“But things do need to be done,” said Jane.
“Yes, but I am ordering you not to worry about them at this time,” said Mr. Darcy. “I shall join you there by and by. Now, go.”
Both of the sisters obeyed, though neither was quite sure why they did so. Mr. Darcy had suddenly become very convincing and authoritative. Elizabeth couldn’t help but find it a bit comforting, and there was cold comfort in any other part of her life now.
* * *
It was some time later before Mr. Darcy returned, and then he came directly to the library and told them that they must sleep if they could.
Jane began to protest, saying that she had too much that she needed to do, but Mr. Darcy told her that he had ridden to Netherfield to engage servants there. They would clean and dress their mother’s and sisters’ bodies on the morrow. In the meantime, he had procured more ice, and would go at once to see that it was packed around the bodies for preservation. Both of them needed their rest, especially if they did not wish to succumb to the sickness themselves.
He was insistent, in the same way he had been about sending them to the library, and they found themselves obeying him again.
They had to undress each other in their bedroom, for there was no maid to help, but they managed this for the most part and then fell into bed. Elizabeth did not sleep right away, for she had slept in the carriage. Instead, she lay in bed and tried to think of what was to come, and when she did, it filled her with horror.
She well remembered her mother’s prattling about Charlotte Collins being mistress of this place after their father’s death, but it had all seemed as if it would be far in the future. No one had even said anything about it when they put her in the carriage back to Longbourn. But now she was forced to confront the fact that she would soon have no home.
Well, perhaps it would not be so dire. Perhaps Mr. Collins would allow them to stay. After all, it was only the three of them now, she realized. Only she, Jane, and Lydia survived. The thought made her start to sob again, loud, gasping sounds she feared would wake Jane.
But Jane was oblivious to the world, having been up and caring for the sick for days now. She slept soundly.
Elizabeth did not think she wanted to stay under Mr. Collins’s roof, though, even if he would allow them to stay. She did not know if she could bear watching him turn Longbourn into his own household. And she was not overfond of the man to begin with.
But where else could they go?
Perhaps to the Gardiners or to the Philipses. Both of her mother’s siblings might be able to help. She and her sisters would probably be divided, though, so as to prevent any undue hardship on either family. Two of them to London with the Gardiners and one of them with the Philipses? Oh, Elizabeth did not know.
And there was the looming proposal from Darcy that she had perhaps somehow given the impression she’d accepted. She had seen in his countenance that he was assured of her acceptance. He wouldn’t dream that she would ever deny him. Under normal circumstances, she would have liked to refuse him, if only to undercut his dreaded pride.
But now… well, she hardly cared whether Mr. Darcy was insufferably self-assured or if he wasn’t.
What did any of it matter in the face of such loss?
When her sobs fell off again, she did fall asleep, sleeping dreamlessly until morning.
Upon awakening, she noticed she was alone in the bed. Jane had already gotten up, apparently. Elizabeth dressed herself, assuming there was no one to assist her, and went downstairs.
There was bread and ham laid out for breakfast and even some chocolate. Lydia was at the dining room table, eating. When she saw Elizabeth, she got out of her chair and ran to her, embracing her.
“Oh, Lizzy, you are here. Jane said you were, but I thought she had gone mad. She does seem to be so desperately sad.” Lydia pulled back. “As she should be, that is. As we all are. I am devastated, of course.” Her eyes filled with tears. But she dashed them away. “Still, I must say that our parents would have wanted us to stay strong and do as best as we could, wouldn’t they?”
“I suppose,” said Elizabeth.
“Mr. Darcy had all this brought over from Netherfield,” said Lydia, turning back to the table. “Isn’t it lovely? I thought he was an awful man, but he has been so kind to me this morning. And I must say, he is rather handsome, is he not?” Lydia wrinkled her nose. “Not that I’m thinking of such things. Oh, I am sorry, Lizzy. I feel dreadful. I do. I just don’t know how to act. I simply don’t.” She sat down and began furiously eating bread and butter.
Elizabeth didn’t say anything. She was not sure what to say to her youngest and silliest sister. She could see that Lydia was distraught, but it was true that Lydia had been sheltered from any true calamity in her life, mostly by their mother, who tended to coddle her last born child. Elizabeth looked at the food, but she didn’t feel hungry. She left the dining room and entered the sitting room.
There were the bodies. Her father was already washed and dressed in his finest suit. He looked like he was sleeping.
The others were laid out, too. Her sisters. Her mother.
Jane was in the corner with several servants that Elizabeth recognized from Netherfield. They were arranging flowers for their scent. Jane looked up and saw her.
“Oh, Lizzy,” she said. “Would you like some time alone with them?”
“Please,” whispered Elizabeth.
Everyone cleared the room.
Elizabeth turned back to her father, picking up his hand. Oh, it was cold and stiff. She sobbed.
She adored her father. He was lighthearted and sweet and he had doted on her. She could always count on him to be there with a joke or a smile. She could not bear it, looking at him like this. How could he be gone, so soon? And how was it that she had never gotten any chance to say goodbye?
* * *
Mr. Darcy approached the sitting room in Longbourn to check on the progress of the servants he’d paid to leave Netherfield, and he saw Elizabeth there, holding her father’s hand and sobbing.
He stopped short in the doorway and simply stared at her.
He was confused. He was not sure how he’d ended up in the middle of all of this. The sickness here, it was more than a sickness, it was a plague. It was wiping out people in droves, and he was terrified of it all. He had been terrified when he’d heard how quickly it was being passed from person to person. He knew Elizabeth would have understood if he had withdrawn his offer to bring her home, but he was not the sort of man who considered himself a coward. And he did not go back on his word. Honor was important to him.
So, he was here, even in his terror.
And things here were growing gradually more terrifying by the moment. When he had gone to Netherfield the night before, he had hardly expected anyone to be there except the few remaining servants left behind to maintain the place in the event that Bingley might come back. He had been astonished to find that Bingley had returned there for a brief visit to settle some affairs and that his sister Caroline had accompanied him.
Bingley had been roused from bed, but he hadn’t looked well. There were circles under his eyes and he was coughing into his handkerchief too often. He told Darcy that he’d planned to be there only a few days and had no intentions to make any social calls while there. He was simply attending to financial matters. If all went well, no one would even know he had visited.
He had been most generous with his servants and his resources, inquiring after the eldest Miss Bennet with a concern and worry that led Darcy to wonder if he’d made the right decision discouraging his friend from an alliance with the family. After all, he had no right to say anything now, not after he had proposed to a Bennet sister himself. He did not tell this to Bingley, however. He did not wish to burden his friend with anything.
It all might be too late, anyway. Darcy was frightened that Bingley had contracted the horrible illness. From what he could understand, as he made inquiries as he went to gather things that
the Bennet family needed, anyone who became sick with the illness died. No one had yet recovered. As to why some of them were afflicted and others were not, no one knew. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it all, and that too was terrifying.
They might all die here. And thinking such grave thoughts as that, it did not matter whether he had proposed or whether Elizabeth Bennet had accepted him or not.
Even though, strictly speaking, she had not accepted him. He supposed he was not to consider himself engaged to her, although he was definitely behaving as though he was.
He watched her in her grief, and his heart went out to her. It was a bad, bad business here, all this death. It was devastating. He had lost both his parents at once, in one fell swoop, when they were in a frightful accident involving spooked horses. His mother had lingered on for days with her head swollen, talking of nonsense in her bed, confusing him with her own long-dead father, grabbing his hand and asking if she might have a dolly and other such things.
It had been the single worst thing that had ever befallen him, and it was made worse by the fact that no sooner were his parents both buried than he was to be the master of Pemberley and take over it all. He was too young for that, or so he thought at the time. He had expected his father to live on for another thirty years, and that Darcy would have his own children before his father passed on. The reality was almost impossible to reconcile.
He still hadn’t gotten over it. He probably never would.
The fragility of a human life, that was what it had taught him. He had not given that any thought before. He had thought of his parents as… infallible and untouchable. They were supposed to be there to guide him for years to come. They were not supposed to die suddenly. They were not supposed to suddenly turn into their former child selves and then drift away in the night without even knowing their son waited at their bedsides.
Yes, he knew the pain that Elizabeth was going through now. She would be too overcome with it for anything else for some time.
He could help. He would help. Whether she accepted him or not, he would help. Because he could see the pain that was etched into her features now, and he knew it well. It called to the pain in him. He knew it, and he wanted to ease it any way he could.
CHAPTER THREE
“But it may be dangerous for you to be here,” Jane was saying, turning in a circle in the sitting room.
Mr. Gardiner was bent over the lifeless form of his sister, and his wife was standing behind him with her hand on his shoulder.
“What’s that, Jane dear?” said Mr. Gardiner, not looking up.
Elizabeth was standing next to Jane. Her aunt and uncle had just arrived not long ago. “I think she means because the illness is still so rampant. Anyone might catch it, and no one seems to recover.”
“Well, we had to come,” said Mrs. Gardiner. “But as you can see, we did leave the children at home.”
“What good will that be to them when they are motherless and fatherless?” burst out Jane.
Mrs. Gardiner went to her and put an arm around Jane’s shoulders. Jane began to cry, clutching at Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner smoothed her hair.
“I think we will be all right,” said Mr. Gardiner. “I have hope, at any rate. There are fewer and fewer new sicknesses, from what we hear.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Gardiner. “And we are hardy and strong.”
So were our parents, thought Elizabeth, but she did not say anything, because she did not want to think of losing her aunt and uncle also.
“I suppose there are no other guests because most of the neighborhood is engaged in mourning their own dead?” said Mr. Gardiner.
“That’s right,” said Elizabeth. “And many who have not been afflicted are afraid to leave home. They do not want to catch the illness if they may avoid it.”
“Well, that is all very good, then,” said Mr. Gardiner. “I think we must not wait too much longer for the burials, then.”
Jane sucked in a noisy breath. “Oh, I’m so glad you are here, uncle. I do not know what we would do without you.”
“We will always be here for you,” said Mr. Gardiner.
“In fact, we have spoken, and we want you girls to come back to London with us when Longbourn passes on to Mr. Collins,” said Mrs. Gardiner.
“Oh,” said Jane, as if she had not thought of this at all. “Well… that is… yes, that would probably be…”
“You don’t have to think about it now,” said Mr. Gardiner, smiling at her. “But we want you to rest easy when you think of your futures.”
“We do each have a bit of money that will come to us,” said Jane. “We would be happy to contribute to help with the expense of—”
“Don’t be silly,” said Mr. Gardiner. “You must not worry about anything at all. Now is not the time for it. We will be here to help you through all of this.”
Elizabeth was happy they had arrived. The sight of them always did make her feel as if sanity had returned to the world. But now, she was frightened, mostly that they were going to become ill. She currently watched absolutely everyone for a sniffle or a cough. She lived constantly on edge.
The world had shifted upside down and she was not the same as she used to be. All this loss had changed her, had hollowed her out in a way she could never have imagined. Inside her, there used to be a lively girl who joked and smiled. Elizabeth was not sure where that girl had gone.
Time passed slowly, each minute and hour grinding past.
And yet, it also went too quickly. She could not believe that it had been such a short time since she had been at Rosings. The world didn’t make sense anymore. It kept going, and Elizabeth wished that everything would simply stop.
* * *
When Darcy arrived at Netherfield, it was late afternoon, and no one answered the door when he knocked. He had returned most of the servants he had taken to Longbourn. There were only a few staying behind to help the remaining servant at Longbourn, and Darcy was paying them handsomely out of his own pocket, although he had not told the Bennets of this or Mr. Bingley. He didn’t want anyone to be offended, but he also knew that the work that the servants had been doing deserved compensation.
He knocked again after waiting for a long time.
This time, the door was opened by Caroline Bingley herself. She looked at him like a woman who had been shipwrecked, as if he were a floating piece of jetsam that would save her. Indeed, she flung herself at him and clung to him much the way a drowning woman might.
Darcy was stunned by this.
He had to admit there was a brief period of time in which he had considered an alliance with Miss Bingley. She was clearly amenable. Anyone with eyes could see how she doted on him. She was not without her assets. She was handsome enough—though not nearly as pretty as Elizabeth Bennet—and he was already associated with her family. She had her wit about her, too, although it was generally cutting.
The longer he associated with her, though, the more that he began to find the way that she looked down on others distasteful. She had a flawed idea of who she was in the world. She thought she commanded higher respect than she did. But her family had its money from the trades. She was no heiress with old blue blood in her veins. She could stand to cultivate some humility, he thought.
And then, the way she began to throw herself at him, it became unbearable. He remembered on one occasion she actually sat next to him admiring his handwriting, as if she could not find any other thing to compliment, and had decided that the one way to ensure they were wed was to adulate him constantly.
So, now, his arms full of Miss Bingley, he felt acutely uncomfortable.
He endeavored to disentangle himself at once.
But she was sobbing and holding onto him with all her might. “It’s Charles, it’s Charles,” she blubbered.
And the terror that Darcy was living with surged in his gut. He managed to get her by the shoulders and hold her out at arms’ length. “What’s happened?”
“He�
��s gone,” she said. “He’s gone.”
“No,” he said, pushing past her into the house.
She stood there, the door open, sobbing.
And he didn’t do anything but rush by her and start up the stairs, taking them two at a time until he got to Bingley’s bedroom.
When he saw him, he knew she was right. Bingley had succumbed to the sickness as well.
Darcy turned away, shutting his eyes.
* * *
Jane sat in the bed she and Elizabeth shared, shaking her head. “That is quite a lot to take in.”
It was night, and Mr. Darcy had left to visit Netherfield that afternoon and never come back. Elizabeth had been surprised at how concerned she was at his absence. Which had led Jane to ask more about why Mr. Darcy had come at all.
So, Elizabeth had told Jane the entire story, starting with the revelation from Colonel Fitzwilliam that Mr. Darcy had turned Mr. Bingley aside from Jane, and then the letter from Jane, followed by the proposal.
“Indeed, it is a lot,” said Elizabeth.
“Did you accept his proposal?”
“No, but I did not deny it either,” said Elizabeth. “A man like him, who is so arrogant, he was assured that I would accept him, I think. He assumes even now that we are engaged. It is the only thing that explains his behavior.”
“I suppose he couldn’t simply be doing it out of kindness?” asked Jane.
“I don’t know.” Elizabeth picked up a pillow and hugged it. “He has been quite good to us since he arrived.”
“We don’t even know where he is sleeping,” said Jane. “I certainly did not see to him. We do not have any servants to make up our lone guest room, and now the Gardiners are staying in it.”
“He must be staying at Netherfield,” said Elizabeth.
“Perhaps,” said Jane. “Or perhaps he has taken a room at the inn. He has gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to be here with you, Lizzy. Not to mention the fear of contracting this awful sickness. He has put himself in mortal danger. I think these feelings he has for you must be real.”
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