CHAPTER 65
Before Papers
Mrs. Doddridge did not congratulate her.
She only rang for Evans and said, “The blue gown, I think.”
Elizabeth looked toward the pale muslin laid out upon the bed.
“I had meant to wear that.”
“Yes, ma’am. I believe you will find the blue more comfortable.”
There was nothing in the words to resist. No triumph, no hidden meaning, no invitation to quarrel. Only the blue gown, comfort, and Mrs. Doddridge’s immovable manner.
Elizabeth considered the pale muslin again.
It would pull.
The blue would not.
After a moment she said, “Very well.”
Mrs. Doddridge inclined her head and gave the gown to Evans.
Evans dressed her with the same quiet care she used every day, except that her hands were gentler at the laces. Elizabeth bore it as long as she could, then said, “That is enough.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Evans stepped back.
The gown was more comfortable.
Elizabeth disliked that very much.
When they had gone, the room became too quiet. She stood by the window, then sat, then rose again. At last she came to rest near the hearth, one hand laid uncertainly over her middle.
There was nothing to feel.
That was what made it so strange.
No proof. No answer. No little claim beneath her palm. Only herself, ordinary and altered, with Mrs. Doddridge’s flat certainty behind her, Evans’s careful hands, a gown that had pulled, and a calendar she had neglected until it seemed almost indecent in its plainness.
She moved her hand a little, foolishly, as if gentler attention might discover something.
Nothing.
And yet the thought would not leave her.
If it were true—if it were really true—then a life had begun quietly while she was looking everywhere else.
While she was writing letters, ordering fires, watching Georgiana, watching Fitzwilliam, judging what must be done, deciding who must be spared, measuring Pemberley by the hour and by the injury.
She had been responsible before she had known to be careful.
Elizabeth’s eyes stung.
Not because she was unhappy. She was not unhappy. Whenever the thought came near enough to be faced plainly—Fitzwilliam’s child, their child, some small future person owing nothing to ledgers or settlements or Wickham’s wickedness—her heart opened so suddenly that she had to look away from it.
But she had not known.
That was the part which would not be managed.
She, who noticed frightened pauses, strained smiles, tired eyes, unanswered letters, false comfort, and every shadow that crossed Fitzwilliam’s face, had not noticed this.
Her hand settled again over her middle.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
Then she flushed violently, because apologising to someone who might not yet exist, and certainly could not yet hear her, was so irrational that even Mrs. Bennet might have considered it excessive.
The door opened.
Elizabeth turned too quickly, which only made her blush more.
Fitzwilliam entered still in his coat from the estate office, his hair a little disordered from his hand, his face tired in the way she had come to know too well. He had removed his gloves but not changed for dinner, and his first look at her made all her careful plans scatter at once.
He stopped.
“Elizabeth?”
That was the trouble with being loved by an observant man. One could not even stand near a hearth with suspicious composure without being understood against one’s will.
“I have something to tell you.”
His whole attention changed. It gathered toward her so completely that she almost wished she had begun with a lesser matter. A forged account, perhaps. A tenant grievance. Lady Catherine arriving at the stable-yard with a sermon and a new outrage.
“What is it?”
“Mrs. Doddridge has made me count.”
Fitzwilliam became very still.
Elizabeth heard the sentence after she had spoken it and blushed more deeply.
“That is not at all how I meant to begin.”
“No?”
“No. I had several better beginnings. They have abandoned me.”
He waited.
Of course he waited.
“It concerns my gowns,” she said, and at once wished she had chosen any of the abandoned beginnings instead. “No—that is not—my gowns were only the cause of Mrs. Doddridge’s suspicion.”
His eyes moved once, very briefly, over the blue gown, then returned to her face.
Elizabeth drew a breath. It shook.
“I counted badly at first,” she said. “Then again. More carefully.”
His voice was lower when he spoke. “Elizabeth.”
“No, let me say it before I become entirely ridiculous.”
He said nothing.
She looked at him then, mortified, tender, overwhelmed, and suddenly too full of feeling to manage delicacy.
“I think I am with child.”
The words came out all at once, graceless and too plain.
For a moment Fitzwilliam did not move.
Elizabeth saw the meaning reach him. His face changed slowly—shock first, then disbelief, then something brighter, more frightened, more open than she could bear to look at directly.
“With child,” he said.
“Yes. At least—I think so. Mrs. Doddridge thinks so. I have counted, and I think—”
She stopped.
His eyes were on her face, not her waist.
That somehow made it worse.
“I did not know,” she said.
The words were small. Then they were not small at all.
“I did not know.”
He came toward her. “Elizabeth—”
“I did not. I ought to have known. I ought to have noticed. I was tired and thought it was the journey. I slept in the carriage and thought it was the road. I could not bear the broth and thought Cook had done something unforgivable to it. My gown pulled this morning and I thought Evans—”
She stopped, mortified, and pressed both hands to her face.
“Oh, this is so stupid.”
“No.”
“It is. It is. I am crying because my gown was tight.”
“You are not.”
“I began there,” she said, and the absurdity of it made another sob catch in her throat. “That is hardly dignified.”
Fitzwilliam reached her then. He did not seize her. He put his hands lightly at her arms, as if she might yet wish to step away.
She did not.
That was worse too.
She went against him before she could decide to do it, and once there, with his arms coming round her, all the pieces she had been holding apart came together too violently.
“I did not know to be careful,” she said into his coat.
His arms tightened.
“That is what I cannot bear. I did not know. I have walked everywhere. Stairs, galleries, sickrooms—oh, I have been everywhere. I have eaten badly. I have slept badly. I thought it was the house, the journey, the heat. I thought it was everything but—”
She could not finish.
Fitzwilliam’s hand moved over her back once, slow and unsteady.
“You could not know,” he said.
“I should have.”
“No.”
“Yes. I should have. I notice everything when it is someone else. I notice when Georgiana is tired. I notice when you have not eaten. I notice when your father is going to argue with Mr. Grant before he has strength enough for two sentences. Bell can put a false ditch before me and I understand it perfectly. Mrs. Doddridge can look at my gown and know what I ought to have known.”
Then she was crying properly.
Not prettily. Not in the quiet, respectable manner she might have preferred. Her hands clutched his coat, and the sobs came with such force that she could not finish any sentence she began.
“I am not sorry,” she managed.
“I know.”
“I am not sorry. I am not. I only—oh, I feel so foolish.”
“You are not foolish.”
“And guilty.”
His breath changed.
“I feel guilty,” she said, and hid her face harder against him. “Perhaps Mrs. Doddridge is wrong. Perhaps there is nothing to be guilty for. But I feel as if I have already neglected someone.”
“No.”
The word was quiet, but it stopped her for half a breath.
“No,” he said again, and now there was pain in it. “Do not take all that to yourself.”
Elizabeth drew back just enough to see him.
His face had gone pale.
“I saw you tired,” he said.
She shook her head at once. “No.”
“I saw it.”
“You thought I was overworked.”
“I did.”
“So did I.”
“I thought the journey had exhausted you. I thought Pemberley had exhausted you. I thought—” He stopped, jaw tight. “I thought exactly what was easiest to think.”
That hurt him. She saw it. His guilt had come to meet hers, and it made everything more tender and more unbearable.
“You could not have known either,” she whispered.
“I could have asked.”
“I would have said I was tired.”
“I would have believed you.”
“Yes.” A weak, wet laugh broke through her tears. “You see? We are both very foolish.”
He looked at her then with such helpless love that she nearly cried again from that alone.
“Have you been uncomfortable?” he asked.
“A little.”
“How little?”
She gave him a damp, reproachful look. “You are becoming exact.”
“I must be, if you will not be.”
“I have been warm. Tired. Cross. My gowns have pulled. The stairs are longer than they ought to be.”
“That is Pemberley’s fault.”
“Entirely.”
“And food?”
She closed her eyes. “Do not speak to me of beef broth.”
“I shall have it kept from you.”
“That is not a medical treatment.”
“It is a beginning.”
She tried to smile. “I am not ill, Fitzwilliam.”
“No. But you are not to be left to become so merely because no one has yet proved anything in writing.”
She looked up.
There it was: the estate in him, the lawyer in him, the husband now claiming both. Evidence mattered; but so did care before evidence. How very unfair that she should love him more for becoming impossible.
After a moment, his eyes lowered to where one of her hands had come to rest, without her noticing, against her middle.
His voice changed.
“How far do you think—” He stopped, swallowed, and tried again with more care. “How long do you think it has been?”
Elizabeth’s whole face warmed.
That was the worst question, and the necessary one.
It took the matter out of gowns, food, and Mrs. Doddridge’s dreadful correctness, and placed it where it belonged: in the privacy of their marriage, in the days she had been too happy to count, in the mornings she had woken beside him and thought only that he looked easier, not that joy might have left a consequence.
“I do not know exactly,” she said.
“No.”