He let her go with a hard breath. Despite the rage that flooded him, Darcy kept his voice quiet and soft. “Who did this to you? I swear I shall call him out and kill him.”
“That shall be impossible.”
“I care not who the man is. The king himself, I would call out — do you wish to protect this man? I care not who he is.”
Elizabeth smiled in her humorless manner again. “The trouble is, that I believe I have already placed this gentleman on my credit, and so he cannot go onto yours.”
“What do you mean?” Darcy stepped closer to her. Her cheeks were flushed, her hand felt hot. “What happened? Tell me everything, and above all, tell me how I might help you.”
“May I sit?” Without waiting for his reply, Elizabeth hobbled back with his arm supporting her to the chair by the crackling fire piled high at Mrs. North’s command, and she collapsed into it. “I believe — had no chance for me to confirm — I believe I killed the Earl of Lachglass when he tried to… to…“
“You need not say it.”
“He did not succeed.” Her wide eyes looked at him beseechingly.
Lord Lechery — that was how Lachglass was known amongst the men of the ton. And Elizabeth had killed him. Lachglass was almost a relation, as he was the cousin of his Fitzwilliam cousins, on their mother’s side.
“It would not have made a whit of difference to me, not in the slightest, if he had succeeded in his vile design against you.”
Elizabeth smiled at him, with something of the generous sparkle he remembered better and better from the time of their acquaintance those many years before. “I am glad to hear that you are so minded. For my part, I am glad that since I did kill him, I did so before he achieved his aim. Better to be hung a maiden.”
“I shall not let them hang you. I swear to that.” Of course Elizabeth, brave and strong Elizabeth, had defended herself. “Is there any chance they do not know it was you?”
“None at all. I met his man of business, and smashed his cheek in as I fled the house.”
“You did!” Darcy looked at her admiringly. “Shall I need to fear for myself in your presence?”
Elizabeth smiled back at him almost mischievously, though it did not reach her eyes. He could see that she wished to maintain as light a mood in her distress as she could. “You perhaps ought.”
“Mr. Blight.” Darcy blinked at this detail. He’d met Lechery’s servant several times, and thought he was as thoroughly distasteful as his master. “Tell me all details — is there any chance they know you are come here?”
“I doubt there is. We seem to be entirely unconnected. In a way we are entirely unconnected—”
“Nay, say it not. Madam, we always have been connected, even when we did not feel the binding.”
Elizabeth replied with a weak watery smile. She forced that smile. “I am glad… glad you do not despise my face. I always, always hated to think that you though ill of me, even though I deserved for you to think terribly of me.”
“Never — there was nothing you said to me then that I did not deserve, and the memory of the reproof you gave me has been most valuable to me over the years, in reminding me to show less of arrogance and more of kindness to those around me.”
“I am glad to see you once more,” Elizabeth replied with a pale smile, “and I am also glad you do not despise me for breaking all notions of propriety to renew the acquaintance in such a manner as I have, I am—” Elizabeth paused, and she seemed to pant. She shivered, though it was almost too warm in the room, and sweat stood upon her forehead.
She added, her hand trembling slightly, “It would have been greatly to my preference to not have obliged a peer of the realm to take up permanent residence in a much smaller plot of land than he is used to. On account of the fear that they shall oblige me likewise to take up a similar residence.”
“I tell you, I shall not let you be hung.”
“If I must, I’ll walk the gallows walk, and I’ll walk that walk brave as any man. He was such a man, such a man as deserved such a fate.”
“How did you end up in a position of vulnerability to Lechery? I mean Lachglass.”
“Lechery?” Elizabeth laughed with real humor. “Had I known his true title, I may have exercised more caution in accepting the post of governess in his house. But I had never even met the gentleman till I was one week into dealing with his unenthusiastic daughter.”
“I understand,” Darcy replied, not greatly surprised. He had known that the resources of her family were slender, and a fall from gentility of this sort was hardly unexpected or unusual. “I am sorry for your loss.”
“How do you know my father has not thrown me off for some strange reason?”
“It would have been a difficult matter in such a case to find respectable employment.”
“As the matter turned out,” Elizabeth laughed, “I did not find respectable employment.”
When Darcy smiled back at her, she touched her forehead.
Her face and forehead was flushed, and it had become redder, he realized in the past minutes as they talked. “I feel queer, of a sudden,” she said in a tinny voice. “And quite dizzy.”
And then before Darcy’s terrified gaze, her eyes rolled up into her forehead, and she slumped into the chair in a dead faint.
Darcy anxiously jumped forward and felt her forehead.
She was burning up with fever, but at least he felt her thin reedy pulse pumping blood through her precious body.
With a leap, Darcy rang for his servants, pulling the bell rope connected to the servant’s quarters again and again until Mrs. North followed by a maid and a footman bustled into the room. “A doctor, for Miss Bennet. Immediately. Immediately. The physician immediately.”
Chapter Three
The first time Elizabeth awoke was from the sharp sting as the surgeon’s knife cut open the vein above her wrist so that he could let her blood. She blearily looked towards her arm and tried to pull it away. But the steady and experienced hand of the surgeon held her arm in place, as her blood burbled purply with each pulse into the wavering cup held against her arm.
“Shhhh. Shhhh. You will be all right. You will be well soon.” Darcy’s deep comforting voice sounded from her side.
She was lying on a soft bed. Her throat felt raw with flame. She tried to swallow, but she could not because it hurt so much.
The doctor finished his work and tied a strip of white gauze around her arm tightly. “Rich colored blood. I think the young miss will recover,” he said looking at the cup.
Elizabeth tried to swallow again, but a droplet of saliva caught in her throat and she started desperately coughing. Mr. Darcy and the doctor helped her sit up higher as she coughed, each cough causing a spasm of achy pain to go through her chest. Everything hurt.
“Keep her seated up. I have made the observation that when a patient is made to keep their chest upright when their tonsils are swollen, or they are otherwise ill, it reduces the frequency of pleurisy of the lungs. There is no authority or experiment to support this belief, but I suspect an upright posture permits the patient to cough more productively when oral secretions make inroads into the breathing passageway, instead of down the esophagus. Keep Mrs. Benoit—” Elizabeth blearily blinked at this name. Everything swam before her eyes, and she could not think clearly, but she was fairly certain her name was not Mrs. Benoit. “—with her head and chest elevated. Enough cushions so she can comfortably sleep. Sleep will do more for her than my ministrations can. I’ll visit again tomorrow at this time, and bleed her once more depending on the progression of the illness.”
Darcy stood, and shook the doctor’s extended hand with his fine hand. Darcy had such a fine muscular hand. Elizabeth stared at the hand. The light from the candle was painfully bright in her eyes. Her throat hurt so much.
The servant in the room stuffed cushions behind her on the surgeon’s orders, pillows that cradled her head. She wasn’t as comfortable this way at first, but when her head
lolled to the side backwards, she began to drift off again, though the afterimage of the candle burned into her sleep, and ate into her delirious dreams.
Elizabeth did not remember later any moments of distinct consciousness for the next three days. What she did remember, always, till the day she died, was the sense of Darcy’s presence next to her, warm, comforting and helping her to sleep and know all would be good. Her hand would search out his, and he would let her hold his.
Quite improper, but she was happy for this.
Each evening the doctor would come, frown and tap his nose, take Elizabeth’s pulse and temperature, and leave with a cup of her blood to drink. For she presumed, in this strange state of mind that her fever had given her, that that must be what doctors did with the blood, and that perhaps the bleeding did nothing beneficial — it had certainly done little to help Papa after his stroke — but the doctors had perpetrated bleeding as a scam upon all of society so that they could satisfy their endless desire to drink blood.
Elizabeth also had memories — she was not quite sure if they were memories or fragments of a dream — of vomiting, throwing up over Darcy’s fine wool clothes. Of throwing the covers to the side feverishly because she was too hot. And other memories that she was sure were dreams.
Jane and her sneaking into the same bed, whispering as little girls. A seven-headed hydra, each head that of Lord Lachglass, that though she smashed with her skull every head, there was always another sneering head, leering forward to bite her. A swinging gibbet, they led her up to be hung, but when the lever was pulled, instead of her hanging, she saw in impossibly vivid color Mr. Blight, his tongue sticking out and his face blue and black.
And then she was back in the bed.
Dark. No candle burning, but a dim red glow from the fireplace.
Elizabeth felt sick with shuddering aches, and she suspected she yet burned with a little fever, but she knew she was healthier than she had been for the past days, however many they had been. And at last she could appreciate that she was lying in the softest, comfiest bed she had ever slept in, including the one she’d possessed when she was one of the more blessed Miss Bennets of Longbourn.
She looked to her side. Darcy sat up in the winged armchair, lightly snoring.
Elizabeth felt a powerful wave of affection for him that went up and down her achy limbs and filled her soul. Her true hero, Fitzwilliam Darcy.
She looked at him, her eyes still bleary from illness and fatigue. His features and clothes were barely visible in the dim firelight. But she felt a deep thankfulness to him.
After so many years, when he had every right to despise her, he immediately, and without question, gave her sanctuary, paid for her care, and then sat by her bed to keep her company as she was sick.
He must love you still.
The thought came to Elizabeth, and while a female modesty suggested such thoughts should always be discouraged, rationality interposed between modesty and her mind: A man did not sit by the bedside of a woman in such a way unless he cared very deeply for her.
Elizabeth was glad of it. She did not yet know what to make of her sentiments towards Darcy, and her life was so strange. That she had murdered her employer the earl should make it impossible for her to ever marry anyone, let alone Mr. Darcy.
They could never marry.
The impossibility did not change anything. She was happy, deeply and desperately happy to believe he still loved her.
There was breathing on the other side, and Elizabeth rolled her head over to look. There was a woman wearing the clothes that marked her as a fine lady’s maid. No doubt Darcy had always kept one of his servants present in the room with them when he was in her room to maintain a frail semblance of propriety.
Elizabeth grinned.
The woman stirred and stood. She placed her hand on Elizabeth’s forehead.
“Water,” Elizabeth whispered hoarsely. But though her throat was dry and rough, it did not feel painful and inflamed the way she remembered from the past days.
The woman smiled at her and poured water from a pitcher by the bedside into her cup, very quietly. Elizabeth took the cup in her shaking hands, but needed the maid’s aid to hold it steady so that she could drink slowly.
Elizabeth then closed her eyes.
She felt quite terrible still. Much worse than she could ever remember feeling. Achy and weak. But she also felt surprisingly clean. “How long?” Elizabeth whispered without opening her eyes again.
“Three days, ma’am, since the evening you came to us.” The maid spoke very quietly, clearly hoping like Elizabeth to not wake Mr. Darcy from his snores. “Do you feel better?”
“Horrendous. Like I’d been tied to the ground with stakes and left to bake for a long summer day.” Elizabeth opened her eyes and looked at the maid, whose profile was barely visible in the light. “But I no longer have any delirium that I can detect in my mind.”
“I am very glad. The physician said the critical point would be yesterday. There was a fear you would die once or twice, Mrs. Benoit.”
Elizabeth quirked a smile. She whispered, “So that is my name now?”
“I had a suspicion it may not be your true name. The maid who let you into the house swore until Mrs. North properly talked to her that you had introduced yourself as a Miss Bennet,” the maid replied with a quirk of her lips that made Elizabeth suspect she had a fine sense of humor. “But it seems a simple mistake to make as the two sound similar. And as you and the master are old friends, he would certainly know about your marriage.”
“Oh yes… my marriage. Poor Mr. Benoit, he never cut a memorable figure.”
The maid snorted with humor.
At the sound Mr. Darcy started and woke up. His eyes gleamed at her in the dim reddish glow. “Elizabeth, I mean Miss Bennet. I mean Mrs. Benoit.” Darcy looked at the servant.
“Mrs. Benoit,” the maid replied with a smile in her voice, “says she is much improved.”
Elizabeth smiled at Darcy, though her lips felt cracked and painful. “I think the fever is gone.”
He quickly touched her forehead and then pulled back. “I worried.”
She smiled at him. “I know. You have saved my life.”
“Nothing, nothing.”
Elizabeth’s eyes were starting to blink closed. “I am yet very sleepy,” she yawned. “And rather sick. But I am not likely to die in the night. Mr. Darcy, you should go to your own bed and sleep properly.”
He did not move. Elizabeth opened her eyes again and saw a mulish look on his face. She smiled sleepily at him. “I am sure that…” Elizabeth glanced to the other side of the bed, “What is your name?”
“Becky, ma’am.”
“I am certain Becky can ensure I do not die in the night and am provided water and the like. You must sleep properly, though. I’ll be easier if I know you are caring for yourself now that I am well.” Elizabeth felt her aches returning, and she then closed her eyes, waiting with her ears to see if Darcy would leave the room.
But she fell back to sleep before she could decide if he’d left.
*****
When Elizabeth woke again, light seeped around the edges of her curtains, and the fire still burned. She looked around and the same maid from the last night was still sitting in the chair, but Mr. Darcy was gone.
There was the repeated soft clicking of needles together as the maid worked on a matter of knitting, which she put down when Elizabeth stirred. “Awake again, Mrs. Benoit?”
“Awake.” She glanced back at Mr. Darcy’s seat.
“Took a while to convince him to leave. But when he felt your forehead again and decided there was no returning fever, I was able to convince the sweet master to get his needed sleep. He’s exhausted himself caring for you. Quite a fine gentleman. I had no notion since I came back to the house that he was attached.”
Elizabeth had had no notion that he was still so attached either. But she was happy that he was.
She tried to sit up with her
legs hanging off the bed. And she managed to sit up, with difficulty, though she was still achy and weak.
“Now do be careful,” the maid cautioned worriedly, putting her cool hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders. “Ought to have the physician back to tell you that you can stand up before you try to.”
Elizabeth shook her head and ignored Becky to place her feet on the ground. Her head swam around and around in circles, and her stomach yet felt quite tender. “More water, please.”
She gratefully drank the water and closed her eyes after she had finished the cup.
She just concentrated on the feel of thick rug beneath her bare feet. She sat for a minute, quietly with the maid, and then putting her hands under her, Elizabeth stood. Her legs were wobbly, and the only reason she did not collapse was Becky’s help.
“You don’t want to stay in bed longer than you have to,” Becky stated.
“Never in bed. Never been bedridden.”
“Fortunate you are in that. After my child was born, I had a fever that nearly carried me off. I was sick for three weeks.”
Elizabeth took several deep breaths. The longer she stood the steadier she felt. That was a good sign. “Please help me to the chamber pot. I would rather not continue to use the bedpan.”
“I’d surely prefer you to use the pot as well.” The maid laughed. “Not my normal duties, but Mr. Darcy did not wish to hire a nurse from outside the household. And while I can leave matters for the maid to dispose of, Mr. Darcy put me in charge of keeping you clean and dressed.”
“No, he would not want to hire someone from out of the house.” The thought of what she had done arose again. Elizabeth refused to consider that thought.
The maid helped Elizabeth walk to one of the closet doors, through which was a tiny room with a fine painted wooden box, whose top lifted to reveal a hole underneath which sat the chamber pot. Elizabeth approved of setting the chamber pot in a closet instead of right in the bedroom itself. One of the luxuries of the wealthy. A further luxury was that there was a small iron box in the cabinet for the chamber pot where hot coals had been placed that made the wooden seat pleasantly warm when Elizabeth sat on it.
Elizabeth's Refuge Page 3
