Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (54 page)

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.

H
er 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.