Chapter 12 #3
“Yes, I am Mrs Darcy, and you had best remember that. We had an agreement: fidelity and respect. We may have married without affection, but we are, in fact, married. To be mistress of Mr Darcy’s house may not be anything, but I am still your wife and am due more honour than what you have shown me.”
“I have honoured our agreement, and have been perfectly—”
“No, whatever adjective you were going to use, you have not. If you insist on my calling you Mr Darcy, then you had best remember that until I die, I am Mrs Darcy, and you owe me more respect!”
She stalked from the room with as much pride as she could muster before going into the garden where she was sure to have the privacy to cry.
She had not lied when she said that this home was better than Longbourn; she was independent, admired, and useful so long as Georgiana needed her.
But when she is dead, what will happen to me?
If she was to be treated coldly by Mr Darcy, the independence of her situation as a married woman would not make her days much more bearable here than they had been at Longbourn.
No, this is not how I shall spend my final weeks.
Any dignity she was going to have at Netherfield Lodge would not be granted to her by simply being Mrs Darcy.
She would have to take it for herself. Elizabeth wiped her eyes, and gathered the flowers she had cut.
Crying over Mr Darcy’s rudeness and lack of sympathy was not going to help, and it certainly would not do Georgiana any good.
“Can I bring you anything, my dear?”
Georgiana shook her head as Darcy sat by her side after he carried her into the little parlour. “Where is Lizzy?”
“She has been outside this quarter hour to collect flowers to brighten your room.” He had watched her through his study window and knew that five minutes of her time was spent crying, and the other ten minutes in calming her mind. The flowers were incidental.
“She has a sunny disposition. You must let her cheer you in the days ahead.”
“Mrs Darcy is a charming woman”—even if she did ruin a fine quill—“but nothing will cheer me in the days and weeks ahead.”
“I am going to die, Fitzwilliam, and I am ready. I am ready for the pain to end. You cannot know how I long to finally see my son.” She forced him to meet her eye. “Let your wife comfort and love you when I am gone.”
He had no answer that his sister could hear.
“I know that you quarrelled this morning.”
Darcy started. “How could you have known that?”
“From the smallness of the house and the manner in which it was built, noises pass from one point of this house to the other. I could not hear the words, but the tone was unmistakable.”
He would never open his wife to criticism, but Mrs Darcy had no right to imply he did not respect her.
It was simply easier to remember himself and his position when he thought of her as Mrs Darcy rather than Elizabeth.
She was going to die soon herself, and there was no reason to allow her to influence what little domestic felicity he could have before she did.
It was not that she was an unworthy woman.
There was not a woman in all of his acquaintance who had an equal claim to virtue through her affectionate behaviour as did Mrs Darcy.
He respected her good qualities, but the familiarity and admiration had to end there.
Besides, my sister’s comfort and feelings are my priority.
Georgiana was still looking at him with disapproving, sunken eyes. “You need not concern yourself with our trivial domestic matters,” he said.
“You ought to set aside your pride and apologise.”
The coughing fit that followed prevented Darcy from telling his sister to mind her place. When it passed, with another basin filled with the fetid contents of her lungs and more of her strength lost, she laid propped up against the pillows. She was feverish and weak, and her pulse was quick.
“Shall I read to you?”
Georgiana shook her head feebly. “Apologise to Lizzy.” She closed her eyes and fell into a light sleep.
Darcy regretted losing his patience with Mrs Darcy, but she sought a familiarity that he could not, would not indulge in.
He certainly would not call her Elizabeth.
The sole time he addressed her that way was when he said, “I, Fitzwilliam, take thee Elizabeth to my wedded wife.” He had too much guilt, too much grief, too much anger, and too little of himself to give to a woman he married only for convenience.
He leant back in his chair and closed his weary eyes.
“Has sleep repaired the frayed edges of your temper?”
He sat up with a start and looked around.
The shadows were longer, and Mrs Darcy was standing in front of him with a letter in her hand.
Darcy rubbed his eyes and sighed. She looked reluctant to have to speak to him, perhaps was even disappointed in him.
I am disappointed in myself. Mrs Darcy did have a sunny disposition, a radiant gracefulness that would bewitch him if he let it.
An apology, then, and then he would keep a respectful distance. “Mrs Darcy, I am exceedingly s—”
“An express has come for you from your cousin.”
He took the letter, read it, and was on his feet in an instant, calling for the kitchen boy to get his man to saddle his horse. The sun set later this time of year; he could make it to town before dark. He was in his own room—packing his own things—when he realised Mrs Darcy had followed him.
“What could Colonel Fitzwilliam have written about to take you from Georgiana now?”
Debts purchased in London and Bath—legally enforceable debts—at incredible expense.
“I would not leave were it not from principle of duty.” The necessity of getting a writ from the magistrate’s court as soon as possible, the need to meet with the sheriff’s officers who arrest debtors, could not be spoken.
Darcy had to step around Mrs Darcy as he packed and she looked on with disapproval.
“You have a duty to Georgiana!”
“You need not speak to me of honour or duty. It is implicit in every action I take in my daily life.” Even if Fitzwilliam was available to take care of this for him, how could he explain needing to be at the magistrate’s court himself, to look the men, whom he would hire from the office next door, in the eye?
The need to begin this process as soon as possible?
“You should at least tell your wife where you are going and when you intend to return.”
He supposed any wife had a right to know where her husband was. “London.”
“You are thought to be in Madeira!” He turned to look at her and saw she was struggling for patience.
“It was a risk going to town for the licence. As unlikely as it is in such a large city, if you are recognised, it could undo everything you have done to protect Georgiana’s reputation, and soon her good name is all she will have left. ”
“I am going only for business. I shall stay where I will not be known, and be there and back in two days.”
“Are you hoping to avoid the death watch?”
Darcy stepped with quick steps toward her, and with much spirit resented the imputation. “Your insinuation is improper and unbecoming! I have immediate business in town. This has to be done, and it must be done now, and it must be done by me.”
Mrs Darcy inhaled slowly. “Please, do not leave her now. We do not know—it could be any time . . .”
“Do you not see? The only way I could leave Georgiana at all is because you, you, are with her. I could leave her with no one else.” He grabbed her hand and pressed it, staring into her eyes.
“This writ—” He shook his head, but still had not let go of her hand.
“I am sorry for how rudely I spoke to you this morning.” He felt her start of surprise through her fingertips.
“You did not deserve to be treated so meanly. I have to go to town, it is a moral imperative, but I will be back in two days.”
“I feel unutterable anxiety that Georgiana will—”
“She would not dare.” He tried to smile.
“She looks up to me more like a father than a brother and would never offend me by dying when I must be away from her side.” Darcy felt Mrs Darcy return the squeeze of his hand.
He dropped her hand but stayed near. “Your affectionate behaviour is better for her than any nursing I could do or any medicine the apothecary could prescribe, and if you want to stop the treatments that pain and strain her, I have nothing to say against it.”
Mrs Darcy gave a sad little nod. She turned to go, but something that had passed between them compelled Darcy to call after her.
“Why did you choose this, knowing however unlikely that you could die after Georgiana? To spend your last days nursing not a sick girl but a dying one? To be a stranger’s wife while you watch your friend die? What sort of life is this?”
“More than I thought I would have after I read Mr Jones’s letter.
You cannot know what it feels like to live knowing you have a fatal disease.
And you cannot know what it is like to be a dependent and on someone else’s mercy.
I have leisure to read, to play the instrument, to work on what I wish, to walk as I like, to be Georgiana’s friend.
If you tempered your selfish disdain for my feelings—” She stopped, likely having too much pride to continue.
“I have never known such freedom as I have as a married woman.”
Darcy shook his head sadly. “You have settled for contentment, and very little at that, I am afraid.”
“It is not forever, is it?”