The Dread Mr. Darcy

by Valerie Lennox

She was with child.

  She did not reveal this to the doctor, but she asked if they might not reveal to Darcy that they had been stepping down his intake of the opium. The doctor said that it was too soon, that Darcy was still too dependent. They must wait to tell him, the doctor said. He would tell her when it was a good time to apprise Darcy of the situation.

  One afternoon, Colonel Fitzwilliam appeared at Pemberley without warning.

  Darcy was sleeping off whatever laudanum he had ingested after luncheon, and so Elizabeth had to greet the colonel alone.

  She had one of the servants bring him down some bread and butter and tea. She tried to think of how she should speak to him. She didn’t know much about him, but she knew that he and Darcy were cousins, so she knew that she must be polite and welcome him. But it was a sorry household they kept here. Darcy was not in any shape to entertain.

  “Colonel Fitzwilliam,” she said. “What a surprise to see you here.”

  “A surprise? But I wrote to Darcy and told him I would be coming,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Didn’t he tell you?”

  She shook her head, smiling. “It must have slipped his mind.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam ate some bread and butter. “Where is Darcy?”

  “Asleep, as he usually is at this hour, unfortunately,” she said, deciding the truth was the best policy in this situation. Colonel Fitzwilliam was family, after all.

  “At this hour?” Colonel Fitzwilliam raised his eyebrows. “It is not yet three o’clock.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well, have someone wake him up. I’m sure he’d like to see me.”

  She spread her hands helplessly. “Even if I wanted to, I doubt that I could. He sleeps very soundly after his lunchtime laudanum.”

  “He sleeps every afternoon?”

  “He sleeps most of the time. When he is awake, he is not quite himself. Very much in a daze.”

  “Dash it all,” muttered Colonel Fitzwilliam.

  “He will probably be up in time for dinner. You must stay, of course.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam’s nostrils flared. “He has gotten very bad, has he?”

  Elizabeth studied her fingernails. “He is actually a bit better than he was.” But maybe she was lying to herself about that. Maybe he wasn’t better at all. Maybe she only wanted him to be better so that he could be a proper father to their child. But maybe Darcy wasn’t capable of such things. Maybe the opium had swallowed him whole.

  Colonel Fitzwilliam regarded her with a concerned expression. “Oh, dash it all,” he said again. “I had hoped that marrying you might help him turn things around.” He drew in a long breath. “I will stay. Perhaps I can do something about this mess.”

  “Oh, I do hope so,” said Elizabeth. But she wasn’t sure that her hope wasn’t simply a liability these days.

  * * *

  Darcy blinked hard. “Richard?”

  “Ah, good, you’re awake,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was standing over Darcy’s bed. “If I’d had to shake you any longer, I was going to call for a bucket of icy water to dump over your head.”

  Darcy struggled to sit up. “Honestly, Richard, you might have waited for me in the drawing room.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you for hours now. I finally got your wife to consent to have a servant rouse you. When he wasn’t successful, I said that I’d do it myself.”

  “Oh,” said Darcy dully. He looked out the window. What time was it?

  Well, he’d eaten luncheon already. It must be late afternoon then, nearly evening. Yes, now that he looked again, he realized that the light was fading.

  He got confused sometimes. The days bled into each other. He was on edge all the time. He longed for opium, but whenever he took some, it was only enough to barely blunt his desire for it. He was in agony most of the time. He didn’t dare up his dosage, because at the rate he was going, he would be taking a ridiculous amount of the stuff if he did. But there was nothing pleasurable about his life now. It was only need and hunger and pain.

  Colonel Fitzwilliam wandered over to Darcy’s bedside table, where several laudanum bottles were sitting out. Colonel Fitzwilliam picked them up, walked over to the window, undid the catch and dropped them out of sight.

  Darcy made a noise in the back of his throat. “What have you done?”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam gave him a lopsided smile. “I don’t suppose you’ll be helpful enough to tell me where the rest of them are.”

  Darcy lunged out of the bed, suddenly surging with energy. He tackled Colonel Fitzwilliam and knocked him to the ground. “You don’t understand. I need it.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam seized his wrists and held them at bay. He chuckled. “It’s going to be a long couple of days, Darcy. Saddle up.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Elizabeth paced. “The doctor said it could kill him. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  In the next room, Darcy was pounding on the door, screaming at the two of them. It had been ten hours since his last dose of laudanum. The first few hours had been bearable. Darcy had merely sulked in his room, and Colonel Fitzwilliam had assured her that there was no danger.

  The next few hours had been a bit worse but still hadn’t overly worried Elizabeth. She had even begun to think that perhaps she should have done this ages ago, that it was not so bad after all, and that Darcy would be feeling better soon.

  But now, things had started to get much worse. Darcy had stopped sounding sulkish and started sounding desperate. After the screaming started, Elizabeth started to think they should stop the whole thing.

  “Oh, nonsense,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “I’ve seen it before, at least two or three times. It’s hellish, but they get through it. No one dies. Your body doesn’t need opium to live, it only tricks your mind into thinking it does. Everyone knows that you’re better off without it in your system.”

  “Still, the doctor said—”

  “And that was before you had been slowly stepping him down for months,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. She had told the colonel of what she had been doing thus far. “It’ll be easier for him now. Safer. He’s already started beating it, he just doesn’t know it.”

  “I really don’t think we should be doing this.”

  “Oh, come now. We can’t stop now that we’ve begun. We must get him shut of the evil stuff.”

  Darcy banged on the door. “Let me out, Richard. I am going to be sick.”

  “Be sick in the myriad chamberpots I left in there for that precise purpose,” Colonel Fitzwilliam called back.

  “You bastard. I’ll kill you as soon as I get my hands on you!” Darcy’s voice was a thin shriek.

  Elizabeth stopped pacing. “We can’t do this to him. He’s in agony.”

  “Elizabeth?” said Darcy. “Is that you? Are you letting him do this to me?”

  She put her hands to her mouth.

  “Help me,” said Darcy. “I think I hid a bottle in the study somewhere. You can find it for me, sneak it to me past Richard.”

  “Shut up!” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, banging two hard knocks on the door.

  “Please, Elizabeth.” Darcy was whining. He was pitiful. “If you’ve ever loved me, please. Failing that, you could go to the doctor and get me some more. I’m dying here.”

  “You’re not dying,” the colonel snapped. He turned to Elizabeth. “He’s not dying. If he was dying, he wouldn’t be telling us that he was dying. He’d be silent.”

  Elizabeth wrung her hands. “We have to let him out. He can’t take it.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam took her by the shoulders and walked her down the hallway. “If you can’t stand listening to him, then go somewhere else.”

  She almost protested, but then she had another idea. She hurried to the stables. It was dark, after midnight, but she knew that doctors were used to being disturbed at all hours. She would ride to the doctor and tell him what Colonel Fitzwilliam was up to. If there was danger, he would help her stop the colonel from
killing her husband.

  She simply had to get there in time.

  She rode as fast as she could. Arriving at the doctor’s home, she didn’t even bother to tie up her horse. Instead, she ran for the door and began banging on the knocker with all her might.

  The door opened and a maid glared at her. “You are in need of the doctor?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Yes, please.”

  “Well, tell me where he needs to be, and I’ll fetch him. You can run on back home.”

  “I need to speak to him. I must ask him—”

  “Mrs. Darcy?” The doctor’s voice filtered out from behind the maid.

  The woman turned.

  “It’s all right,” said the doctor, pushing past the maid. “What is it, Mrs. Darcy?”

  She spilled out the story as best she could, explaining everything from Colonel Fitzwilliam’s arrival to the fact that Darcy had been without any opium for over ten hours. “Is it going to kill him? Should we stop?”

  The doctor rubbed his chin. “Listen, when I said that there was a chance that going off it was fatal, I only meant it was possible, not that it was likely. The future is difficult to predict, and I can’t say for sure what might happen. But I don’t think his death is imminent. However, I would say your larger problem is simply that this is probably a lot of effort for nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I’ve watched family members do this to those who are habitual opium eaters, and it’s very rarely successful at curing the eater of his problem. He will most likely go back to the bottle not long after he gets clean. This is being forced upon him, you see. No, I think that the best thing you could do would be to go to him now and tell him of what you and I have done. See if he can be convinced to try this for himself. If he wants it as much as you do, if he believes it is possible, then you’ll be much more likely to succeed.”

  * * *

  “You did what?” Darcy flung himself out of his chair.

  Elizabeth flinched. He wasn’t taking this very well. And he didn’t look good. She supposed she hadn’t really noticed, since she saw him all the time, and the incremental changes were so minuscule so as not to be noticeable. But Darcy was skeletal. His shirt hung open, baring his chest, which was pale and had a slightly yellowish hue. She could see the outline of his ribs below his collarbone. His face was gaunt too.

  “You and that doctor made me think I was going to the devil. The misery you’ve caused me.” Darcy clenched his hands into fists. “And all for no reason at all.”

  “Not for no reason. For your own good. Darcy, you’ve already come down in what you were taking a day. You’ve managed it. Don’t you see what an accomplishment that is?”

  “It’s no accomplishment. It’s been torture. And now this torture. The worst torture. You have no idea what this is doing to me. I feel as if my skin is flaking off. I feel as if I’m being stabbed with a thousand knives—”

  “Stop being melodramatic,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was standing behind them, observing everything to make sure that Elizabeth didn’t try to slip Darcy any opium.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Darcy said to Colonel Fitzwilliam, lip curling. “Why, I might kill you yet.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes. You’re going to murder me. I’ve heard it all before.”

  Elizabeth reached for her husband. “I know you don’t want to be this way. You don’t want to be dependent on this awful thing. And you’re on your way now. If you just choose to try, to fight, you can have everything that you never thought you could. We can be truly together. We can be…” She bit down on her lip. Until she gave words to this, she hadn’t realized just how desperately she wanted him to come out of this, to be the Darcy she had first met.

  Darcy sneered at her. “What happened to saying you’d take nothing more from me than I could give, hmm?”

  Elizabeth pressed her lips together.

  “Maybe you are just a whore,” he said. “Maybe you’re so desperate to be fucked that you’ll do anything to me.”

  Elizabeth drew back, sucking in breath.

  “Don’t,” Elizabeth said to him, her voice quiet. Darcy’s sharp, vulgar words had wounded her far more than she had known possible.

  Colonel Fitzwilliam placed a hand on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t pay any mind to what he’s saying now. It would probably be best if you stayed away for the next few days. I don’t mind his abuse, but the things he might say to you may be worse yet than that.”

  Elizabeth shook him off. She went closer to Darcy again, kneeling next to him. “I know it hurts.” She reached up and rested her hands on his knees. “I know you think you are dying. But if you fight for this, you can get through it.”

  “Give me some laudanum,” said Darcy. “Please.”

  She shook her head. “Choose me, Darcy. Fight the habit and choose me and the life we could have together.”

  Darcy pushed her hands away. “I choose my blasted laudanum. I’m dying without it, do you hear me?”

  * * *

  Colonel Fitzwilliam found Elizabeth in the drawing room. She was drinking some mulled wine to try to calm her nerves, but it wasn’t working. She stood in front of the fire, and she was still trembling from the thought of the awful things he’d said to her.

  “Mrs. Darcy?”

  She whirled. “The doctor says it’s all for naught. He says he’ll go back to it.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam sighed. “I suppose it could happen. I have seen that before as well. But I think he will fight for you.”

  She laughed bitterly. “You heard him, didn’t you? He said he chose laudanum.”

  The colonel nodded. He came over to the mantle and stared into the fire.

  They stood in a heavy silence for some time.

  “If he does not recover, if he does choose this, then perhaps…” He licked his lips. “I could not help but overhearing what he was saying to you. I do not mean to speak about indelicate matters, but I understand the marriage is not, er, consummated.”

  “No,” she said, lifting her face at once. “It is. In fact…” She swallowed. “I am three months gone with child.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam’s eyes widened. “Truly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there is no possibility of an annulment then.”

  “I don’t want an annulment,” said Elizabeth. “Why does everyone think I want an annulment?”

  “We must tell him of the child,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “If anything would lead him to want to pull himself out of this, the knowledge that he is to be a father would. Why have you not told him already?”

  “I…” She took a gulp of her wine. Her hands were still shaking. “Oh, he was so drunk that he does not even remember…” She put a hand to her mouth. “My apologies. I should not speak of such things to you. It is only that I have been telling myself for so long that perhaps if I waited just a little longer, he would recover. And then I could tell him then. But he never recovers, and I am beginning to think myself a fool.”

  “I am sorry, Mrs. Darcy.”

  She clutched her glass. “It was quite one thing when it was only me. But things are different now. I have loved him to distraction. I have thrown all caution to the wind for this man, but if there is to be a child…”

  “You must tell him,” said the colonel. “Tell him, and perhaps it will change everything.”

  Elizabeth sniffed hard. And then she nodded.

  * * *

  The doctor came the next morning. He checked Darcy’s vitals and declared that he was in no danger of dying. The withdrawal would continue on, he said. It would peak the next day and then slowly fade away. The entire process would take a week.

  The doctor told Colonel Fitzwilliam that he was likely wasting his time, that he would have to watch Darcy every moment. “He’ll go back to it first chance he gets.”

  By this time, Darcy’s screams had subsided. He was no longer
vomiting or passing thin stool or unable to sleep. But he still looked horrible. He was thin and raving, barely dressed and nearly mad.

  It was starting to snow.

  Darcy yelled from the room, “The doctor won’t be able to come back with the snow. Tell him to leave some laudanum if you have a heart.”

  “Now,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Go to him. Tell him about the child. I will be outside the door.”

  Elizabeth squared her shoulders. “All right,” she said. Together, she and the colonel unlatched the door and Elizabeth entered the room where Darcy was being kept.

  It was cold in the room. Darcy had claimed he was too hot and doused the fire with one of his chamberpots. Now the room smelled of smoke and urine. She could smell it all the more strongly with her heightened senses now that she was carrying their babe.

  “Did you bring me laudanum?” said Darcy. He was sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed. He was clad only in a pair of drawers. His gaunt chest heaved. He was sweating.

  “I came to talk to you,” she said, smoothing out her skirt. “I was waiting to tell you my news until I thought you were doing better. But Colonel Fitzwilliam thinks you should know now. He thinks that if you do know, it may give you a reason to try to fight off your dependency.”

  “I don’t care about any news, Elizabeth,” said Darcy darkly. “I only care about my laudanum. I am dying, and you do not even care.”

  “I am with child,” she said.

  He turned to her sharply. “What?”

  “Yes. I am not very far along. It will be some months before I am even showing signs, but I thought that—”

  “You can’t be with child.” He was on his feet now, coming for her. “I have not touched you.”

  “No, that is the thing. You have. You do not remember. You were drunk and you blocked it all out, but I swear to you—”

  “I am dependent on laudanum, woman, not a simpleton,” he snapped. “You think I would fall for such a ridiculous story?”

  “Do you remember waking up and asking why you were in my bedchamber?” Her voice was shaking.

  “If you are with child, it is not mine,” said Darcy.

  “Please, don’t be ridiculous.”