Chapter Three
Mr. Darcy woke from a nightmare where he’d shot Wickham, but the blood spurted and spurted from his own chest. It did not stop, like it had after the doctor bound the wound up.
A terrible sharp pain came from his chest as he woke up and instinctively tried to sit up.
“Don’t struggle, don’t get up. There, just keep lying here peacefully. Very good.”
Darcy blinked at the half-familiar female form in front of him.
She put her surprisingly strong hands on him and pressed him back to the couch. They felt cold and refreshing on his skin.
His fever was higher than it had been earlier in the day.
The reddish light of dusk came through the windows. A soft sound of Georgiana’s music came from the piano. And then a discordant bang of random piano keys being smashed. Darcy looked around and saw that Georgiana sat at the stool with Mrs. Wickham’s little girl on her lap.
“It’s time to change your bandages.” Mrs. Wickham smiled at him, but there was something thinner and more ragged in her manner than earlier in the day.
It made him wish to throw up. He had killed her husband. He had committed an even graver sin in killing Wickham than he had realized at first.
The boy, Mr. Wickham’s son, looked at Darcy now that he had woken with some interest. His hands were full of blocks that he was stacking into a tower.
“Water,” Darcy croaked.
Mrs. Wickham poured a glass, and then she carefully dripped out a dose of laudanum into it that was much smaller than what his father had habitually taken to deal with the pain during his long final illness.
After the first dose let him sleep, despite the aching pain in his chest, Darcy no longer had the will to fight the medicine. He’d refused it because he wanted to hurt. He deserved the pain.
Even now when he was faced with Mr. Wickham’s widow, there was a thing in him that exulted in his success. He had avenged the crime against his sister’s virtue. He had proven, in the most profound way possible, that he had a right to call himself a man of honor.
Mrs. Wickham helped him slowly sip from the cup of water without having to sit up.
The broken ribs ached, the wound hurt and hurt, gnawing into his brain, and often when he took a breath there was a sharp pain.
When he’d drunk the water, Mrs. Wickham put a cold hand on his forehead, and she nodded. “Not too high—I’ll return in half a second. Stay here, George, and don’t bother Mr. Darcy.”
Mrs. Wickham quickly walked out of the room.
Darcy’s eyes involuntarily followed the swaying of her dress around her legs and her easy stride. She had a light and pleasing figure, with excellent eyes. It was pleasant to think about something besides the pain.
It surprised Darcy that a gaping wound in his chest, laudanum, and that Mrs. Wickham was serving as his nurse were not all sufficient to prevent his strong awareness of how profoundly appealing she was as a woman.
It showed the depths of his depravity, to think of the beauty of a woman whose husband he had murdered in hot blood.
As soon as Mrs. Wickham left the room the little boy smiled at him. His expression painfully reminded Darcy of the face of Mr. Wickham when they had both been young and dear friends. “Mama said it was my father who pinked you.”
“Pinked me? Oh, you mean who shot me.” Darcy looked at the boy’s cheerful countenance. It was not his place to tell him, if he did not yet understand, but Darcy had to ask. “Do you realize that it was your father whom I killed?”
“Oh, yes. I know. We saw him at the church. The hole was much bigger on his back than in the front. Did you know that guns did that?”
“I did.”
“I don’t mind that you popped him. I can now tell the fellows that my papa got killed in a duel. And that he pinked his man. They’ll all be envious that I saw both wounds. He stood the line, didn’t he?”
Good God, I must have hit him. Wickham’s voice from across the clearing. The look in his eyes as Darcy raised the pistol and took the second to properly sight the pistol before shooting.
“He was not a coward,” Darcy replied. He found himself suddenly on the edge of tears.
“That’s even better than actually having a papa.”
Perhaps perceiving Darcy’s confusion, the young boy added, his eyes wide and sincere and painfully like Wickham’s, “No one will make fun of me for that.”
Darcy could not reply.
Wickham had been a sweet child. Spoiled but full of authentic delight in cookies and running and games and laughter. When had he become the man who would call the girl whose virtue he had just taken a slut in front of her horrified brother?
“Tell me how you did for him! Tell me, please!”
“You can hardly wish to hear that tale.”
The boy stuck his tongue out. “Was it like this?” George tapped his chest and moaned ‘Ohhhhh’.
He pretended to fall towards the floor and then grimaced and forced himself to stand up.
He made a gun with his fingers and pulled back the thumb like it was the cock of the pistol before pulling the imaginary trigger and making a vaguely gunshot like sound.
“No,” Darcy replied. “I was staggered but never near falling. I only perceived the pain after I made my shot.”
“Woah.”
Mrs. Wickham returned carrying a tray with a collection of wet bandages with steam lightly rising from them. They had a pleasant smell of chamomile. There also was another bowl of the broth that the doctor had said was all that he could eat for at least two weeks.
“A poultice of chamomile and comfrey this time.” Mrs. Wickham said, “And now let me see.”
She undid the tie on the bandages and removed them. The pile of linen was soaked through with fresh blood, and a yellowish fluid.
“Not too bad. It’s already entered the inflammatory stage. We’ll hopefully see the beginnings of a laudable pus tomorrow. How do you feel?”
“Feverish and it hurts, just a little,” Darcy replied.
Mrs. Wickham laughed at that.
“You speak like a doctor,” Darcy added.
Mrs. Wickham smiled at him. “But no chills? I have not seen you shaking at all.”
“No chills,” Darcy agreed.
“I know a little rudimentary Latin—my father liked to teach me—I was his favorite. It has been of use, I think, in encouraging doctors to explain their mode of care to me at greater length and to recommend me to their patients—I dare say I could easily enough make a passable living in the profession. My father would be shocked if he knew.”
Mrs. Wickham wrung out the new bandages and placed them against his chest. The hot compress felt soothing, and the tense muscles relaxed. She wrapped the long bandage to fix it in place around the wound.
There was something terribly intimate in the way that she lifted him up and wrapped the white linen around his chest. Her hair brushed against his chest and against his cheek. Her scent filled his nostrils.
When Mrs. Wickham stepped away again, Darcy felt lightheaded.
He noticed that Georgiana had stopped playing to watch them, and he smiled at his sister. She looked down instead of replying.
Without asking if he’d like to try to feed himself, Mrs. Wickham then held out a spoonful of the broth.
It now tasted much better than it had this morning.
Despite his annoyance, Darcy let her feed him by spoon. He knew from this morning that making himself properly sit up to eat would be exquisitely painful.
“I shall serve as your nurse tonight,” Mrs. Wickham said. “I...was distracted while out, and I wholly forgot to make inquiries.”
“You do not need to,” Darcy replied.
She gave him another spoonful of broth and replied scornfully, “You would like to have your sister as your nurse—Miss Darcy, I mean no offence, but this is a serious wound. It should be under the care of someone with at least a little experience in such injuries. At least until after suppuration has begun.”
From Georgiana’s wide eyes, it was clear to Darcy that she had found the experience of changing his bandage the one time she made the attempt as unpleasant as he had. Darcy had been in a great deal of pain then, but he’d still done half of the wrapping himself.
He had been the one who had thought it would be better to wrap it tightly enough to keep the blood from flowing out, rather than the opposite.
When he’d eaten a substantial amount of the thin broth, Darcy asked Mrs. Wickham, “Why do you not despise me for killing your husband?”
The woman’s hands stilled.
She looked at her son.
He grinned at Mrs. Wickham, “See, I’ve been very good. I didn’t bother Mr. Darcy at all.”
“Of course not.” She laughed and ruffled her son’s hair. Mrs. Wickham then gave Darcy another spoonful.
A beautiful woman, that had struck him when she had first walked into the room.
She also had a strong will.
Quietly Darcy let her feed him the rest of the bowl.
He still felt dreadfully hungry when the bowl was empty, but there was also an edge of nausea.
His fever was higher than it had been this morning, and despite the nap he felt deeply tired.
He had not slept at all the night before the duel, and the pain from his wound had only allowed him fitful snatches of rest last night.
Georgiana began to play again, and Mrs. Wickham complimented her on her excellence at the piano. Darcy closed his eyes. There was a childish shout from George. The girl, Emily, started crying. George went over to her, and said, “Emily is sad.”
Mrs. Wickham stood from where she had sat next to Darcy and went over to her daughter. After picking the girl up, and quieting her with bouncing, she asked Georgiana to play Robin Adair. Mrs. Wickham sang the accompaniment with a lovely soprano, while walking the child about.
“What made th’assembly shine? Robin Adair! What made the ball so fine? Robin was there. And when the play was o’er, what made my heart so sore? Ah! It was parting with Robin Adair.”
Darcy’s throat caught. He felt something indescribably painful, and a sense of the loss, and the crime, and the profound wrongness of taking a gun and shooting a man.
Ending a human soul. And he remembered Wickham’s face, when they both were young, and when young Wickham followed him about as they played in the spring flowers. Splashing in the lake together.
The ducks, Wickham had liked to feed the ducks.
Damn you. If you had just deloped, or missed, or killed me, I would never have shot you.
“But now thou’rt cold to me, Robin Adair. And I no more shall see, Robin Adair. Yet he I lov’d so well. Still in my heart shall dwell, Oh! I can ne’er forget, Robin Adair.”
Darcy wiped at his eyes.
When Mrs. Wickham stopped singing Darcy opened his eyes, and said, “You must feel that strongly to sing it so.”
“No.” She looked at the window, then shook her head. “I did once. That is why it is what I always sang to Emily to put her to sleep. But hardly…maybe again. Maybe again. He is dead, and I hardly know. But I think he has already left my heart.”
“Might you sing again?” Darcy asked, “But not Robin Adair, I do not think my heart could bear to hear it again.
Mrs. Wickham held her daughter in her arms, and she lightly swayed back and forth. “Now that I have sung Emily to sleep, I must sing you to sleep as well? Miss Darcy, can you play Bluebells?”
Georgiana’s fingers immediately began the tune, and Darcy closed his eyes.
“O where and O where does your highland laddie dwell; He dwells in merry Scotland where the bluebells sweetly smell, and it’s oh, in my heart I loved my laddie well.”
After she finished, Emily started fidgeting in her sleep, and Mrs. Wickham started to sing Hush-a-bye baby, and as the cradle fell and came down, baby and all, Darcy fell asleep.