Chapter 1
“Ah, there you are,” said Elizabeth, reaching for the carved wooden cat on the floor of her private sitting room. “Henry will be pleased to see you again.”
Rising, she glanced out of the window at the moonlit drifts of snow surrounding Pemberley, wondering whether there would be any trace tomorrow of this morning’s activities.
The winter weather had been especially harsh, with new snow arriving every day, often blown in by blindingly strong winds.
She was relieved her family had chosen to stay at Longbourn for Christmas; Kitty’s first child was due any moment, and Mrs Bennet wished to fulfil the motherly duty she had not been able to offer Jane or Elizabeth at their most recent lying-ins at their faraway estates.
Mr Bennet had written to Elizabeth,
Another daughter giving birth in winter.
Your mother’s only consolation to such thoughtlessness for her nerves is that winter births produce boys.
I cannot comment as to whether hardiness to the cold is exclusive to the male sex, but even Mrs Bennet must regret how poorly she arranged all of her own confinements, delivering every one of her children—all of the female sex—in England’s warmer months.
It was a rare letter from her father, written more to exercise his wit than to impart any true news of Longbourn or the neighbourhood. Thinking on it now, Elizabeth touched her own stomach. If Mama’s supposition is correct, she will have a granddaughter to celebrate this summer.
She had not yet told Darcy, and if he suspected it, he had said nothing.
Elizabeth planned to give him the news on Christmas Eve—and share her mother’s superstition about summer babes.
She knew her husband would love a daughter, a little girl to trail behind and be protected by her older brothers and indulged by her father, but for Elizabeth, the more the merrier in Pemberley’s nursery was all that mattered.
They were secretly delighted to be alone for Christmas.
Hosting the Gardiners was always a joy, but the addition of the Bennets and Philipses and Bingleys—including the Hursts, their young son, and the as yet unmarried Miss Bingley—had proved overwhelming last year.
Even the ever-patient Mrs Reynolds had seemed worn-out by the number of children—ten, including four in leading strings.
This year, they would host only the Bingleys and their brood, coming from their estate twelve miles from Pemberley. Even had Kitty’s condition not precluded travel, the snow and ice on the roads would have prevented anyone from the south from making such a journey.
Walking back into her chambers, two high-pitched voices, squabbling rather than laughing, reached her ears.
“I am the oldest! I shall tell Mama!” cried four-year-old Bennet.
“Me will!” wailed Henry.
Elizabeth smiled as the pair ran into the room. “What will you tell me?” she asked, gathering them into her arms and breathing in deeply. Freshly bathed, they smelled of soap and warm milk. She looked up, waiting for their nurse or Darcy to follow.
“It is Papa! He is sleeping on my bed!” said Bennet.
Henry, at nearly three the very image of his father in the miniature portrait Lady Anne had kept on her dressing table, shook his head. “We tickled Papa—”
“But he did not move,” his brother finished.
“Oh?” Elizabeth stood. After a morning visit to a tenant whose roof had collapsed under the snow, Darcy had joined her in the gardens with the boys, pulling them on a small sled and showing them how to make snowballs.
While she and the children had napped, her husband had gone to his study to write letters he could only hope to post if the weather cleared.
After such a long day, it was no surprise he was exhausted.
“Where is Mrs Vickers?”
“I am here, Mrs Darcy.” A stout blonde woman stood in the doorway, clearly hesitant to enter the mistress’s chambers. “I am sorry, they ran ahead in their eagerness to see you.” Smiling down at the boys, she said, “Your papa has told you a story. It is off to bed with you.”
“I need Cat,” cried Henry.
“Here he is, sweetheart. He was hiding from us,” said Elizabeth, placing the toy in his hands. She looked up at the nurse. “Is Mr Darcy in the nursery? Asleep?”
The woman’s cheeks reddened. “Yes, ma’am. He appeared a bit fatigued.”
It was hardly surprising. Beyond today’s activities out of doors, the poor man had barely rested since winter began, taking the sleigh two days earlier to visit Georgiana at her husband’s family estate and deliver the gifts of blankets, caps, and socks Elizabeth had knitted for the baby she would welcome in the next few weeks.
It was but seven miles each way, and he and Elizabeth had been eager to assure themselves of Georgiana’s good health in the birth of her first child.
A yawning Henry in her arms, she followed the nurse and Bennet down the corridor to the nursery.
There, sprawled on Bennet’s small bed, Darcy lay, eyes closed and breathing deeply.
While Mrs Vickers busied the boys in picking up their scattered toys, Elizabeth whispered in her husband’s ear, asking him to walk with her to his—their—chambers.
His eyelids fluttered open. “’Lizabeth?”
She touched his cheek, noting it was flushed and rather too warm. “Are you well?”
“A headache, nothing more,” he mumbled, his voice thick.
“Fitzwilliam.” She waited for his gaze to meet hers. “We must get you to your own bed.”
“Yes.” Darcy sat halfway up before he began coughing, and immediately she knew he could not walk steadily on his own.
“Mrs Vickers,” she said quietly. “Please ask James to come and help Mr Darcy to his rooms.”
“No, I am well,” he protested, rising from the bed as another coughing fit erupted.
Before she could reply to her husband, he had crumpled to the floor.
Darcy had begun coughing the previous day, after taking Bennet and Henry to visit the stables. He had waved away Elizabeth’s concerns as ‘a bit of hay in my throat’ but consented to drinking a cup of tea with honey and retiring to bed earlier than usual—to sleep.
At present, in the nursery, it appeared more than a cough afflicted him. Alert and clearly mortified, he refused James’s help, rising to his feet and growling, “I am tired but fully capable of walking to my chamber.”
Elizabeth walked beside him, at a slow pace, with James following at a near distance, receding only when Edwards appeared at the dressing room door.
There, Darcy’s exhaustion and his apparent weakness truly emerged, and he gave himself over to his valet’s assistance in a manner she had never seen.
Edwards seemed to share her concern, giving her a look of anxiety as Darcy lifted his arms for his night shirt before bending over to cough.
The valet helped him to stand, and he accepted a small glass of brandy before stumbling to bed.
He was asleep when Elizabeth joined him there a few minutes later.
Daybreak had not yet arrived when a noise, harsh and jagged, awoke her.
Elizabeth pushed away the heavy counterpane and sat up, listening.
The bed shifted underneath her as a rough, tortured cough lifted her husband halfway off the mattress.
Leaning closer, her sight adjusting to the dim light thrown by the flames in the hearth, she saw his eyes were open but staring past her.
“Fitzwilliam!” she cried. His answering cough brought her fully awake; the bright moonlight reflecting off the snow-covered countryside made obvious the unnatural flush to his cheeks and the damp curls clinging to his forehead. She did not need to touch his flesh to know he was burning with fever.
Fear building within her, Elizabeth scrambled from under the remaining covers and ran to pull on the bell cord. “Seaton,” she gasped when her lady’s maid appeared at the door in her robe, concern on her sleepy face. “Quickly, see that Dr Lumley is summoned, and tell Mrs Reynolds I need her.”
Seaton’s gaze fell to Elizabeth’s waist. “Ma’am, is it—?”
“No. Mr Darcy is ill.”