In honour of the visiting Bennets, the Millhouses arranged a ball at Pennyswope for them. At his wife’s encouragement, Lord Millhouse persuaded Elizabeth that it would just cause more talk if she and Darcy refused society. Thus, she tried to assuage her impending mortification by reminding herself that the mistress of Pennyswope bore eccentricity well and hoped her family’s bouts of unseemly behaviour might be considered such.
The favoured Millhouse nephew, Newton Hinchcliffe, was in residence, and with writing tablet in hand, mused in his room most days. Lady Millhouse thought a ball just the occasion to lure him to exercise, as fresh air was evidently an impossibility.
At the news that the eligible young Hinchcliffe was in Derbyshire and their archrival for his affections (unbeknownst to her), Georgiana, was in London, Maria and Kitty trilled in impenitent excitement.
As they dressed upon the appointed evening, the obviously pregnant Lydia tightened her corset recklessly, impending motherhood be damned. She refused to let so minor an issue as a coming baby infringe upon her participation in society.
For having bested her sisters by marrying first, that coup was negated by their much more advantageous matches. She was not about to relinquish her position of superiority with the impressionable Kitty and Maria. (The current arena of competition was the race to produce grandchildren. Although Lydia had given birth to the first son, and saw herself at match point, Jane was already enceinte. Hence, Lydia knew her position was in jeopardy. The importance of a child who had expectations far out-stripped that of a child of an army officer. All might not be lost, for Lydia knew well that if her sisters did not produce heirs for their rich husbands, their fortunes could fall to a cousin. Longbourn was entailed to Mr. Collins. It was conceivable.)
In Maria and Kitty’s eyes, Lydia’s infamy as a femme fatale was unparalleled. She went to Brighton, she wanted Wickham and she got Wickham. (More accurately, Wickham had her, but semantics are rarely questioned under some circumstances.) They, unfortunately, looked to her as an expert upon allurement and she counselled them both in their quest of Newton Hinchcliffe specifically and romance in general. When Elizabeth overheard Lydia whispering to Kitty that was she to have any success in attracting young men (“You do not have the face for it, Kitty, so you must use other wiles”) she must begin by dampening her chemise, thereby more advantageously exhibiting said “wiles” beneath her muslin, Elizabeth could be a silent observer no longer.
“Lydia, to advise your sister to do such as that just to reveal her figure to young men is beyond mere vulgarity. It will announce to them she is loose.”
“Of course, Lizzy,” Lydia was exasperated at Elizabeth’s denseness, “that is how one attracts lovers. One does not have actually to be loose. One must only appear to be.”
Elizabeth very nearly reminded Lydia that in her case, actually being loose did attract one rather unsavoury lover. However, since Wickham ultimately became Lydia’s husband, Elizabeth decided not to stir that particular kettle of fish. And knowing any reproof would be laughed at, Elizabeth offered a simple statement of fact.
“As it happens, if either of these girls attempts repair from this house with wetted slips, I shall feel myself falling ill and give our regrets to the Millhouses. Am I understood?”
Lydia pursed her lips and made a face, but did not argue.
The ball was barely tolerable. Only a few guests dared venture a comment about “recent events.”The one person Elizabeth might have thought to do just that, Lady Millhouse, had remained staunchly silent upon the matter and when others alluded to it at the ball, she pointedly altered the subject. Thus, she was spared all but the dereliction of decorum in play in her own family. By the time they took their leave, her cheeks were in quivering weariness from the smile that she had determinedly fastened upon her face all evening.
As gauged by the listless remarks of disappointed celebrants the next morning, the ball was not a resounding success to others either. But as it was not rendered an unmitigated disaster by a misdeed of a relative of hers, the morning saw Elizabeth looking upon it more favourably than most.
There was but little time for Elizabeth to breathe that sigh of relief before she was set upon once again by her mother’s carping. This time, however, the subject her mother chose to abuse delivered her daughter mute. This not was by reason of fancying heinous methods to disengage her mother’s tongue, but because she was absolutely speechless.
For Mrs. Bennet sat upon the side of the bed and took Elizabeth’s hand, patting it sympathetically, “Oh, Lizzy, Jane has been so fortunate to be with child of Mr. Bingley so soon after the wedding.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth cautiously agreed.
Shaking her head woefully, Mrs. Bennet looked at her quite pitiably, “But you, Lizzy!”
Elizabeth sat in wait.
Mrs. Bennet took her arm and, looking first to her right, then left, to be certain they were free of eavesdroppers, shared a conspiratorial whisper.
“Mr. Darcy’s fortune is far too vast for him to be in want of a son. You must lure him now, Lizzy. Now, whilst his interest is keen.”
“Lure him?” Elizabeth repeated.
“Yes. If you are to become with child as Jane, you must now. If not, he shall find other pursuits and your chances of giving him a son will diminish post-haste.”
With a look blank of any true emotion, Elizabeth stared at her mother. Not a single comment came into her mind in response to such a remark. Silence, however, was a commodity Mrs. Bennet refused to leave at peace.
“Yes, yes,” she consoled Elizabeth of the unspoken undeniability of Jane’s husband’s preferable temperament. “I know Mr. Darcy has not the happy disposition of Mr. Bingley, but he is a man. Certainly, you can interest him. You must deliver him a son, Lizzy. ’Tis imperative!”
“I do not think…” Elizabeth began.
“Pray, do not despair, Lizzy. Perhaps you can ask Jane’s advice upon these matters. She has been successful. She might offer you some suggestions.”
The eyebrow Mrs. Bennet raised intending to be provocative was, to Elizabeth, possibly the most lewd expression she had ever witnessed.
“Yes, Mama,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps.”
When Jane’s labour commenced, Bingley, a father-to-be of considerable means and no little anxiety, summoned not one, but two midwives and a physician to see to his wife’s laying-in. Perchance wanting to assure Mr. Bingley they were, indeed, all needed, they hovered busily about Jane’s bed, causing Elizabeth to fear for her feet.
However, Jane did not want two midwives and a physician, just Elizabeth. Jane’s ever-intimidating lady-maid, Mary (Jane had never been able to summon enough courage to dismiss her), stood before Jane’s door. With an officiousness peculiar to an unchallenged servant, she told Elizabeth that, howbeit married, a woman who had not borne children would not be allowed to witness a delivery.
Before Elizabeth could explain that what she would be allowed to do fell to her own will not Jane’s lady-maid, she was interrupted by Jane, already in hard labour.
It was the first time Elizabeth had ever heard Jane raise her voice.
“My sister will stay with me,” she said, as if daring anyone to keep Elizabeth from her side.
Was her adamancy initiated by the perturbation of childbirth, no one was willing to reckon and Elizabeth did, indeed, second the physician with the birth. And, howbeit hers was an easy labour and swift delivery, Elizabeth was quite surprised with the aplomb with which Jane dealt with it, for she did not call out (“Charles might hear me,” she worried), not wanting to be a bother.
Elizabeth told her, “Jane, if you are ever to be a bother, now is the time.”
At the onset of this event, Mrs. Bennet took to her bed in a dress rehearsal for the impending delivery of her favourite daughter, Lydia. Mr. Bennet hid in the Pemberley library, and Lydia waddled off to shop.
Bingley spent the hours of Jane’s labour in his own library, alternately pacing and sitting uneasily in
a wing chair in the company of Darcy and Mr. Hurst. Neither of those men having had acquaintance with impending fatherhood, they knew nothing but to keep the glass Bingley clenched tightly in his fist filled with brandy.
Bingley’s pointer, Hap, attempted to comfort him by resting his head upon his knee when he sat and following him upon his cursory trips the length of the room. Alternatively, Bingley lifted a hand to his ear listening for the initial wail of an infant.
By the time Elizabeth appeared to tell him he had a thoroughly undistressed (and therefore silent) daughter, Bingley was quite unable to stand unaided. Unwilling to wait for sobriety, he had two burly housemen carry him in an armchair up the stairs to have Elizabeth Jane Bingley introduced to her father.
It was the first time that Darcy and Elizabeth had been apart from each other since their ill-fated return from London the summer past. Hence, no one should have been surprised that he cut short his business trip to Exeter with Matlock rather abruptly.
So abruptly did he forsake Matlock’s coach for horseback (saving a half-day), he arrived in the early morning hours. Hence, his home-coming was with compleat absence of the fanfare upon which they had departed. Indeed, hardly was an eye awake to see him appear. However, for a house compleatly asleep, it came to life with considerable rapidity.
Fatigue notwithstanding, he quite uncharacteristically bounded up the stairway, scattering hastily assembled footmen and servants as he went. Hearing the commotion, the dogs began to yelp, thus awakening Elizabeth. She was to her feet and at their bedroom door before he made his way up half the staircase.
Their reunion was lengthy and undertaken with considerable vehemence, very nearly consummating there in the corridor. Instead of scandalising them both, he exuberantly picked her up and carried her into their bedchamber, kicking the door closed behind them with a thud.
However, by the time they reached the bed, exhaustion reclaimed him. He heaved her upon it and sank with a groan beside her.
Moving astride him, she began to undo his cravat, chastising him, “Your strength could better serve you than carrying me about.”
“I want nothing more than to lie here next to you.”
Both entered into, and perpetuated, the charade that the trip, return, and reunion were unextraordinary—a commonplace occurrence of no particular note. Nevertheless, it was not.
That he had even embarked upon a trip was a high-water mark in reclaiming a dauntless existence. Thus, that it was conceived and consummated without incident was of far greater relief than one unfamiliar with their history might have understood.
“At least pull off your boots,” she insisted.
He leaned back against the headboard allowing her to attempt what heretofore had been Goodwin’s chore. As she was unschooled in the particulars of the removal of a gentleman’s boots, it came as a surprise that he braced one boot-clad foot against her hinder-end for a support as she tugged off the other. The look she bestowed him over her shoulder at this affront set him to laughing and he would actually have guffawed had he not been so very weary. He quieted. And in that quiet, he realised that she did not wear a gown.
She wore his incongruously oversized night-shirt. The sleeves were turned back several revolutions just to clear her wrists.
“Pray, is your husband so ungenerous as not to buy you a night-gown?”
“As you see, he is a cruel and stingy man.”
His boots conquered, she ignored the abuse to her dignity (his stockinged foot not nearly the affront the booted one was), then turned and undid the buttons at the knees of his small clothes. With a bit of exaggerated coquetry, she began to massage his legs whilst issuing sympathies upon the excessive weariness he suffered.
“If your concern is for my weariness, you are not serving your purpose, Mrs. Darcy.”
In answer, she raised her eyes to him in a manner so provocative it gifted him a slight tingle in the area of his recently horse-wearied nether regions.
“Am I not?” she said in all innocence.
He might have conjectured that when she brought her hands from beneath his pants legs, but let them rest tantalisingly upon his knees that she truly did not know she had provoked considerable husbandly lust. Whatever the case may have been, any speculation upon his part was soon abandoned. When her hands undertook a tantalizing trip, sliding lazily up his legs toward his torso, he knew she felt the unmistakable evidence that he was not so very weary after all.
She felt it twice more (one must not leave some things to wonder) before she gripped the knees of his pants and drew them off. There, exposed, was an exceedingly generous example of masculine arousal.
Raising one eyebrow, she reminded him, “I believe you said, sir, that you just wanted to ‘lie next to me.’”
“A blatant prevarication.”
“Very blatant.”
Thereupon she shed his nightshift and bade him be still. Quite happily, she undertook the singular office of inflicting a rather pleasurable penance upon his body for perjuring his intent. He bore this chastening with the utmost of perseverance. And when his reparation was exacted with a shuddering moan, he turned her upon her back and repeated the process with the enthusiasm of a man who had not relished his wife in two fortnights.
Thus spent consecutively and unequivocally, he said, “Lizzy, at this moment I am grateful twice you are my wife. For I should have to steal you if you were not, and I do not know where I might find the strength just now.”
Sleep claimed him almost as he made that declaration and morning came and well-nigh fled before they finally awoke.
To her drowsy supine figure, he murmured, “Far, far too long, Lizzy.”
“Darcy,” she sighed, as if reassuring herself that he was, indeed, home.
He drew her closer, buried his face in her hair and let his hand gently search her curves, his body announcing there would be an imminent recapitulation of the previous night’s passion. This preparatory exploration led his hand over her breasts and down her abdomen. There, it came to an abrupt and baffled halt. He slid his hand back across her stomach and left it there, cupped.
She looked over to him as his hand rested thus. His eyes were still closed, yet a bit of puzzlement overspread his countenance. He flattened his hand and ran it first across, then thither, then yon.
Much like one who had lost his way, his hand re-inspected her, from the beginning.
This reiteration confirmed the tumescence of her breasts and a pronounced swell in her belly. As closely as he had investigated her the night before, he could not imagine how he had missed it. He let his hand tarry, lightly caressing it.
Obliquely, he looked at her.
“Pray, you feel it as well?” she asked.
“I believe I do. Yes.”
“Thus, it is not my imagination,” sounding relieved, she then confided, “I have told no one, not even Jane, for fear it just a wish.”
“If it is true,” he chose his words carefully, “when will your confinement end?”
“Before All Saints.”
Yes. That was little more than five months hence. It was certain. Overtaken by an unprecedented giddiness, he made a gesture as to ring a celebratory bell. Jubilation rerouted his ardour, thus, when he kissed her they rolled across the bed laughing. With that merriment yet tickling their innards, he became quite solemn, stroking her cheek with the back of his fingertips.
Then, in a voice husky with emotion he said simply, “Lizzy,” before he leaned down to kiss her belly and thereupon repaid the debt to her lips.
Gratitude and relief flooded his senses, as much for the timing as the event itself. The decision he dreaded would not have to be made at all. Elizabeth’s condition would be justification not to travel to London for the season. They would not have to take the road to town as an armed convoy, nor pass the place where the abduction occurred. He would have a year’s reprieve before he would have to take his family upon the road again. Elizabeth would remain within the sheltering walls of Pemberle
y.
Their breakfast had become a luncheon due to the hour. By the time he came downstairs to join her, Darcy found Elizabeth at her favourite window. He came to her there and surprised her by, in full view of Mrs. Reynolds, putting his arms about her and placing his hands upon her stomach, caressing the fullness there.
Elizabeth could but guess, but fancied he did that in lieu of initiating guessing-games amongst the staff. If he did, owing that his chief vice was that of abiding reticence, she was quite delighted to learn he thenceforward appeared to own no faults at all.
Elizabeth’s ever-growing belly had become cumbersome to her by autumn. As was expected of her, she kept herself cloaked in great folds of clothing and withdrew from society once her condition became obvious. Seldom did she venture beyond the immediate demesne. The single time she ventured to the stables to visit Boots, her husband scolded that the uneven ground was too treacherous for her. He even feared her negotiating the stairs and suggested they room downstairs until after her confinement.
Exasperated, she reminded him, “I am merely with child. I am not suffering from dropsy!”
In the presence of company (the very narrow circle that her confinement allowed), Mr. Darcy never spoke of Mrs. Darcy’s health or the impending accouchement. It might have been presumed that he chose to ignore it, as it was a woman’s province and not a subject on which gentlemen concerned themselves.
However, as Elizabeth had come to understand, the more detached from a topic Darcy appeared to others, the greater was his private emotion. For when they were alone he was immersed in pleasure and overwhelming pride. In the privacy of their bedroom, he uncovered her stomach, marvelled at its girth, and bedevilled her about her protruding navel.
“If you get much larger, I fear it will explode,” he said to her with such seriousness, it took her a minute to know it was a tease.
Weeks were spent summoning him to her side in anticipation of foetal activity. And for weeks, all went for naught. Their shy child became still as a mouse the moment its father laid his hand upon her stomach. (“Are you certain you are with child and it is not simply gas?”) However, after the initial kick, the baby gyrated relentlessly whenever Darcy was near. So rambunctious a bundle was it, Elizabeth complained she had been undoubtedly impregnated with a whirligig.
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