Chapter Seventeen #2
Mr. Darcy went without her to Hertfordshire one evening to charm her family into this news about the inheritance.
Then, two days hence, they received a letter from their mother, informing them of it.
The inheritance stipulated that it must be used for the girls’ dowries, she said, but the amount was staggering.
They would all be able to marry very well, her mother wrote, and that she was insistent that Mr. Bennet take them all to London this instant.
Though their father hated London, he was considering doing so.
There was a time when Elizabeth would have been wary of her husband’s incredible generosity, but now she knew the man too well to ascribe any ulterior motives to such a thing.
He wanted her happiness, first and foremost, whether her choices made him happy or not.
She was grateful to have met Mr. Darcy, even if he was a blood-sucking fiend, she thought with a little wry smile.
There was a ball at the end of the week that they all attended—Elizabeth, Jane, and Mr. Darcy.
Everyone knew of Jane’s fortune somehow. Elizabeth wondered if the news had spread because of her mother’s inability to keep her mouth shut about anything at all, or if Mr. Darcy had done something to spread the rumors himself.
At any rate, Jane was the belle of the ball. Her dance card filled up immediately. Positively everyone wished to dance with her. The next day, they had all sorts of callers in the afternoon, and the day following that as well.
At first, it seemed the callers had arrived at the Darcy town house, where everyone assumed that Mr. Darcy resided. They were redirected to the house where Mr. Darcy actually lived by the servants at the Darcy house.
Elizabeth worried that this would raise suspicions about Mr. Darcy not living where he was meant to live.
Could it be easy to discover her husband’s vampirism?
But her husband told her it was likely no trouble at all, and that the callers were only temporary.
Once Jane was married off, no one would remember this address at all.
Indeed, by the third day, the suitors began to dwindle. That was the day that Colonel Fitzwilliam came.
He did not bring documents for Mr. Darcy or anything of that nature. He came in while two other men were there to speak to Jane and he sat down with Elizabeth and eyed them. “Your sister is quite sought after.”
“Well,” said Elizabeth, “she is beauty and sweetness personified.”
The colonel smirked at her.
She shrugged. “I suppose I am biased towards her, but I can tell you, there isn’t an ounce of badness in her. She is everything I wish I could be.”
The colonel gazed at Jane. “Ah, yes, I suppose you might regret it now, being tied to a man who cannot even join you in the afternoon, while every eligible bachelor in London makes love to your sister.”
“No, sir,” she said.
He glanced at her, lowering his voice to make sure their conversation was not overheard, though Jane and her suitors were not even looking at either of them. “Apologies. I know I said I would no longer speak of this anymore. There is, indeed, nothing to speak of.”
“I don’t think there is, actually,” she said. “I think you have a worry about my husband, that he is dangerous in a way he is not. He is a good man, despite the fact he is… what he is.”
“You would think so, madam,” he said, but he did not meet her gaze.
“You are a good man, too. You would not see a woman like me harmed,” she said.
“But that is all I think it is for you, some kind of gallantry entwined with finding me not unpleasing, I suppose. And for my part, I have only been swayed by your easy conversation, and the way you smirk from time to time.”
Now, he was looking straight at her. “The way I smirk?”
“I think I worried it meant something,” she said. “But what I said before is true. I am quite taken with my husband, and this is, with us, it’s nothing.”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, as I said before, we can leave the subject entirely.”
“It is nothing,” she said.
“Absolutely nothing, madam,” he said.
Then, they didn’t speak much and it was a bit awkward, and she wondered if she had made a misstep there. He obviously did not think it was nothing, and perhaps she could have gone easier on him there. She did not truly know what his attachment was to her, if there was one.
She expected he would excuse himself by and by, perhaps after he finished his tea. But instead, one of Jane’s other suitors left, and the colonel moved across the room to sit on the other side of her sister.
And Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Jane, on the other hand, spoke eagerly with the colonel, who was the sort of witty conversationalist he always was.
He had Jane laughing a great deal quite quickly, and then Jane was asking him ever so many questions about all manner of things.
“Have you truly been to the war? Were you very frightened?”
This went on to the point where the other suitor left, looking somewhat crestfallen, as if he could not compete with a man who was both the son of an earl and a war hero.
That evening, Jane could talk of little but Colonel Fitzwilliam, and with a sort of exuberance that was somewhat unlike her. However, Elizabeth could see the charm Mr. Darcy had put on her sister at work in it.
“If I’m honest with myself,” said Jane quietly, “he is exactly what I want. I wish to be married to a well-connected man with ties to a respected family. He is the son of an earl, after all. But also, he is a good fit for me. He is talkative where I am shy. He is boisterous where I am quiet. And… he has this way of smirking.” Jane turned bright red.
Elizabeth could not help but smile. “I know that smirk you speak of, in fact.”
“Do you think he likes me, too? He behaved as if he did, but perhaps he was simply being polite. I truly cannot tell. And there have been ever so many men in and out, you know, but most of them did not make me feel at ease in the way the colonel did.”
Elizabeth examined her feelings about it all. Was she jealous of Jane and the colonel? Had she felt some possessiveness of him?
Certainly.
But she also wished the colonel well and thought well of him also. Her only concern was that the colonel had been so attentive to Jane because he was trying to show Elizabeth that he was not interested in her since she had dismissed him rather sharply. If that were the case, Jane might be crushed.
Otherwise, she thought they might suit each other quite well.
It might be a very nice match.
When Mr. Darcy awoke and they were still talking of this during dinner, he was quite surprised, but he did not say anything, not until later.
She and her husband had taken to retiring to her chamber in the evenings now that Jane was staying. They would lie together on her bed and her husband would drink a bit of her blood. They would talk. She would fall asleep in his arms, though when she woke, he had always left her to avoid the sun.
That night, as she lay in the circle of his arms, he tentatively broached the subject of the colonel.
“And I wish you to be honest with me, Lizzy. I mean it. Do not worry that it will wound me if you are hurt by the way he has begun pursuing your sister. We were still considering him as the father of your children, after all.”
Elizabeth laughed into his chest. “You know, you keep assuming I want someone to father children on me.”
“Well, it’s the only way to get children.”
“You keep assuming I want children.”
“Ah,” he said, stroking her back. “Do you not?”
“I am not certain,” she said. “It’s something I always assumed I would do. Everyone does, after all. I had never had the notion of not having children presented to me, really.”
“I sometimes feel a pang about it,” he said. “I missed it all entirely, after all, and there is nothing that can be done about it. I suppose it is one of the reasons I cherish my relationship with Georgiana.”
“Certainly,” she said. “But I think, if I am to become a vampire, I should rather not have children at all. I think it will be painful enough watching everyone I know now waste away and die, while I stay young and unchanged. I could not bear watching that happen to my own children, I don’t think. It would be awful.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“And I have been thinking a lot about it, about letting you turn me,” she said, tracing patterns on his chest.
He tightened his grip on her. “Well, I don’t wish to sway you, but I have been thinking about it, too.
I have long been a solitary vampire, and I have found that every time I am in the company of other vampires, they wear on me, but then I leave them and I find I am quite painfully lonely, and I often wish for a companion.
I think… perhaps I’ve been waiting for you. ”
She lifted her head from his chest to look down at him.
“I don’t mean to pressure you—”
“That is not pressure, Ty, it is reassurance,” she said to him. “It is the first thing you’ve said to me that made me feel you might truly want me for yourself, not against your will or good sense.”
“Ah,” he said, tracing the outline of her jaw, affectionate. “Well, I am perhaps too cautious, my love. You are breaking me of that habit, in the most wondrous of ways. You are very good for me. If I could have you and never give you up, I should be the happiest of men.”
She smiled down at him. “There. This, you see, is why I do not care very much at all about Colonel Fitzwilliam.”
He chuckled. “Well, then, good. I would not see my Lizzy saddened by anyone. If he hurt you, I would—”
“You would do nothing at all,” she scoffed.
“Oh, you don’t know that. I can be frightening and terrifying, I’ll have you know. I’m a vampire.”
She giggled, settling her head back down on his chest. “I only worry he isn’t as serious about Jane as she is about him. As long as he wants her, too, they both have my blessing.”
“Well, time will tell that, I think,” said Mr. Darcy. “We must see if he calls upon her again.”