Chapter 15 #7
“I did not trick him!” To her sister, she said, “You must believe I had no idea we would be discovered. I was only trying to convince him of my esteem. I feared he would leave me again otherwise. Lizzy, I am so sorry. For everything. I have treated you abominably. Can you ever forgive me?”
Elizabeth squeezed her hand and nodded but was breathing too heavily to respond with words. Her countenance twisted into a rictus of agony, and Jane could only observe her sister in wretched suspense until the spasm passed.
“I forgave you as soon as I learnt his heart was untrue,” Elizabeth gasped at length, collapsing back into her pillows.
“Thank you, dear Lizzy. I do not deserve you.”
But she was already in pain again, her crying out now more of a growl than a scream. And though it was muttered through clenched teeth, Jane could hear her keening for her husband.
“Is it supposed to hurt this much?” she enquired, turning to Mrs Reynolds in alarm.
“I have no children, ma’am. I would not know.”
She looked at Mrs Sinclair.
“I birthed mine over half a century ago. You cannot possibly expect me to remember.”
“Am I dying?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes wide with fear.
“We are all dying,” Mrs Sinclair replied. “Only some of us are doing it more quietly than others.”
“Miss Baker, run and see if anybody has been found to attend Mrs Darcy,” Mrs Reynolds shouted at the maid.
“Jane, I’m frightened!” Elizabeth cried.
As was Jane, more frightened than she had ever been, but it was long past time she acted like the sister Elizabeth deserved, and she was determined not to fail her.
“Do not be. If Mama can do this five times, then I am quite sure Mrs Darcy of Pemberley can.” She lifted a lock of drenched hair from Elizabeth’s face and stroked her cheek.
“And you are my brave Lizzy. You can do anything.”
Elizabeth let out a sob. “There you are, Jane! How I have missed you!”
Georgiana was delighted to be returning to the serenity of Pemberley. Her stay at Hornscroft had been wonderful, but so many girls together in one place were exhausting. She knew not how Elizabeth had tolerated it, growing up at Longbourn.
Still, she had not expected the house to be quite as quiet as she found it.
She had rather hoped Elizabeth would come to meet her, for there was a good view of the driveway from the saloon in which they usually sat, though it was just as likely she was in a different part of the house and had not seen her approach.
That not even Maltravers was there to direct the unloading of luggage, however, was more than passing strange.
Hughes, her lady’s maid and travelling companion, left to make enquiries below stairs. Of a mind to find her sister, Georgiana thought to look first in the orangery, but before she got farther than the foot of the grand staircase, Hughes came dashing back into the hall.
“Mrs Darcy has been hurt, Miss Darcy! She fell down the front steps!”
“Oh my! Is she badly hurt? Where is she?”
The sound of somebody coming down the stairs made them both look up. Elizabeth’s maid, Baker, was galloping down at a pace. Hughes opened her mouth to speak, but Baker pre-empted her.
“Not now, Sally, I must see if they’ve found a physician yet. One is needed for the mistress this instant.”
“Is Mrs Darcy in a bad way, then?”
Hughes nodded. “It is horrible! They think she is dying!”
Georgiana gasped, her hands over her mouth in horror. Elizabeth could not die!
“An apothecary has been found,” Hughes informed her. “Mr Maltravers and Mr Barnaby are interviewing him as we speak to make sure he knows his business. But let me fetch him. You had better go back up to Mrs Darcy.”
“Aye, very well, but hurry!” She disappeared back upstairs.
Hughes looked to Georgiana. “May I—”
“Yes, go, go! Make haste!” She herself set off after Baker, her mind blank but for the fear of anything happening to Elizabeth or her baby. Again, she was arrested, however, this time by the most unexpected arrival of Mr Bingley.
“Miss Darcy! I hope y—”
“I beg your pardon,” she interrupted, “but I must leave you. Lizzy has been injured. I must go to her.”
“What has happened?” he cried, hastening across the hall towards her.
“She fell down the front steps.”
“Good Lord! Is she badly hurt?”
Georgiana tried her utmost but could not prevent herself from bursting into tears. “She is not expected to survive!”
Mr Bingley’s countenance drained of colour. “Dear God, I should never have left. Where is she?”
“I do not know, I am only just returned myself. I was on my way to find her.”
“Miss Darcy! And…Mr Bingley!”
Georgiana started and turned. Mrs Reynolds was coming down the stairs.
“I did not know you had arrived, Miss Darcy.”
“Only moments ago,” Georgiana assured her. “I heard what happened. I was coming to find Liz—”
“No!” she exclaimed. “You cannot see her, Miss Darcy.”
“But—”
“She is well attended, I assure you, but you are far too young to see such things.”
“Upon my word,” cried Mr Bingley, “is it that serious?”
“She is near the end, sir,” she replied, looking at him meaningfully. “As you might imagine, she is suffering a great deal.”
“Dear God,” he said in a rush of breath. Georgiana did not know what to say.
“Pray, excuse me,” Mrs Reynolds said. “I must fetch the apothecary myself. This delay will simply not do.”
She had gone only one step before Baker reappeared at the top of the stairs. “’Tis too late for that, Mrs Reynolds!”
Georgiana fumbled for a grip on the handrail, thinking she might fall.
Baker noticed her then and bent heads with Mrs Reynolds to whisper the remainder of her dire message.
Nonetheless, Georgiana still heard her say, “Not breathing.” And there was no mistaking Mrs Reynolds’ cry of, “Oh dear Lord, the poor girl!” With a last instruction that Georgiana was not to follow her, the housekeeper disappeared up the stairs with the maid.
Georgiana turned to Mr Bingley, too horrified to speak.
He did not look to be faring any better. “Forgive me, Miss Darcy,” he murmured, shaking his head, “I cannot—Oh God, I must get some air.” With which he turned and stumbled towards the front door.
Less than a heartbeat later another door flew open, and Hughes rushed past her, followed closely by a man who must have been the apothecary. Then the house was quiet once again. Georgiana remained where she was, halfway up the stairs, shaken, alone and terrified.
“She is dead.”
“No, she is bloody not!” Darcy snarled, ramming Bingley against the wall again. “I did not give her leave to die again!”
He was vaguely aware that Bingley dropped to the ground once he released him but spared it no further thought as he wrenched the front door open and stormed into the house, bellowing for Maltravers. He was not there, but Georgiana was, weeping hysterically on the stairs.
He ran to her, resisting the pull of despair with all his strength. “Where is she?”
His sister only sobbed and shook her head.
“Mr Darcy?”
He span around. Barnaby and Maltravers had both materialised at the foot of the stairs.
“Mrs Darcy is in the lying-in chamber, sir.”
“The lying-in chamber? Is she—good God!” Bingley’s words and Georgiana’s tears rendered that news the most terrifying Darcy had ever received.
He turned and ran. Yet, the nearer he got to the corner of the house where every mistress of Pemberley had birthed its heirs, the more fearful he became, for there was no crying out to be heard, either from Elizabeth or an infant. There was only silence.
He had no time to consider what he might find within the chamber. All he knew was his visceral need to be with Elizabeth, and no sooner had he reached the door than it was open, and he was inside.
“Fitzwilliam!”
There she was—pale, evidently exhausted but, in stark contrast to all his deepest fears, alive and incandescent with joy, a child, his child, in her arms.
“Elizabeth! Thank God!” He was at her side before he knew how he got there, cradling her beautiful face and scrutinising every inch of it for blessed proof of life. “Are you well?”
“Aye, now that you are both here, I am.” She smiled the most transcendent smile he had ever seen grace her countenance. “Meet your son, Fitzwilliam.”
My son. He tore his eyes from her and looked down.
It was apparent he had only just missed the birth, for what little could be seen of the child in the folds of bloodied linens was still covered with gore.
But his eyes were open, and he was looking directly at him.
He was the most wondrous sight Darcy had ever beheld.
“Perfect, is he not?” Elizabeth whispered.
Darcy looked up at her. Never in his life had he known a love such as he felt for Elizabeth and now their child. He nodded. “Without defect.”
“He is a credit to you, Lizzy,” somebody else said.
Darcy looked up in surprise. He had not noticed Jane Bingley was there.
Indeed, he had not noticed anybody was there—not Mrs Sinclair, not Mrs Reynolds, not the several maids—and certainly not the man, whom he sincerely hoped was a physician of some sort, doing something alarming to his wife under a sheet at the foot of the bed.
“He is,” Mrs Sinclair agreed. “Promisingly troublesome from the off.”
“Oh, tsk! We thought he was not breathing at first,” Mrs Reynolds hastily explained, “but it was only that he did not cry as most babies do.”
Darcy turned back to look at the child in alarm. “Is he well?”
Elizabeth grinned and nodded. “He simply had nothing to say that would amaze the whole room.”
Still, she had the ability to fell him with one utterance. He leant forward to rest his forehead reverently against hers. “God, I love you, woman.”
She pressed a gentle kiss to his scar. “And I you.”
Immeasurable though his relief and elation were, Darcy could not long overlook the events that brought him racing home nor the traitor awaiting him downstairs. He sobered as he considered the magnitude of what he had almost lost.