Felicity in Marriage

by Aria Benedict

  “Any other news from Hertfordshire?” Darcy asked when she paused.

  “No, but there is a letter from Kitty.” Just last year her second youngest sister had married a gentleman of reasonable wealth and sense from Kent. Lizzy and Jane had both made a special effort with Kitty, inviting her to their homes and taking her to London to enjoy the Season, so it was understandable they both felt not just pleasure at their sister’s happiness, but a sort of accomplishment at her advantageous marriage.

  Lizzy began summarizing Kitty’s letter as she had Mrs. Bennet’s, including more detail than she normally would have.

  When Darcy replied, “How nice,” to her announcement that Kitty’s neighbor had accidently shot his own spaniel while hunting, Lizzy suspected he might be nearly distracted enough. She went on for a minute or two more, just to be sure he had been lulled, then said, “Also I am with child.”

  Darcy made another low murmur then froze. His eyes, filled with joy, rose to meet hers.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Quite certain.”

  With a whooping bout of laughter reminiscent of his school-boy days, he pulled her from the arm of the chair to his lap and kissed her.

  Lizzy’s heart soared. They were nearly five years wed and had had but one previous pregnancy which, to their great sadness, had ended in miscarriage. She had begun to fear she was barren, until she had realized she was once again with child.

  “How long?” Darcy asked.

  “She will be born in the early spring, I think.”

  “So soon.”

  “Yes . . . I wanted to be sure—make certain it would not be like . . . like last time.”

  “So you’ve been holding in all your concern for the babe? Suffering on your own so I would not have to share in your disappointment if something happened?”

  “No, I’ve been keeping my joy all to myself.”

  Darcy was not fooled by her airy reply. “Never hide your fears for my sake.”

  “There is no need for fear, I have felt her quickening. I believe she will be quite strong.”

  “She? It will be a girl?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Though I have no preference either way, I must ask, how do you know?”

  “I suppose I do not know, but it occurs to me that a girl will have you in her power from the moment of her birth. It will amuse me to see you brought to your knees.”

  “Have you not already mastered me?”

  “Not thoroughly, no. A daughter will have you completely and utterly enslaved.”

  “And a son would not?”

  “I think not. Girls are far more cunning than boys, and fathers are particularly vulnerable to their manipulations.”

  “I see.”

  Lizzy watched the smile grow on his face and then, almost as quickly as it had appeared, fade into a look of consternation.

  “Oh no, there it is, the dreaded crease,” she said, running her fingertips across his brow as if to smooth away the lines that had formed there. “I knew it would be making an appearance. I am both terribly fond and horribly aversive of it.”

  “Don’t worry for me,” she added, knowing he must be concerned about the birthing and the danger it presented her.

  “How can I not be frightened for you?”

  “I will be fine. I am very hearty.”

  He nodded, but his visage remained anxious.

  “If you must make yourself unhappy, think only of how irritable and changing I will be for the next few months. I plan on making you miserable and you will have to be excessively solicitous to me all the while.”

  Soothed by her confidence, he returned to happier thoughts. “This is the best news you could have ever given me.”

  “How can you be sure? I have not even gotten to the end of Kitty’s letter and I still have other correspondence completely unread. Who knows what wonderful news they might contain?”

  “Go on as you wish, I have to be indulgent.”

  “Good. Once I have finished Kitty’s I shall read you all of Mr. Collin’s letter. Five pages.”

  He kissed her to punish her for her teasing and she kissed him to punish him for his distraction. Soon her letters lay scattered, quite forgotten, on the floor.

  The Missing Bonnet

  Lizzy woke vexed, a common occurrence these days. With much struggle she rolled out of bed, quite literally rolled. She felt like an overripe plum, any false movement might cause her to burst.

  She had been so pleased to find out she was with child again, happy for the chance to provide Fitzwilliam with a son even though he insisted he had no preference for the sex of the babe as long as mother and child came through the birthing hale and hearty.

  He always said exactly what he should; he was all too perfect sometimes. Which vexed her. She wanted to be upset with him. He had gotten her in this state after all . . . which she was ever so pleased about.

  Lizzy had been beginning to think she was too old to have another child. She had been beginning to be quite fine with it. Three children was enough. Three was a handful even when they were all girls which some people insisted were easier—utter madness. What would it be like with four children?

  Regardless of her fears, she should be pleased. And she was. Ever so. But she was also vexed, though she was not sure why.

  As she shuffled the short distance to her dressing table, her poor legs groaning under the extra weight, she remembered the cause of her vexation. Miss Tibbet, the girls’ governess, had asked for three days leave to visit her ailing sister—a most vexing development. Lizzy had intended to wake early, but she had slept in, and now the girls must be driving poor Mrs. Reynolds to distraction.

  The children should not yet be awake, but they undoubtedly were. People insisted children were supposed to sleep long hours. Hers did not. No, hers were puckish little beings with endless energy. She suspected they were changelings.

  Lizzy sighed, the day had not yet begun and she was already tired. No matter, she must get on with it. Just as she was about to ring for assistance Martha, her maid, entered the room. The industrious maid set to work right away, aiding with her toilette.

  “Do you know who is watching the girls?” Lizzy asked.

  “Mrs. Reynolds had Sally looking in on them last I checked, ma’am.”

  Not good, thought Lizzy. It was not that she did not trust Sally with the children—Sally was responsible—but the maid was far too lenient and the children would exploit her shamelessly.

  As she was getting ready Lizzy noticed her favorite bonnet, the one adorned with dark burgundy silk flowers, the one the girls were always begging to try on, was absent from its hook on the wall by her dressing table. She knew the servants too well to suspect them of thievery, and even if she had left it in the foyer or carelessly strewn in a chair, Martha would have returned it to its proper place. It would not be the first time Anne, Frances, and Ellie had borrowed her things for one of their games.

  She had no intention of wearing the bonnet at the moment of course, yet its disappearance, like everything else this day, vexed her. It was her greatest fear that the girls would grow up completely wild, and in her irritated state she saw this bit of minor thievery as a warning sign of far worse things. In a few years she was certain they would be holding up coaches.

  With Anne, the eldest, there was some hope of reform, for she had the disposition of her father. Yet within her there was also a little spark of rebellion that her younger sister Frances could coax into an inferno. Frances was something of a hoyden, but there was a bit of Jane-like sweetness to her that promised to hone her into a lady with time. The youngest, Elinor, seemed doomed to be the worst of all. She was all rebel with not a hint of sweetness.

  Together they made for a riotous bunch. They would look like little angels in their pinafores and bows and then suddenly, upon the slightest of provocations, would set to biting and scratching and one another. It was like living in a nest of weasels.

  Lizzy could
put on a stern face, which she could use to some effect. Fitzwilliam, whose severe expressions and generally intimidating demeanor she had banked her hope on, was no help at all. The girls owned him so completely they could probably have a brawl in front of the parson and Darcy would buy them sweets and kiss their bruises and not have a cross word for them.

  When her dressing ritual was complete Lizzy set out to rescue poor Sally. As she approached the nursery she heard shrieks of laughter and feared the worst.

  “Girls, how many times must I tell you not to take my th—” Lizzy began, but words failed her as she walked into the room. The girls were sitting on the floor having a very messy tea in their best dresses, this was not entirely unexpected. It was the fourth occupant of the room, who was decked out in her burgundy ribboned bonnet and her black shawl who momentarily left her speechless.

  “Goodness, what have you done to your papa?” she asked after she regained her composure.

  “It is not Papa, it is Mrs. Pennywether!” said Ellie.

  Turning to her husband, Lizzy said, “I fear we have not been introduced, ma’am.”

  Anne made the introduction most properly. She was getting a little old for such games, but she was still willing to humor her younger sisters. Lizzy was certain she had been right in her earlier thinking. Even if Anne had gotten marmalade on her church dress, she was maturing. There was really no need to worry about her turning highwayman. Perhaps even Ellie’s wildness would be tamed in the coming years.

  The hostesses bade Lizzy to take a seat on the floor which she had to regretfully decline.

  “If I sit on the floor I will not be able to get up,” she said.

  Mrs. Pennnywether gallantly helped her lower herself into the rocking chair usually occupied by Miss Tibbet and the gathering proceeded from there.

  The girls really could play together so nicely, Lizzy thought as she watched them. There was not a weasel in sight. She did not know what she had been so very vexed about. She was terribly fortunate. She had a considerate husband and three lovely children. Even though another child promised to bring more chaos, she was reminded in that moment that it would also bring more joy.

  A Letter to Mother

  Lizzy raced across the room the moment the footman entered the library carrying a silver salver filled with correspondence, all dignity forgotten. The servant was not startled by his mistress’s display. All the household servants were now quite used to Mrs. Darcy’s newfound obsession with the post. It had been a full month since Edward Darcy had gone away to school and he had yet to write a single letter to his dear mama.

  Every day Lizzy went through the post with great eagerness, and every day she was disappointed. Today, however, she would find her joy.

  “Finally! Two letters from Edward. Perhaps one was waylaid—no, one is for you and the other is for me, how odd,” Lizzy said, offering her husband the letter addressed to him.

  Darcy crossed the room, though equally excited to finally have news of his son, he managed to keep at least the pretense of decorum—he even took a moment to put right the chair his wife had knocked over in her haste.

  Lizzy was already perusing her letter. “‘Dear Mother’, he writes. Dear Mother! Who is this ‘Mother’ he is speaking of, last month I was his mama!”

  “Edward is not a little boy anymore, Elizabeth,” Darcy replied.

  “I realize that, but it is no reason for me to suddenly become Mother. It sounds so cold. And this letter is so short! One . . . two . . .eight. Eight lines!”

  Darcy tried to shift away from her so that she might not see his letter; his movement only resulted in catching her attention

  “What is in your letter? Yours looks longer than mine.”

  “All the same things I’m sure.”

  “He would have written a letter to both of us if he was merely going to repeat himself.”

  Darcy shrugged carelessly as if to say, ‘Children—who knows?’ but his insouciance could not fool Elizabeth.

  “It’s about me, isn’t it? Not only am I Mother now, he is writing unflattering things about me.”

  Desperately she tried to read over his shoulder. He turned away to prevent her.

  “Give it to me.”

  “It will only upset you.”

  “Nothing he says could possibly shred my heart any more than it already has been.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?”

  “No. Give it to me,” Lizzy said, racing around the other side to try to sneak a peek.

  Again he dodged her.

  “Fitzwilliam Darcy give it to me right now.”

  He sighed. Knowing she would not be dissuaded, he handed the epistle over.

  Lizzy’s eyes found the offensive words almost immediately. “‘Keep Mama from writing so often’.”

  “He called you ‘Mama’, that is something at least.”

  “I write too often?”

  “You have sent six letters to his one.”

  “That is because it took him a month to write to me. Eight whole lines.”

  “He thinks other boys will tease him if he is forever getting letters from his mother.”

  “Do you think the other boys will tease him?”

  “Yes, though not necessarily because of how often you write.”

  “That is hardly reassuring.”

  “It is the nature of children, they are awful. We have four of them, haven’t you noticed how vicious they are? We’ve only just now gotten the girls to stop biting each other.”

  Lizzy gave her husband a quelling glare. The girls were quite grown: the eldest married, the second soon to follow, and the youngest would make her come out in the spring. It had been a long while since they had bitten each other.

  “How can you jest about this?”

  “Because I know he will be fine, Elizabeth. He is as independent as his mother—forgive me, his mama—he can look after himself.”

  ****

  “Fourteen lines—all he has to spare for me! A waste of paper and postal tax. Are they not teaching him to write a proper letter at his school?” Elizabeth Darcy was occasioned to ask upon receiving her son’s second letter from school after yet another month.

  Darcy had thought Lizzy might be pleased the letter was longer than her last and addressed to both of them. He had been mistaken.

  “He has never been a particularly verbose child,” he said, though he knew it would do no good.

  “How am I to know what is going on in his life with so little to go on as fourteen lines? He barely even mentions his school work, his friends. It might as well be a courtesy letter to a distant relative.”

  Darcy thought it likely Edward believed the less he wrote the less fodder he would give his mother to worry about and therefore write him about. She had limited herself to four letters this last month, but he suspected Edward still thought her correspondence too frequent.

  “Anne is a married woman now and she still finds time to write me nearly every other day. He should know what this must be doing to me, how I am fretting about him. Anything might be happening!”

  “It is not in the nature of a man to be effusive. Do not worry so.” Darcy said knowing his words to be complete twaddle. However to sooth his wife he would resort to whatever means necessary, and if that mean spouting erroneous claptrap he would do so.

  “He isn’t a man. He is twelve. And you cannot tell a mother not to worry.” Lizzy realized how much she sounded like her own mother.

  Before she had had children she had been blithe and unworried, a different person than she was now. It occurred to her perhaps Mrs. Bennet had been a different person as well. Perhaps she and her sisters had driven her mother to her near-constant state of anxiety and silliness. Well, perhaps not silliness. Lizzy was certain her mother had always been silly. And if Mrs. Bennet’s daughters had not always given her the attentiveness and respect she was due as their mother, it was because of her talent for embarrassing speeches and hysterical behavio
r.

  I am not so embarrassing as to deserve this treatment, am I? Lizzy wondered. She did not think she was, but then, she had no idea how to be a boy. Perhaps it was considered embarrassing to have one’s mother write so often. She could restrain herself, if only to save Edward from the perceived humiliation of having a coddling mother.

  Darcy meanwhile was wondering what had caused Edward, who was usually such a thoughtful boy, to be so insensitive to his mother’s feelings. At Edward’s age he had written home much more regularly and with greater detail, though he had known his mother was dying and therefore was less apt to take her for granted. Yet he had begun to distance himself from both parents at that age, which he thought must be the natural way of things. Asserting his independence did not require Edward to injure his mother, however. Darcy decided while he would not scold his son, he would perhaps remind him how fortunate he was to have a mother if his letter writing did not improve.

  The letter that arrived a fortnight later, however, proved no reminder would be necessary.

  “Now this is a proper letter,” Lizzy exclaimed, her eyes scanning the page hungrily, “And there is some writing on the other side!”

  Edward’s letters became not only longer but also more frequent as the term went on. His mother was ecstatic. His father thought they ought to be alarmed by this sudden change; He was certain it signified their son was terribly homesick, but he was not about to say this for fear of ruining Elizabeth’s pleasure in the letters.

  ****

  The day finally arrived that Edward could come home for holiday. Though most parents would merely send a carriage to collect their sons, Lizzy was determined to see Edward at the first possible moment, the discomfort of travel held no meaning for her.

  The Darcys had been greeted by the headmaster when they arrived then ushered into a comfortable little sitting room while Edward was called.

  “I’m going to embarrass him, don’t let me embarrass him,” Lizzy said, wringing her hands.