Chapter One #3
“I don’t know anything.”
“Nor do you do very much.”
The maid immediately adopted an offended and mulish expression. “I do what I’m told.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. She pressed her lips together.
Shouting at Mr. Wickham. Demanding he find employment at something now that his money had run out. Pointing at her own pregnant belly. Asking him if he really expected her to clean and cook like a common servant. ‘My papa was right about you. I should have never married you.’
“I do apologize.” Elizabeth said when she opened her eyes. “I believe your name is Sally? This is your first place, is it not?”
The girl nodded.
“You’ll do better in time.” Three deep breaths. “Let’s find the supplies.”
At least the servant girl knew how to hunt through the pantries. Miss Darcy looked completely helpless.
Though, when Emily spotted a half loaf of bread and started reaching for it and desperately saying, “Bre, bre, bre,” Miss Darcy successfully cut an even slice from the loaf for her.
After five minutes vinegar was found, but no camphor or spirit of turpentine.
“Sally, off to the apothecary, get more rolls of bandages, spirit of turpentine, and camphor. Also, comfrey and chamomile. Ought I write that down?”
“I cannot read, ma’am.”
Of course not. You cannot, as already noted, do much.
Elizabeth vibrated from tension and the desperate need to not think.
It should be written down, with the paper to be handed to the apothecary, but Elizabeth would only write it all out after she changed the bandages.
After a search, Elizabeth found a still clean bowl to soak the bandages in and returned to the drawing room. She was followed by both the servant and Miss Darcy with Emily.
Mr. Darcy was fully reclined now, wiping at the bloody matter oozing onto his chest with a damp towel that presumably George had acquired for him.
The boy eagerly listened as Mr. Darcy said quietly, “Yes, I killed the man who hit me.”
“Woah.”
“Why are you telling him these stories?” Elizabeth asked with some annoyance. “George, there is bread in the kitchen. Sally, can you cut him a slice?”
“I can cut my own bread!” George insisted.
“I know that. I am worried about what else you might cut.” As Elizabeth spoke, she grabbed a roll of the bandages, worked them out, and soaked them in a bowl full of vinegar.
“Yes, ma’am.” Sally said, “Come along George, there is some butter that you can have with the bread, and I’ll let you help me hold the knife.”
Several treatises written recently preferred a method of bandaging with damp bandages to keep the wound from drying out completely, and the doctor who had several times recommended Elizabeth as a nurse was insistent that he’d achieved far better outcomes for patients treated in that way.
Elizabeth wrung out the vinegar-soaked linen and then wrapped them again into a loose pile. “This shall likely sting,” she warned Mr. Darcy before placing them against his wound.
The gentleman hissed.
“Have you taken sufficient laudanum?” Elizabeth asked as she wound a long strip of still dry linen several times loosely around his body to fasten the main roll of bandages in place.
“I have not taken any laudanum.”
Elizabeth looked at him in some surprise. “How can you speak at all? That must be exceedingly painful.”
“It is not so bad.”
She stared at him. He calmly stared back at her.
“Mr. Darcy, do not be a fool. Take your laudanum. Do you have a bottle—no, of course not. I shall add it to the list when I send Sally out to the apothecary.”
“I will not take it.”
“If you’ve the will to manage the pain from that injury without anything to dull it,” Elizabeth said, rather impressed despite herself, “then you likely will have sufficient will to cease the liquid after the injury heals—you did not take much of this broth. When did you eat last?”
“You seem quite skilled at wrapping the bandage.” Mr. Darcy said instead of replying to the question. “How did you learn?”
Her husband was dead. Elizabeth looked at the fine wooden pieces that made up the ceiling.
He had already abandoned her. Abandoned her to the point that he’d tried to convince another woman to enter a false marriage.
“Mrs. Wickham,” the gentleman said when she did not reply, “might I do anything for you? You appear—”
“I am well. Perfectly well.” Elizabeth forced a big smile. “Tears never do anyone any good.”
“That is not true,” Mr. Darcy said. “I cried when my parents died, and on some other significant occasions. I do not hesitate to confess that I even cried for your husband, though I have no right as I was the one to kill him.”
“Did it do him any good?” Elizabeth asked.
“It clearly did not help you since you still wish to die to expiate that guilt. I’ll keep you from doing that, just to spite both of you.
Damned gentlemen—I apologize. Long association with your childhood companion has given me improper habits of language.
My mother would have fainted if she heard me speak in such a way. ”
“Do you wish anything to drink?” Mr. Darcy replied.
“Lord, no! Mr. Wickham did enough drinking for both of us. I never touch anything stronger than watered wine. Oh, but the story of the bandages is simple enough. I’ve become quite capable of doing many things over the past two years, and I’ve hired out as a nurse for pay a dozen times.
Quite the servant I’ve become. What would my father say if he knew?
He was quite right that Wickham would leave me without support.
Now I suppose Mr. Wickham can never provide us anything.
I do not know what we shall do!” She pressed her lips tightly together.
Complaints were as useless as tears. “But as for nursing, I first got the experience of nursing when Wickham’s friend Denny got shot in his own duel. ”
“Shall I owe you anything for the service?” Mr. Darcy asked.
“For bandaging you once? Do not be absurd.” Elizabeth felt a choking sensation. So little money. She barely had enough to return to London. Not quite enough for a stage to Hertfordshire.
She should ask him for money.
And all this time she thought she did not care about her respectability, so long as she could avoid becoming a burden on her father, who stole the resources and chances that her sisters ought to have.
It had been her choice to elope with a useless man when Papa had refused them permission because he’d been wise enough to see that Wickham was useless.
Elizabeth could not ask for money from the man who’d been shot by Mr. Wickham.
“Common courtesy,” Elizabeth said, “demands that I help you in this case. It is like what I did to pay those of my husband’s debts that he acquired while we still lived together. He shot you—you must hire a nurse.”
Mr. Darcy had a stubborn expression on his strong face. He would not be easy to force in this matter, but Elizabeth had more than enough tension and anger in her that she was prepared to fight upon the matter if she must.
Elizabeth went to the writing desk and quickly wrote out in a clear hand the shopping list. “Miss Darcy, give this to Sally. Make sure that she has the money or credit to purchase what is on the list.”
Miss Darcy immediately moved to do so. She’d been folding a piece of paper into an animal to entertain Emily.
The girl seemed to be quite good with children.
Elizabeth slumped in the writing chair.
And now there was nothing more that was urgent to do.
Damn.
Miss Darcy returned to the room with both children, and she immediately engaged George by showing him what she had been doing with the paper. Both were delighted by this.
Mr. Darcy still studied Elizabeth.
She stared back at him, until he looked away.
She knew what she must do. She needed to find where Mr. Wickham’s body was, if they had not buried him yet, and let George have a look at his papa.
George should have one chance to see him that he might remember.
And Elizabeth needed to pay her respects to him, and she needed to inquire at his lodgings if there were any personal items that might be of use.
What she could not do though was pay any debts he might have.
By now the last savings from when she had sold every piece of jewelry and nearly every piece of fine clothes after Mr. Wickham left were exhausted. And she could not return to the house of the friend who she had lodged with for the last weeks.
Not after that friend’s husband had made a quite serious effort to seduce Elizabeth.
Elizabeth’s heart started to pound. An unpleasant hollowness ached in her stomach. A claw caught at her throat.
Instead of doing what she ought to do, and making inquiries about Mr. Wickham’s location, Elizabeth grabbed the tray on which the half-eaten bowls of broth had been placed. She piled several other small items on the tray and carried it across the hall and down the stairs into the kitchen.
The stench of rotten meat met her as she passed through the kitchen into the adjoining scullery. Sally and George had made a bit of a start at the cleaning. She put the bowls down in the copper sink for washing the china and looked at the water cistern to see how much was present.
Nearly empty; if Sally did not return soon, she would go out to collect water from the communal well.
Elizabeth went out to the kitchen, and she hauled the dishes scattered around into the scullery, placing them in either the stone sinks for the pots and servant’s dishes, or the softer copper sink for the family’s plate.
She then went back to the drawing room to see what else there was to collect.
George immediately ran up to her, followed by Emily. “Look, look, look!” he waved a piece of paper shaped as a swan in Elizabeth’s face, “Georgie made this. Her name is almost George, like my name. But for a girl.”
“I see,” Elizabeth looked seriously at the swan. Her lips felt rather numb, but she made herself to smile. “And what type of animal is it?”
George looked at her like she was an idiot, and then with a giggle he said, “It’s a swan, of course!”