by Jessie Lewis
“You are bleeding!” he replied.
Mrs. Sinclair shook her head and muttered that he was an imbecile.
“Oh no,” Jane explained, “that is not mine. I helped Lizzy birth her baby…but you are hurt.” She knelt before her husband and peered at his rapidly closing black eye.
“I cannot believe you care.”
“I have never stopped caring.”
“I am a fool for never seeing it.”
“I am a fool for never showing it.”
“They are both fools. Hallelujah!” Mrs. Sinclair huffed impatiently. “We could have told them that a year ago and saved ourselves all this bother.”
“How better could you have shown it than by coming here?” Bingley said.
“I wished to stop you going away with…” Jane succumbed to a few sobs before choking out, “with Miss Greening.”
“Who the devil is Miss Greening?” Fitzwilliam hissed to his grandmother.
“The maid from Netherfield with a likeness to Lizzy. The dolt got a child on her.”
Fitzwilliam shook his head in disgust. There truly was no end to Bingley’s blundering.
“I never planned to go anywhere with her,” the idiot prattled on. “I meant to send her away to prevent her ever coming between us.”
“Ah, now I see!” Noticing his grandmother’s querying look, Fitzwilliam whispered, “Long story, but this means Darcy will no longer have to kill Ashby.”
“I am quite sure your brother did nothing to deserve such a reprieve,” she retorted and returned to watching the simpering ninnies beyond the door.
“I wrote to you in London to tell you I would be back this week,” Bingley informed his wife.
“I was not in London. I was at Netherfield.”
“Speaking of letters,” Mrs. Sinclair said quietly, “did you ever get mine? All Lizzy’s seemed to go astray.”
“I did,” Fitzwilliam answered. Then he grinned at a sudden thought. “Though not ’til after Darcy found a most enlightening one from Bingley.” Leaning close to his grandmother, he whispered the “Bennet Ballad” into her vastly appreciative ear.
“Why did you come back here?” Jane enquired.
Fitzwilliam reached the line about Mary Bennet’s chastity, and Mrs. Sinclair sniggered.
“For you. I heard you were coming here,” Bingley replied, drawing a sob from his wife.
Fitzwilliam reached the line about Jane’s vapidity, and Mrs. Sinclair snorted with mirth.
“Can you ever forgive me?” Bingley pleaded.
Fitzwilliam reached the line about Elizabeth’s virtues, and Mrs. Sinclair burst into gleeful laughter. “Oh, that is superb!”
Both Bingleys looked at her with mixed consternation and mortification.
“Can you ever love me?” Jane said more quietly to her husband.
“How could I not love somebody who still loves me after what I have done? I know not why I ever stopped loving you.”
“Because ennui struck and witless rent ye!” Mrs. Sinclair announced triumphantly.
Bingley instantly turned red. His wife looked confused to the point of wretchedness.
Shaking his head at his grandmother, Fitzwilliam put an end to the Bingleys’ lamentations by instructing them it was time to leave. Jane’s protests were unceremoniously deflected. If Elizabeth wished to see her, she would no doubt write. Until such time, her welcome was exhausted. Bingley had the sense not to object.
“I am truly sorry, Fitzwilliam,” he mumbled as Jane climbed into their carriage. “I never meant to use Darcy so ill.”
“You will be sorely disappointed if you hope for some great speech of exoneration from me, Bingley. This cannot be fixed with a trifling apology. Leave this place and my cousins be, or I shall finish the job for which Darcy had not the stomach.”
Bingley paled, nodded, and climbed up after his wife. Fitzwilliam instructed the driver to ensure they left the park, then went back inside. He found his grandmother in the Spanish saloon, sipping a glass of gin and chuckling intermittently, much to the bewilderment of Georgiana, who had joined her there.
“Is Elizabeth well?” he enquired of the latter.
“Perfectly so,” she replied.
“A toast then!” he declared. He poured two measures of sherry at the sideboard and handed one to Georgiana. “To Darcy!”
Mrs. Sinclair raised her glass. “Aye. Hail the man who wed the second!”
Georgiana frowned. Fitzwilliam began to regret arming his grandmother with the “Bennet Ballad.” “And Elizabeth!” he said, raising his glass a second time.
Mrs. Sinclair raised hers also. “Aye, for she is the jewel, alluring and—” He coughed loudly. She gave him a look of affected affront but capitulated nonetheless. “And their son,” she said instead.
Fitzwilliam smiled broadly as he earnestly echoed her toast. “And their son.”
***
Elizabeth lay at Darcy’s side, her head on his chest and his arm firmly about her as they both gazed upon their son, nestled in the crook of his father’s arm. Every feeling of joy and relief was hers to be united with the two people most precious to her in all the world. Darcy’s stillness was expressive of his prodigious emotion. She almost did not wish to obtrude upon it but felt too much to remain silent.
“He looks so much like you. See how he is almost smiling. ’Tis you to a T.” She felt Darcy’s lips curl into a mirroring expression against her temple.
“What do you think pleases him?” he said quietly.
“I daresay he is laughing at his papa for always imagining such theatrical misadventures for his mama.” Her head jumped slightly when Darcy gave a brusque little laugh.
“Tease if you will, woman. I am too happy to care.”
She looked up at his dear face, suffused with delight but also tired. “You are happy now, but I shall not tease, for you must have been very worried.”
He hushed her gently. “All that matters is that you are both well.”
There came a sweet little gurgle from the bundle in his arms, distracting them both from weightier matters for a while. Elizabeth’s heart felt fit to burst as she looked upon her darling child, blinking at the world as though surprised to see it there. Tiredness blurred her thoughts, and she drifted for a while in dreamless sleep, yet her head was too full of things she wished to say for it to last. “You know that I did write, though, do you not?” she whispered.
“I do. Now cease fretting.”
“But it troubles me, Fitzwilliam. It was such an awful time for you. I cannot bear to think of your waiting for words of comfort that never came.”
“I was more concerned for your safety than your condolences, but it is all explained in any case. Bingley stole your first letter, the second likely arrived at Rosings after I left Kent, and the third almost certainly arrived in London after I left there, for we departed at dawn on Sunday.”
“He stole my first letter?” She sighed angrily. “His duplicity knows no bounds!”
“Think on him no more today, love. I mentioned it only to ease your mind, not to make you angry.”
“Very well,” she agreed, too fatigued and too happy to speak long of aught unpleasant. She placed her palm on her son’s belly and spread her fingers, gently soothing him through the swaddling. He was so warm, so tiny, so perfect. “I promise to write more often next time, though.”
“That will not be necessary. I was in earnest when I said I would never leave you again.”
She smiled up at him, a tired but joyful smile.
He looked at her with the greatest tenderness and pulled her more tightly against him, rubbing his hand gently up and down her arm. “You are exhausted, love. What I endured is of no consequence in light of what you must have suffered.”
&nbs
p; “That matters not either, for look at my reward.” She stroked her beloved son’s tiny hand. He immediately clamped it around her finger, stirring a fierce swell of emotion that bade her exhale unevenly. “How I love you both!”
Darcy pressed a kiss to her temple and one to their child’s forehead. “Dearest Elizabeth, you have given me everything. You are everything to me. I am so in love with you.”
Satisfied that everything necessary had been said, Elizabeth surrendered to her fatigue and fell asleep to the blissful sounds of her son’s sweet snuffling breaths and her husband’s strong, steady heartbeat.
***
Darcy watched with heartfelt delight as his wife and son both drifted to sleep in his arms. Nothing he had endured—not his aunt’s passing or his fearful passage from London or Bingley’s treachery—could detract from his elation.
His son was miraculous—hale despite his early arrival, perfect in form and gratifyingly like him in appearance. His feelings towards him were unlike any he had known before. Towards Elizabeth, his feelings were unchanged—immutable, immeasurable, profound. He loved her more than life itself.
Let the rest of the world go on with its deceits and misfortunes. He cared not for any of them. He and Elizabeth had their own family now, and they would continue as sublimely content as they were this day for all their days to come—in no way mistaken as to their happiness.
Acknowledgements
Mistaken may never have made it out of my head and onto these pages without the help of some very special people. To everyone who helped me achieve it, I express my heartfelt thanks:
Richard—for putting up with my silliness, for the sacrifices you’ve made so that writing can be my day job, and for your unwavering belief in me
Kristi Rawley—for accompanying me steadfastly on this journey from inception to completion, for your capable and compassionate beta skills, and for loving Mistaken’s Darcy and Elizabeth as much as I do
Mum—for your honesty, for your constant and inexhaustible support, for the encouragement I needed to grow from the writer I thought I was into the author I am
All my friends—for championing my dreams
The members of A Happy Assembly—for your warm welcome, for the various contributions I received in the early stages of this journey, and for faithfully waiting for me to reach the end
Michele Reed at Meryton Press—for seeing the potential in Mistaken
My editor, Debbie Styne—for tolerating my obstinacy almost as well as Darcy tolerates Elizabeth’s, for coaxing me down wiser paths, and for helping me polish Mistaken into a treasure of which I will forever be proud
Ellen Pickels—for your eagle eyes and deft touch on the final edit
Zorylee Diaz-Lupitou—for dressing up my story so beautifully with its wonderful cover
Perhaps most importantly of all, I thank Jane Austen. For your razor wit, stunning turns of phrase, and captivating characters, for the privilege of spending more time with your Darcy and Elizabeth, for the honour of incorporating some of your inimitable writing into this alternative journey for them, and for inspiring me to write, I thank you.
