Darcy was terrified too. He had her hand in a death grip. Every time she made noise, every time she screwed up her face against the pain, he winced in sympathy.
His terror was feeding her own terror.
They walked together, and the thunder rumbled and dark clouds blew overhead, and the air felt heavy with rain.
“We’ll never make it in time,” Elizabeth gasped. “There is no point in trying.”
“What?” he said. “You are… that is… the baby is coming?”
“No—well, I don’t know,” she said. “But I meant the rain.” She looked about wildly. “Oh, if only it didn’t hurt so bad, I should throw myself down on that grass and lie there and—”
“No,” said Darcy. “We should move. But if it does rain on us, it shan’t do us any harm. We will be wet, that is all, soaked through. But a little water will not hurt us.”
“I don’t want to be wet,” Elizabeth wailed. “I don’t want to walk in the rain. It is easy enough for you. You are not wearing all these damnable skirts and you do not have horrid undulations ripping through your hips and thighs every other moment.” She should probably not say damnable, but she didn’t care.
“You’re right,” he said, and there was less terror in his face now. He looked determined instead. “It is easier for me. It is much harder for you. But it’s all right, because you have always been stronger than me, anyway.”
She shook her head. Her lower lip was trembling.
“Yes, yes,” he said, nodding. “You are the strongest woman in all of England. And in all the seas between India and China as well, for that matter. You have survived all manner of things that would take most people off at the knees. But you barely blink, and you weather them. I, on the other hand, have been utterly weak. Every time something painful has happened, I have crumbled. So, it is a good thing it is you and not me. You are strong, so you can do this.”
She let out a little whimper. “But Darcy—”
“You are so, so strong,” he said. “You can do anything.”
And they were walking again, even faster, as the skies darkened above them.
There was a loud roar in the distance, growing closer. It must be more thunder, she thought, and she kept walking. He was right that they could walk through the rain. A little water would not hurt them. It wasn’t important. Getting back to the lying-in chamber and her monthly nurse was paramount. There might not be time for the accoucheur to arrive, but the nurse could deliver the baby, if they could simply arrive within—
“Elizabeth,” Darcy was saying, tugging on her, pulling her over to the side of the road.
“What?” And then she realized that the sound she was hearing was not thunder, but a coach drawn by horses coming down the road, and they were right in the path.
“I need to leave you here for a moment,” said Darcy.
“You said you wouldn’t leave!” she wailed.
“One moment,” said Darcy, letting go of her hand. He flung himself into the road directly in the path of the coach. He waved his hands over his head.
Thunder roared overhead. A forked tongue of lightning split the sky.
Elizabeth cried out as an even more intense pain hit her. She felt as if she were being split in two.
The carriage came to a stop in front of Darcy, horses shying on their back hooves.
Darcy ran around to the side and flung open the door. “You will give my wife and me a ride to Netherfield.”
“What?” said a voice from within. Two ladies heads poked out, taking Darcy in.
Thunder crashed again.
Elizabeth clutched her belly. And then there was a warm rush of hot liquid between her thighs. Her skirt was awash in it. Her bag of waters had broken. Oh, Lord!
One of the ladies in the carriage noticed and wrinkled up her nose. “Listen, who are you?”
“You will let us into the coach,” said Darcy, “or I shall make you.” His eyes were wild, and he reminded Elizabeth of his days as a ship captain, ordering around the unruly men.
The women shrank from him.
Darcy held out his hand to Elizabeth. “Come on!”
She ran to him and he handed her up into the coach.
Darcy roared directions at the driver and they were off.
No sooner had they shut the door and begun to move but the sky opened up. Big, fat droplets of rain pattered the top of the carriage like the rattling of a drum line.
Elizabeth sagged against Darcy, who put his arm around her.
“Hang on,” he whispered, his lips against her temple. “Hang on for just a bit longer.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
When they arrived back at Netherfield, Jane seemed more intent on keeping Darcy out of her home than in helping her laboring sister.
Despite Elizabeth’s protests to the contrary, Darcy was left outside the front door in the rain.
But Elizabeth had no time to think on it or do anything, because she was conveyed directly to her lying-in chamber, where the monthly nurse examined her and said Elizabeth had to push.
“So soon?” said Elizabeth. “But it just started.” She was whining, and it hurt, and she wasn’t ready. How could this be happening to her? “Lord, I was there when Lydia had her first babe and she was walking about in the room for two days and two nights.”
“Every woman is different,” said the monthly nurse. “You are lucky. And all the walking you have done could not have hurt to help you along.”
“I don’t feel lucky!” snapped Elizabeth, as another intense pain tore through her.
“Push,” said the nurse. “Push!”
And soon, that was all Elizabeth could think about or focus on. Pushing.
Compared to what had come before, the pushing seemed to go on for an agonizingly long time. She felt as if she wasn’t making any progress at all.
She pushed and pushed with every pain that she felt, and she was exhausted and she lay back on the bed and exclaimed to the ceiling that she had changed her mind, and she didn’t want to have the baby after all, and that she would like all this to stop. “I shall try again next week, but I am not ready right now,” she said. “Please stop now, and I shall try again next week!”
The nurse thought this was funny, but Elizabeth was in earnest. She did not think she could do this.
And then Darcy’s words came back to her. You are the strongest woman in all of England.
The next time she was told to push, she pushed.
She began to come to grips with the fact that this could not be put off. She was having a child, and that was all there was to it. She had to get the child out if she wanted it to be over. So, she gritted her teeth, and sat up, and clutched the back of her thighs and…
It happened.
In moments, there he was, a perfect little boy, squirming and blinking in her arms. She could not take her eyes off him.
Everyone was coming in to look at the baby and coo and chatter, and she simply clutched her little one, and marveled at how small and sweet and flawless he was.
When she finally did look up, she looked around at the faces in the room, and she didn’t see him. “Darcy?” she said. “Where’s Darcy?”
“I sent that villain away,” Jane said imperiously.
“Well, get him back!” Elizabeth cried.
“I am not chasing after that poor excuse for a man,” Jane said.
“You mean the man standing outside in the rain?” said little Alice, Jane’s daughter. “He is frightfully wet. Water is dripping off his nose. I saw him through the window.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “For God’s sake, let him inside!”
* * *
Somehow, Elizabeth managed to convince them to give her some time alone with her husband. Darcy, wrapped in towels, his hair sopping wet, stood at the foot of the bed and looked them both over.
“You didn’t have to let me in,” he said. “I was only waiting to hear that you were all right, and that the babe was safe as well. I do not me
an to intrude.”
Elizabeth offered him the little bundle in her arms. “Would you like to hold your son?”
Darcy licked his lips. He hesitated. “Very much.” His voice wasn’t strong.
Was he crying? Or was that just the rain on his cheeks?
She handed the baby over.
Darcy cradled the tiny boy carefully. “Oh, Elizabeth. He is so perfect.”
She was going to cry. But instead, she forced herself not to. She lifted her chin. “I should not forgive you, you know. You don’t deserve it.”
“I do know,” he said, still staring at their son. “I won’t… Say the word, and I shall leave. I don’t want to cause you any more pain.”
“That’s the thing about forgiveness, though,” said Elizabeth softly. “You don’t do it because someone deserves it. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
He looked up at her, confused.
“Love isn’t about that,” she said. “It’s not about keeping score. It’s not about everyone getting what he deserves. And I love you, Mr. Darcy.”
“You do?” Now, he was crying. She was almost sure of it. “Because I love you more than life.”
“Yes, I do.” She cocked her head to look at him. “But if there were a score to be kept, I might tell you that I remember life before I met you, and it was a dull place, in which I was bound by propriety and rules. I was worth nothing because society dictated that unless I found a husband, I was simply dead weight. But you… you showed me another world, where society’s rules didn’t matter, where I could do as I pleased and take what I wanted. You woke me up, Mr. Darcy. And there is something to that, something powerful.”
He shook his head. “Elizabeth, no. What I have done to you is only visit one evil after another—”
“You have given me our son, darling. He is pure perfection.”
“Yes.” He turned back to the bundle in his arms in wonder.
“At any rate, I have decided to give you another chance, even if you don’t deserve it.” Then she smiled mischievously. “But have a care, Mr. Darcy. I might change my mind and kill you any time I like.”
His eyes widened in shock, and then in remembrance. And he smiled back at her—that insouciant smile that was all their own. “Fair enough, Mrs. Darcy. Fair enough.”
“Kiss me, then,” she said. “I have had a rather rough day.”
He laughed, and he came closer. Their lips met, sweetly and softly, like the warm calm sea on a sunny day.
He handed her back the baby.
She smiled down at her tiny son. “So, you have stopped using the laudanum? Tell me about that.”
EPILOGUE
Sometimes, when Elizabeth pondered how well things had gone for her, she could hardly believe it. She patted her rounded belly as she reclined on the couch in the nursery.
Darcy was sitting across from her, their eldest son crawling all over him. Watching the two of them always brought tears to her eyes because of their sweetness. She supposed it might be because she was with child. She was always a bit more teary when she was increasing. But she thought it was especially because of how gentle Darcy was with their child.
Though things between Darcy and her family—especially Jane—were not smooth as silk, she would no longer consider them bumpy. Darcy had changed, and everyone had seen it. There was no condemnation for him now that he had set about making things right.
Little Eric was tickling his father’s stomach.
Darcy was putting on a little laugh. “Are you tickling Papa?” he asked in the voice he used only for Eric.
Eric screamed with laughter and did it again.
It made her heart swell, watching Darcy this way. For all his masculinity and bravado, he could be a man who adored a little boy and played games with him. The same man who had tricked men on the high seas was now at the mercy of a little boy’s tickles.
Eric bounded out of Darcy’s arms and toddled over to Elizabeth. “Tickle baby brother,” he said, climbing up next to her and putting his hands on her round stomach. He had already decided that baby in her womb would be a boy, even though Elizabeth thought it would be nice to have a little girl. One of each. But as long as the babe arrived healthy, she would be grateful. She and Darcy were already so lucky, and the new child only served to make them luckier.
Eric looked up at her with big, round eyes. “Is he giggling in your belly, Mama?”
“Yes, little one,” she said, rubbing his head, feeling the sweetness of his fine, soft hair. Just then, the baby in her womb decided to kick.
Eric squealed. “He likes the tickles, Mama!”
Darcy chuckled from across the room, getting up to join them. “Is he moving?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said.
Darcy placed his hand on her stomach.
Another little kick.
His face lit up with a smile. “He’s a strong one.”
“He might be a she, you know,” said Elizabeth.
“If so, she’s going to be just as stubborn as her mother, my love.” Darcy kissed her forehead.
“Don’t want a sister,” said Eric, sticking out his lower lip. “Want a brother. I want it to be all boys.”
Elizabeth and Darcy both laughed.
“You would love your sister once you got used to her,” said Darcy.
Eric shook his head, making a face. “I don’t think so.”
They laughed again.
“You are precious,” said Elizabeth, leaning down to kiss Eric’s cheek.
“Ah,” Darcy whispered. “I love you both so much.”
She smiled up at him.
He smiled too. “More than anything on earth. More than anything in the sky. More than anything in the sea.”
Mr. Darcy's Indiscretions Page 59
