Chapter Twenty-two
IT WAS NOT the last they saw of Mr. Wickham, unfortunately.
He attempted to get Lydia to elope with him in truth. But Lydia was not having it, not now that she had quite a hefty dowry. She had set her sights a great deal higher than Mr. Wickham.
Wickham had been so sure of himself that he had already sent off a letter to Mr. Darcy, saying that he had his wife’s sister and that he would not release her unless Mr. Darcy made Mr. Wickham a vampire.
But when the letter from Wickham arrived, they were actually dining with the Bennet family, including Lydia, who were staying in London for the late winter and spring, so that the newly dowered Bennet sisters could enjoy balls and socializing.
So, it was very obvious that Mr. Wickham did not, in fact, have any Bennet sister with him at all.
Mr. Darcy idly wondered if he should be doing something about Wickham. “He seems to be predisposed to cause all manner of mischief, does he not?”
“What would you do?” said Elizabeth to him.
Mr. Darcy thought about it.
“Would you kill him?”
“I don’t kill people as a general rule, Lizzy,” said Mr. Darcy, giving her a look.
“Well, then, I can’t think you could do anything at all besides give him money,” said Elizabeth. “And you must not do that.”
So, Mr. Wickham was left to go free.
By June of that year, Jane was married to the colonel, and all three of the other Bennet sisters had secured engagements for quite good marriages.
By September, all of the girls would be married, and Mrs. Bennet would be so overcome with emotion at each wedding that she would have to excuse herself.
“To think, all of my girls so happily settled!” she would exclaim, again and again.
Elizabeth might have counseled that the younger girls wait a few years, but Lydia was hellbent on getting married straightaway and Kitty wished to do whatever it was that Lydia did.
In mid-July, when there was a break in Bennet sister weddings, Elizabeth left her husband for some weeks to go on a tour of the northern part of the country with her aunt and uncle Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner.
It was strange to be parted from him, but she could feel him through the bond, steady and sure, as if he were right next to her, and they ended the tour in Derbyshire, at Pemberley, which was sort of hers, she supposed.
Her husband was there, had been waiting for her there during the tour.
He had some apartments in the estate converted to his use with no windows, but he did not like summer in general (too many hours of daylight) and he did not really like the country, and she knew he had no desire to tarry there for too long.
After all, he would not keep this house when he passed it on to Miss Darcy.
He was only a steward of the Darcy lands and name.
She liked Pemberley, though, and her aunt and uncle liked it as well.
She liked the country.
She liked London as well, she supposed, but she would be saddened to live in a city all the time. Sometimes, one needed trees and sky and birdsong, after all.
As she conducted the tour, she felt as if she were saying goodbye to all of it, to the sun, to her family ties, to her warm, human body.
She fully intended, once fall came, to tell her husband to turn her.
Her fears about his attachment to her were unwarranted, after all, and she wished to be with him forever, and there was no reason to delay.
But delay she did.
She and Mr. Darcy spent the fall in the country and then returned to London in late November, and she thought she would have asked him to turn her by then, but she hadn’t.
Then, Miss Darcy met a man who was pursuing her and wished to marry her, and they were caught up in all of that, the courtship, Miss Darcy’s breathless excitement, the engagement, and then the wedding preparations.
“If Miss Darcy is married, does this mean that she is ready to inherit?” said Elizabeth one evening as they were speaking over it.
“Well, it’s nebulous, I suppose,” said Mr. Darcy. “When we made the agreement, she was very young, and we thought that it would be until she was at least twenty-five, but with her married, it would seem that her husband could take charge.”
“But what happens to you?” said Elizabeth.
“I suppose I had thought I would kill myself off, go off into the shadows for a bit and then reemerge as a Matlock, perhaps not a son of the current earl, but some more distant relative. I have done this before, and I always explain away the resemblance to whoever I was before because I am a relation to the last man I was. People will often comment that it’s uncanny, and I shall agree with them, and then they will simply accept it.
I’m always surprised how little it takes to convince people.
Anyway, I can’t do that now, because of you. ”
“Well, I suppose it would be a good time for me to say I wished to be turned,” said Elizabeth. “We could go away and take the time it may take for me to get accustomed to being a vampire. It is all exactly the right timing.”
“Is it, though? You still wish to remain close to your sisters, all newly married, and to your parents. So, I must remain Mr. Darcy, I think, for the time being. It can be easily done, I’m sure.
If Georgiana has needs of any resources, I shall make them available to her, but I shall remain this way, as the master of Pemberley, et cetera, for some years yet. ”
“Years?” she said. “You think I could have years?”
“You can have as many years as you like,” said Mr. Darcy.
“But you do wish to turn me.”
“I hope that I do not have to lose you. I should like us to be together forever, yes. But, Lizzy, my Lizzy, you are so very young. You have just turned one and twenty.”
“How old were you when you were turned?”
“Eight and twenty,” he said.
“Seven years,” she said. “Yes, perhaps give me seven years.”
“I shall give you seventeen or seventy-five or any number between,” he said.
And he took her to bed and sank one very sharp fang into the tip of her breast, which always made her crest nearly immediately, and the sensation of him latching there, suckling at her, taking her blood, it was dizzyingly and transgressively good.
Yes, she wanted seven more years of that, of her blood sustaining her husband, of their bond, of the way he looked at her when he scented her blood, of his mouth between her thighs, of his teeth between her thighs.
She had them.
She had nine years, in fact, before she was finally ready.
For at the end of the seven years, she felt a panic that began to steal into her as she thought of the impending end, of her human life ending, of being turned and losing the sun, ceasing to age… She wanted it, but the finality of it, it frightened her.
So, she delayed again.
And then, one day, when she was almost thirty, she woke one morning at Pemberley, where they were staying because she did love it here, and because her husband was always happy to indulge her, and she did not think of it in that way for the first time.
She did not think of all the things she would be losing, but all the things she would be gaining.
Every day she delayed was a day that led her further and further from doing it.
If she waited too long, maybe she would decide not to turn at all and she knew she did not wish to grow old and see her ageless husband stay the same while she wrinkled and faded and declined.
She had never had children. She honestly could not say that she would have done that any other way, though.
She loved her nieces and nephews dearly, but she did not have the desire to have her own children in the same way that others did, and she didn’t know why exactly.
It could be that having this knowledge of her impending immortality had wiped it away somehow.
She did not need to leave something behind of herself, not if she wasn’t going to die.
But she thought it might have been something else, something inside her, something that was a bit independent and adventurous.
Motherhood would require sacrifices of her, and she was not sure if she could give them.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be fair to bring children into the world if she could not devote herself to them the way that they would deserve.
Whatever the case, she felt more concern over the fact that she didn’t miss children than she did over actually thinking about children. She worried there was something missing in her, some vital feminine part, for weren’t all women supposed to desperately desire babes?
The fact that she didn’t, however, only made things easier for her when she asked her husband to turn her.
He’d been right. Time had worked its magic on them.
She was no longer insecure about her husband’s devotion to her.
She knew how much he adored her. And he was no longer worried that she would miss her human life or feel deprived for being with him.
They’d had years to come to understand each other.
They did it at Pemberley, but first they expanded the chambers, covering up the windows of an adjoining set of rooms for her, and adding a sitting room as well, so that they would have more space to be together.
Miss Darcy had little use for Pemberley herself, since her husband was a baron with his own vast estates. Since Elizabeth loved Pemberley so, Mr. Darcy had used some of his own money to purchase it from Miss Darcy with her blessing. It would be their home for years and years to come.
She wasn’t frightened, even as her husband drained her and drained her and even as her body grew weak, as her life waned and waned until it was only a thread holding her to her mortal life, as that final thread snapped.
Darkness enveloped her then, and pain as well, but she had her husband’s blood in her, and she was already changing. She had only to drink human blood after this, and the change was complete.