CHAPTER 65 #2
“I had not kept account. Not properly.” She looked down. “I mean—I know generally. I know enough to be mortified by not knowing more.”
He waited.
Elizabeth drew a breath that shook. “My usual indisposition came before the wedding.”
His hand stilled against her back.
“And then not after?” he asked softly.
She could not look at him. “Not after.”
“Since The Laurels?”
The name, spoken so gently, nearly undid her.
“Perhaps,” she whispered. “Perhaps from then. Or very near it. I cannot be exact. I did not think—I did not suppose so soon—” She stopped, blushing harder.
“That is, I knew it was possible. I am not ignorant. But knowing a thing is possible and discovering that one has been living with it for weeks are not at all the same.”
“No,” he said.
“I thought marriage had made you happier,” she said, with a small, miserable attempt at steadiness. “That was the consequence I noticed.”
His expression broke.
“Elizabeth.”
“And it had. It has. I was so pleased with it. So pleased with you. With us. I did not look any farther.”
He gathered her closer again, and she went because she had no pride left with which to resist him.
“I should have looked farther,” she said into his coat.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No. We shall not begin this child’s life by making a prosecution of its mother.”
That stopped her.
She drew back enough to see his face.
The sentence was too grave, too firm, almost severe in tenderness, and it reached her where softer comfort might have failed.
“I am doing it very well,” she whispered.
“Then I must stop you.”
Her mouth trembled.
“Oh, do not be kind like that.”
“I cannot be otherwise.”
“That is not true. You can be very severe.”
“Not with you.”
She closed her eyes. Another tear slipped free, but it was quieter now.
He brushed it away with his thumb.
“I missed you,” she said.
The words came out before she could make them safer.
His hand stilled.
“I know you were here,” she said quickly.
“I know you were never far. I know you were doing what had to be done. But the house takes you. It takes you by papers and questions and your father and Mr. Latham and Bell and the estate office, and all of it is reasonable. That is what makes it so hard to resent.”
His face changed again—not guilt alone now, but recognition.
“And then I thought,” she continued, voice unsteady, “if this is true, I shall need you more. Not only want you. Need you. And I was ashamed of minding that there was so little of you left by evening.”
He pulled her fully into his arms.
There was no hesitation in it now.
“Then there shall be more.”
“You cannot simply make more.”
“I can take some back.”
“From Pemberley?”
“Yes.”
“It will object.”
“It may put its objection in writing.”
She gave a broken laugh against him.
He bent his head until his cheek touched her hair. “You will not walk half the house before breakfast. You will not miss meals because papers arrive. You will not sit in rooms that are too warm merely because it is convenient to others. And I shall be with you more.”
“Fitzwilliam.”
“I shall.”
“You cannot remove yourself from everything.”
“I did not say everything.”
“Your father—”
“Has Mr. Grant, Mrs. Reynolds, and me at proper times.”
“The estate—”
“Has Bell, Mr. Latham, four clerks, and enough guilt to occupy them without my standing over every inkpot.”
“And if something is urgent?”
“Then I shall attend to it.”
“And if everything claims to be urgent?”
“Then I shall disappoint several people.”
Elizabeth stared at him.
There was no drama in his tone. No grand declaration. Only a decision made with the same firm quietness he brought to papers, clauses, false charges, and all the other things that became safer once he had put them in order.
“You make that sound possible,” she said.
“It is possible.”
“It will not be easy.”
“No.”
“Pemberley will object.”
“Pemberley has objected to many necessary reforms.”
She almost smiled.
Then the next fear rose, quieter but sharper.
“I do not want everyone to know.”
His expression changed, but not with surprise. He only listened.
“Not yet,” she said. “Not until it is certain. I do not want to be made into an announcement, or an invalid, or something the girls must watch.”
His hand closed more securely over hers.
“Georgiana would be frightened if she thought me ill,” Elizabeth said. “Kitty would be kind in a way no human strength could bear. Your father must not be troubled with it, and Mr. Latham must not be made aware of any new subject upon which he might form papers.”
“No one will be told who has not some care of you.”
Elizabeth breathed out, then looked down again.
“In this house, that means Mrs. Reynolds.”
“Yes.”
“Only enough.”
“Only enough.”
“Mrs. Doddridge may tell her.”
“If you prefer it.”
“I do. Mrs. Doddridge will say only what is necessary.”
“Then it shall be so.”
Fitzwilliam’s thumb moved over her hand.
“You are not a paper,” he said.
“I have been treated as several lately.”
His expression changed at that.
“Not by me,” he said quietly. Then, after a beat, “Not again.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught.
The room seemed to still around them.
“Quietly, then,” she said.
“Quietly.”
“And carefully.”
“Yes.”
“And you will not let Pemberley take you before I have had you.”
His face softened all at once, painfully.
“No,” he said. “Not now.”
It was not proof. It was not certainty. It was not joy neatly arranged for company.
It was enough for that moment.
A while later, when Elizabeth had stopped crying and had begun to be embarrassed by the evidence of it, Fitzwilliam rang for Mrs. Doddridge.
She came in, looked once at Elizabeth’s face, and waited.
“Mrs. Reynolds must know enough to make quiet arrangements,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Only enough.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The girls are not to know.”
“No, ma’am.”
“No beef broth.”
“No, ma’am.”
Mrs. Doddridge withdrew.
The dullness of it was a mercy.
Elizabeth watched the door close and let out a small, unsteady breath.
“I am very tired of crying,” she said.
“Then do not be sensible enough to stop.”
She looked at him.
He had said it quietly, not as wit but as permission.
That was what undid the last of her resistance—not sharply this time, not with sobs, but with the sudden, bodily relief of having somewhere to lay down all the weight she had been arranging into sentences.
“Stay with me,” she said.
It was not what she had meant to ask. It was smaller than the arrangements and larger than any of them.
Fitzwilliam’s hand stilled over hers.
“I do not mean because I am ill,” she said, before courage could fail. “Nor because anything is proved. Only because I do not want to be sensible by myself.”
His face changed.
Then he drew her back to him, and this time there was no careful distance in it.
“You shall not be left to it alone,” he said.
Relief came before thought.
Her shoulders lowered. Her breath, which had been catching for an hour, found its way out. She had not known how tightly she had held herself until he took some of the work from her.
For once she did not prepare the next answer.
She rested.
His hand settled at her back, warm and certain.
Outside the room, Pemberley continued to require things. Somewhere there were papers, questions, footsteps, trays, and a sickroom bell that might or might not ring before morning.
For the present, Fitzwilliam did not move toward any of them.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and let him hold her before papers.