Chapter 24 #2
“I had not before known such fear. I rode all over the estate…
I can recall one day in particular, staring down into a ravine and wondering whether I should see your body at the bottom of it.
Never mind all the highwaymen I thought might have stolen you.
All I ever thought was that I was perhaps one day too late.
I would retire each night wondering whether that day might have been your last, and, but for a bit more effort, I might have found you.
“Then Fitzwilliam found the letter you left for me, and I knew you were no longer in Yorkshire…and my terror could only increase. You were gone, out there, God knows where, and I could not find you.” He sighed.
“Of the child, I dared not think. As it was, I have spent these years on the brink of madness. Had I any comprehension of him, of Bennet, out there… I just cannot think I would have borne it. I should be at Bedlam now.”
Elizabeth cleared her throat lightly. “I have sometimes thought that…that perhaps I had the better lot. I had Mrs Macy and Bennet to occupy my thoughts, and in any case, I knew where you were.”
He gave her a wan smile. “I frequently have dreams where you are gone, and I am trying to find you. Sometimes I hear you or see you just out of reach, or I try to grab you but you slip away. After such times, I must…well, I look in on you.”
“Look in on me?”
He flushed slightly, lowering his face. “I open the door to hear you breathing. Sometimes, I come into the room to see whether you are here.”
“How often does this happen?”
“A couple of times a week. If it is a very bad night, then…then sometimes multiple times in the night.”
She could not deny that it moved her, this new understanding of him.
She went to him at the window and, after a short hesitation, wrapped her arms around him from the back.
Her cheek rested on the fine lawn of his shirt.
“I do wonder at times how it might have been had I remained just a little while longer.”
With exquisite care, he pulled her underneath his arm, managing to bring her to his front without ever losing her embrace. “I do not blame you for leaving,” he said. “Not when I saw how it was. Not when I knew all that you had endured there.”
She raised her face, resting her chin on his chest, and looked into his eyes.
She had always felt she could drown in his eyes although, in truth, they were rather unremarkable.
Just ordinary eyes in the face of an extraordinary gentleman.
“Should you like to stay with me?” she asked.
“In my bed. For sleep, I mean. No more.”
From the look on his face, one would have thought she had given him a great deal more. “You are certain?”
She nodded even though she really was vastly uncertain.
“Thank you. Yes, I would like that.”
She climbed into bed as, with much hesitation, Darcy began removing his trousers and vest. His shirt, as it turned out, was merely his nightshirt that had been shoved into his trousers, so it was short work to be ready for sleep.
He blew out the lamp while she climbed into bed and then slid in next to her.
She had a large bed, and he stayed on his side of it, and she stayed on hers.
But it was comforting to hear his breath and know he was over there.
He was obviously tired; his transition from wakefulness to sleep was rapid, and she studied his profile, such as was afforded to her by the pale sliver of moonlight that entered the room.
Her eyes traced over the features of his face, which was softened by sleep.
How well she remembered his looks on the day they married, the first time he asked her to dance, and when he asked her for her hand in marriage.
And how he could not disguise the tenderness and pride that came into his eyes whenever he looked at Bennet.
A thought entered her mind as she watched him sleep, and that was simply that he did love her.
He did, she knew that; moreover, she loved him too.
Yet it was so very complicated between them, so muddled by painful memories and hurtful actions.
How she wished it was not so. How she wished she might just be unafraid of him.
But he is changed, her heart whispered. He has altered, and to love—ardent love—it must be attributed.
He was gone in the morning when she awoke, the pillow cold beside her. She ran her hand over it and then rose, dressing and preparing for her day.
As she ate and then played with her son, there was one point of curiosity that niggled: the matter of Darcy’s search for her.
Georgiana had indicated something of reports and travels and so forth, and for some odd reason, Elizabeth had a strange impulse to know more.
Had Darcy had kept any of the articles and, if so, would he be disturbed should she ask to see them?
It seemed likely that whatever reports he might have kept would be in his London study, and so she hoped to be able to view them.
She went to him in the late morning, leaning against the study door. She could never forget her last time there and the scene between them as he sent her away, so she merely stood at the entryway rather than enter.
“Will you come in?” he asked.
“I just had a question for you.” She smiled, feeling a bit nervous. “Georgiana mentioned something about the investigators you employed sending reports to you? And your own travels? You probably did not keep those, but if you did, I wonder whether I might see them.”
“I kept all of it,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “You wish to see one of the investigator reports? Something in particular, or any?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “No, nothing in particular, just something to indulge my curiosity. Whatever you think might be interesting to see—I am sure I do not know.”
He nodded slowly, then bent and opened a drawer from which he removed six bulging files. “Where shall I put them?”
“May I carry them to my study, perhaps?”
“I shall carry them for you,” he said. So they took the files, Darcy holding five to Elizabeth’s one, to the small desk in the green saloon where Elizabeth sometimes wrote letters.
The desk, a spindly, feminine-looking thing, seemed as though it might collapse under the weight, but it did not.
From one portfolio, Darcy removed a journal.
“This is the complete record of where things are and what items of information are contained.” He opened the book and pointed to a small numeral.
“You see here? That indicates which portfolio the original report would be in. The first two numbers are the year, and the last three are the order. So the number 13-001 would be the first report received in 1813.” He went on to explain further how items on the map were designated and linked to a certain report, and where other sundry items might be located.
When he finished, he looked up, seeing Elizabeth’s surprise. With a chuckle, he admitted, “This is undoubtedly more than what you wished to see.”
“Not at all. I am simply amazed by this system you have contrived,” she teased. “The military has lost out by not having you in command. You no doubt would have put Napoleon to rest long ago.”
Darcy flushed a bit. “Truthfully, the lead investigator that I hired was a military man, and he had a somewhat similar system that I noted on the first occasions when I visited his offices. I really only adapted it to fit my needs here.”
“I am quite impressed by your thoroughness.”
That earned her a small smile. “At any rate, it is all there. You may study it as you wish.”
Elizabeth was shocked by the first report she saw.
The pages had obviously been read so many times that they were dog-eared and tattered.
She found that once she began reading the reports, she could not put them down.
Interspersed with the investigators’ reports were Darcy’s own travels, painstakingly documented with a synopsis of each and every interview.
He had used excruciating detail in his summaries, even making sketches where useful.
At first, she was merely riveted, but she soon became sad. So much time and energy wasted! And none of them, not the dark-haired woman in Bath nor the lady who was to serve as governess to a child in India, had anything to do with Mrs Elizabeth in Weymouth.
Darcy had made little notes in the margins of the various reports about his own activities, and in those, she could read his hope. Misplaced hopes, but he had hoped nevertheless.
The back part of the journal held the investigators’ invoices for work provided. Elizabeth gasped at the amount on the first one and quickly leafed through them, arriving at a figure that astonished her. She would not have imagined half such a sum.
At long last, she began to replace the pages within their portfolios and closed the journal. She sat for but a moment in contemplation of what she had seen. No one who did not genuinely wish to find something would expend such effort, to say nothing of the cost, in searching for it.
After contemplating her findings for some minutes, she rose and went to find him. He was again in his study, this time reading, and she stood in the doorway to speak to him.
“Will you come in?” he asked, and she nodded.
She crossed the floor as if the carpet were made of poisonous eels and found a chair that did not immediately offend her. He watched as she settled herself into it.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“I was not looking for anything in particular,” she admitted. “Just curious, that is all. I should not have imagined such an effort nor so much expense.”
“Did you not? I would have done twice as much, but none of it led anywhere.”
“No,” she said, with an uncomfortable laugh. “I could see none of it was leading to me.”
“Lydia once told me that if you did not wish to be found, you would not be. I daresay she was correct.”
“It was a close thing, was it not? We might never have come upon one another. What would you have done had you not? When should the searches be complete?”
He raised his head, meeting her gaze with hollow-eyed fervency. “I would have looked for you until the day I died.”