“But I didn’t matter to myself,” said Elizabeth. “Why did you hide the letter from me?”
“He has been coming by daily,” said Jane. “Calling on you. Bringing letters. Every day I tear them up. In fact, I just dismissed him, not a half an hour ago. He is persistent, though, I will give him that.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “He was here? In this very room? He came to see me?”
Jane sighed.
Elizabeth clenched her hands into fists. “Oh, I shall never forgive you for this! How dare you send him away and never tell me he came? How dare you burn his letters?”
“Lizzy—”
“No!” Elizabeth stalked out of the room, and then she was so angry, that she just kept walking. Out of the house onto the grounds. She walked as quickly as she could off into the fields. She wanted to walk until she couldn’t even see Netherfield anymore.
And so she did.
At which point she realized that she should not exert herself so when she was this far gone with child. She was quite tired, and now she only wanted to sit down and rest, but there was nowhere to do so. She clutched her rounded stomach and looked around at the grass and trees and wondered what she was going to do.
She did not think she had it in her to walk all the way back to Netherfield.
But she had walked in the direction of Longbourn. Was it closer to just keep going?
And that was when she noticed that those odd twinges she was feeling were coming at regular intervals.
Oh, dear Lord. She was going into labor. Out here in the middle of nowhere.
Panic seized her. She knew that with her first babe, it might be a day or two from the beginning of her labor until delivery, so she was probably in no danger of delivering the babe in the wilderness here. But it might not be so. Some women did go quickly.
Lord.
She knew that she needed to get back to Netherfield. That was where the chamber had been prepared for her lying in, and that was where she had planned to have the baby. She needed to walk.
But she was exhausted from walking already. She wanted to curl up on the ground and take a nap.
Instead, she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other. She decided, however, that she would be better off walking on the road, and she set herself in that direction.
After some time, she had to stop to rest.
The twinges she was feeling seemed to be growing stronger and more regular, but they were not yet painful. Still, they were growing a bit uncomfortable. She found that all she wanted to do was to walk after all.
She set back off.
After some time, she emerged on the road. And she was startled to find someone there. A man was waving his arms and yelling something ridiculous like, “Buttercup! Buttercup, you get back here!”
And then she recognized him. He was not gaunt and thin anymore, but he was not yet as robust as he had been when she first met him. “Mr. Darcy?”
He turned around. “Elizabeth!” He looked her over and then hurried across the road to her. “What are you doing? You are walking around this far from Netherfield in your condition? You must try to take care. You should sit down.” He looked around for somewhere for her to sit, and there was nowhere.
“Why are you screaming Buttercup? Is it one of your opium dreams?”
“What? No. I have written you that I have gotten free of the laudanum. Buttercup is my horse. She has bucked me out on the ground and run off and I can’t find the blasted creature.”
“Free of the laudanum?”
“These six months now,” he said.
“Truly?” She did not dare hope it was true. But he looked so strong.
“Truly.” He raised his voice. “Buttercup? Return at once, you dratted beast!” He turned back to Elizabeth. “You have not been reading my letters.” His face fell. “I suppose I understand that. I suppose you don’t want to see me now, either.”
“I—” She winced as a particularly uncomfortable twinge overtook her.
“What?” he said. “What is it? Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she said.
He looked her over. “You know, I must say, Elizabeth, you have never been more beautiful. I imagine you don’t want to hear any such thing from me right now, as you probably wish I would go away. But, you see, I have no horse, and so I cannot go anywhere, and I cannot help it. You are quite lovely. You are so bright and full of life and… and…” His gaze strayed to her belly, and his eyes shone, as if they were filling with tears.
“And huge?” she said. “That’s what I am, after all, enormous. I’m not at all beautiful.”
“Listen, you must let me apologize to you. I know that you want nothing to do with me, and I will respect that. I will leave you alone. I will never see you again if that is what you want. But you must let me tell you how dreadfully sorry I am for everything awful I have ever done to you. From bringing you onto a pirate ship, to nearly allowing you to be ravaged by those men, to not protecting you from myself, to abandoning you and sending you back to England when I only wanted you near me, to not seeking you out the moment I arrived and marrying you at once. And for everything that I have done after our marriage. Ignoring you and neglecting you. And forgetting that we made love, and accusing you of being unfaithful to me, and telling you to leave. And the opium. My God, for every blasted awful thing I did when I was under the influence of the opium. For not being a man, but a wretched creature. I am so frightfully sorry for it all. I know it doesn’t make up for anything. I don’t expect things to be mended between us. I know you are angry, and I understand that.”
She felt the need to move back and forth a bit, pacing as he talked. It made the twinges easier to deal with.
“You must let me provide for you and for our child, though. Even if you will not let me near the child. That is understandable. I see why you would do it. I would wish to see him, of course, but if you will not allow it, I will accept it. But let me find you a house to live in and let me buy you both clothes and toys for the baby and everything either of you need. Just let me do something, anything, please, to make some sort of amends for all the pain I’ve caused and—” He cocked his head. “Why do you keep making those faces? And why do you say nothing?”
“I…” She continued to pace. “Listen, I don’t think I should forgive you. That is, I think you should grovel, get down in the mud and put your face in it, prostrate yourself, and beg me for forgiveness and then I should still not forgive you, because you don’t deserve it.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” He started to get down on his knees.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting prostrate on the ground, of course.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”
“Well, you said—”
“I know what I said. Don’t tell me what I said.” She cringed. “Ah, dear Lord.”
“What is it? Are you in pain?”
“It is normal,” said Elizabeth. “It is only the beginning stages, and I have been present at my sisters’ births, and it may take quite a long time before—”
“What are you saying?” His face had gone white. “You are…? The babe is coming?”
“Well, not right at this moment, but yes. Sometime soon.”
Darcy sank his hands into his hair and turned in a circle. “Buttercup!” he screeched at the top of his lungs.
“Listen, I was not finished,” said Elizabeth. “I shouldn’t forgive you. You don’t deserve to be forgiven. And if you should spend years trying to make amends, it would never be enough, because you don’t know how it broke me when you accused me of trying to pass off another man’s child as your own.”
“Well, I was stupid,” said Darcy. “I was an utter idiot. And I am sorry. I am so sorry. You would have been well within your rights to have done it anyway. I was no kind of husband to you.”
“You were stupid,” said Elizabeth. “You were quite, quite stupid, and I hated you in that moment. I despaired. Do you
realize that I once wanted you more than anything on earth? Do you realize that I was once so desperate to be near you that I would have done anything at all? And then you, sneering in my face like that?” She clenched her hands into fists.
His face fell. “I am so sorry,” he whispered.
She was quiet.
He was also quiet, but only for a few moments. “Listen, perhaps we should continue this at another time,” said Darcy. “Because you are… well, you can’t be out here. We have to get you home. You cannot have our baby on the road.”
“There is no danger of—” She moaned. “Oh, God, that hurts.” The truth was, the pain was getting worse at an alarming rate, and the twinges—which were more than twinges now—seemed to be coming closer and closer together. She gritted her teeth and then the pain passed. She sighed and then she began to pace again. “You don’t deserve to be forgiven.”
“No, I don’t. And you don’t have to forgive me,” he said. “But what should I do? Should we walk together, back to Netherfield, or should I go ahead and get a coach and bring it back for you as quickly as I can? I can run there, Elizabeth. You wait, and I will—”
“No,” she said, feeling panicked. “Don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone on the road, laboring to bring a babe into the world.”
“All right,” he said, swallowing. “All right, then, we shall go together.” He held out his hand. “Come.”
She reached out and grasped his hand. “All right.”
They walked.
But now the pain was getting harder to walk through. She paused, crying out.
Darcy was alarmed. “Elizabeth, should you be on your feet? Perhaps you must let me go run ahead for help.”
“No, no, no,” she moaned. “No, you have abandoned me far too many times. You will stay with me, Fitzwilliam Darcy. You will stay with me now, and I will not let you go.”
“All right,” he said, looking at her and nodding. There was panic all over his countenance. “I swear it, then, I will not leave you.” His grip on her hand tightened.
And then, in the distance, Elizabeth heard the rumble of thunder.
She groaned. “This can’t get any worse, can it?”
“We need to walk,” said Darcy in a low and urgent voice. “Come now, Elizabeth, we must go.”
She forced herself to move with him, but she was beginning to feel blindly terrified, because there was very intense pain now every time that she had a—she couldn’t even call it a twinge anymore, it was far worse. The pains were coming more quickly now, and they were quite bad. She was capable of walking through it. The walking even seemed to help ease the pain, but she was gasping and crying out each time one of the pains hit her.
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.”
The Dread Mr. Darcy Page 21
