinion would alter. If she was too discomfited to chance another child just then, he understood compleatly. How best to go about it was not a conundrum.

The ways of love were many—and their union had always been a collaborative one.

Her desire to satisfy him had remained as it always had been. She stroked, nuzzled and drew from him his very marrow. Her methods left him compleatly fulfilled. (Indeed, there were sonnets devoted to such raptures.) What astonished him of late was that she did not care to be pleasured in return. His delectation had always been improved by bringing her to achievement (again and again and again, and, sometimes, again). Would she allow him to attend her properly, she could be brought to exquisite triumph without fear of falling with child.

Indeed, it was his particular gratification to stroke her to submission.

Closing his eyes, he imagined the journey his tongue would take, snaking down between her breasts, across her belly....

He sat up. Only then did he become witting that he had not only slipped halfway down his chair, he had a conspicuous bulge in the crotch of his breeches. In fortune, there was no one about to witness his embarrassment, for the impromptu reveille of his nether-regions was not easily conquered. As he struggled to do so, the possibility that Elizabeth faced a similar dilemma struck him. To be taken partially down the road to ultimate rapture only to be diverted onto another path might be unduly demanding upon her sensibilities as well. Perhaps she feared throwing all caution to the wind as did he. Concluding that she dared not trust her own passion was a more palatable thought than others, but not a true consolation. Yet, he would protect her from that which she abhorred. That was his duty.

Heaving himself upon her only to spill his seed into a lace handkerchief was an indignity he preferred not to endure. If Elizabeth did not care to give of herself wholly to him, he would just as well do without too.

Having sunk into what might have been accused of being a bout of self-pity; his unhappy thoughts were broken by the arrival of a servant carrying a tray. Upon it lay a letter. It had come by courier. This missive was also in Lady Henry Howgrave’s hand. It was not, however, further condolences. It’s message was implicit.

It read, “I must see you at your earliest possible convenience.”

Chapter 48

Unstrung

Physical congress and under what auspices they would take it did not burden Elizabeth Darcy just then. Her thoughts commanded her deeds, and her thoughts were unhelpful.

Having concluded that Darcy was witting that she stood in the Portrait Hall gazing longingly at their family’s likenesses and that such behaviour troubled him, Elizabeth ceased. Nonetheless, her most profound fear had not altered. She was transfixed with the notion that her memory of William’s happy face was fading. The more she endeavoured to imagine him, the hazier his countenance became to her. Of the mind that no one was aware of it, she silently, but persistently, fretted that she had not had his likeness committed to paint.

She had kept to one vow. Other than one tremulous moment, she had not wept, nor by any other means, appeared unduly bereaved in front of her family. Indeed, she continued to be uncommonly collected. She also began to spend an inordinate amount of time in her bath. There, she could lose herself in her dearest recollections without fear of observation. It was of the utmost importance that her continuing misery would not disturb others.

That recent predilection had come to Mr. Darcy’s attention. (Granted, he used the deplorable tactic of spying on her to obtain this information—he believed the ends justified the means.) It was urgent that her melancholy be addressed. However, he did not want to appear accusatory. They each had their way of contending with misfortune. (He took to the downs on Blackjack—which could be accused as simply avoidance.) To him, her method seemed to be harbouring the hurt, rather than conquering it.

When she had fallen into a black abyss of despair after the stillbirth, she had found solace in her bath. Consequently, he was not surprised that she did so once again. He had come into the bathing room and joined her then. Upon that occasion, as this, he did not mean to take liberties or to commiserate. In naked recumbence, he hoped they could share an intimacy of the heart; one that would contain certain filaments—mad and despairing thoughts—that threatened them both.

Now lost to an internal call, she did not hear him come in or his dressing gown drop to the floor. Startled, she did take notice when he slipped in behind her. She neither spoke nor looked upon him. However, she allowed herself to be engulfed by the length of his legs. The considerable displacement of water his body did disturb, sloshed onto the floor.

She leaned back against his bare chest. Her soaked chemise lay flattened against her as if a second skin. The only thing dividing them was that—and a thousand sorrows.

She spoke, not mournfully, but something far worse. Without inflection, she said, “There are times that my very flesh aches.”

Determined to speak of what she dared not, he whispered in her ear, “It is a time-worn question—is it not? That it is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”

As if she had not heard his words, she suddenly sat up, again losing water over the side of the tub.

“My children! Do I hear them?”

His arms hugged her to him as he soothed, “Hush, my love. They are safe. Listen, you can hear their laughter.”

Her body, which had tensed, gradually settled. He kissed her on her neck and ear. Then as he had done before, he took a sponge, dipped it in the water and drew it across her shoulders, squeezing water from it as he did. She neither revelled in, nor recoiled against, his ministrations. It was a submission. In time, she nestled against him and sighed. The sound was intoxicating. Ere he had a chance to improve on that, once again her attention was stolen by her imagination.