Chapter Eight
Preparing Mr. Darcy’s bandage settled Elizabeth.
Her hands shook when she entered the kitchen. Sally stood by the stove, tending the fire.
Elizabeth forced a smile. “Go prepare a bedroom for Colonel Fitzwilliam.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Milk on the stove. Stirring constantly. Checking the temperature with her finger every minute, and then just when it reached the point that it was almost painful to keep the finger in, she removed it from the heat.
Tears, after all, never helped anyone.
The tight sensation in her gut slowly receded.
After last night she had depended on having a month to contemplate her situation and decide what she must do next. She couldn’t go to Papa. She wouldn’t make it real. She wouldn’t become that burden that her father had said she would become if she married Wickham.
She would not.
She would not steal from her sisters what belonged to them. Not because she had been so immature, so na?ve, and so stupid. So small.
Elizabeth, unfortunately, had no better idea about how to care for her children than to go to Hertfordshire immediately and hope that Papa would support them. If she had been forced to leave now, she would in fact have gone to Hertfordshire, without even a real promise of a welcome.
Pawning George’s storybook in London would give enough money to get the stage to take them the rest of the way home…
Soak bread crusts in the milk. Wrap the soggy bread in the bandages. Put it on the silver tray. Collect a long strip of linen to fix the poultice in place.
Kitty and Lydia might be quite as likely to elope as she had been. She hoped Papa would keep a better eye on them, and she hoped that he would not permit them into society until they were seventeen.
She missed her sisters.
Homesickness had been dangerous. She had refused the sensation.
But she felt an ache to see her home country, the home ways, the old house, her father and his bald spot and grey bushy sideburns, her nervously fluttering mother.
Mary and Jane. Sweet, dear Jane. The two younger sisters would be changed so greatly.
Lydia would now be fifteen. The same age that Elizabeth had been.
Elizabeth returned to the drawing room.
Colonel Fitzwilliam’s voice was loudly proclaiming, “A total, entire, idiotic, and what is worse, asinine fool.”
She would not be driven away by him.
If he convinced Mr. Darcy to send her off now, Elizabeth decided she would scream and demand money. She would now deserve it, not because Darcy killed her husband, but because he tortured her nerves.
As Elizabeth opened the door, she saw that it was in fact the cowering Georgiana who was the subject of this tirade. She held Emily like a Catholic putting the cross between themselves and a brigand, and the little girl sobbed.
George watched Colonel Fitzwilliam steadily, clearly unsettled by the man. Upon seeing his mother step through the door, he came to her and pointed at his sister. “Emily is sad.”
“I see.”
Emily squealed and stretched her arms towards Elizabeth, and Georgiana put her down and the little girl ran unsteadily across the room to Elizabeth.
Mr. Darcy said in a manner that showed that it caused him pain to speak firmly, “Fitzwilliam, save your lecture to Georgiana for when we are in our private circle. We must speak together first.”
Elizabeth smiled as her daughter clamped herself about her skirts. “Darling, I cannot pick you up, as you see.” Emily squeezed Elizabeth tighter as Elizabeth tried to scoot forward a few feet towards Mr. Darcy.
“Oh, the deuce,” Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed. He stomped over and grabbed the tray from Elizabeth. “I can change the bandage myself. I’ve seen it done enough times.”
Elizabeth laughed. She in fact liked the officer a little.
She could not despise him for his suspicions about her. Anyone in his position would have such sentiments.
“No, no, just a second—” Elizabeth replied as she picked up Emily and bounced her. “This is the disadvantage that your cousin chose when he insisted on being nursed by a friend, no doubt to save money.”
Mr. Darcy laughed, which turned into a hiss of pain immediately. He grinned widely. “Mrs. Wickham, I beg you to have mercy on me. Do not say such things.”
As Emily was now calmer, Elizabeth smiled at him, and after kissing Emily’s hair several times, and squeezing her tightly, she handed the girl back to Georgiana who happily took her.
Georgiana asked Emily, “Would you like to look at the piano again—I dare say you will be a fine player one day.”
Emily squealed delightedly.
Elizabeth removed Mr. Darcy’s bandage, and with both professional curiosity and a cousin’s concern, Colonel Fitzwilliam studied the blood and exudate on the bandage, and then the wound itself.
He gave it all a sniff and nodded with satisfaction.
“Very red. And the white is developing under it. Does the surgeon plan to lance it?”
“Tomorrow if the abscess has not burst on its own.”
“It hurts,” Mr. Darcy said to Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Like that time you boxed my ears in when I was nine, but in the body not the soul.”
This statement brought a grin to Colonel Fitzwilliam, though Elizabeth thought his eyes were more worried as he studied the wound.
After his inspection was complete, Elizabeth dripped laudanum into the wound, and then placed the poultice, and Mr. Darcy let out a relaxed sigh as the heat and pressure reduced the pain a little.
Colonel Fitzwilliam’s help was useful in sitting Darcy up for her to fix the bandage around his chest.
“Jove,” Dacy murmured. “I would advise against being shot.”
“I might’ve told you that,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied sourly. “What convinced you to let Wickham get the drop on you? He was never fast at shooting.”
Elizabeth made him drink water with laudanum. “You need your rest,” she said.
She noted that Colonel Fitzwilliam watched closely how much she put into the cup.
He drank the laudanum with a quick eagerness, and then the gentleman relaxed back into the fabric of the couch.
Mr. Darcy closed his eyes. “Did not want to shoot him.”
“Until he shot you?” There was affection in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s voice. “A fool. But I have good hopes that the campaign will still turn well.”
He then turned to Elizabeth, as though remembering that she perhaps had reason to be unhappy at the result of this ‘campaign’, “Apologies, but I shall say it. I am happy Mr. Wickham is dead.”
“I thought that polite manners required that one not speak ill of the dead. Let the good be buried with their bones and all.”
“A simple soldier. I am nothing but a simple soldier. The politeness that ladies expect is wholly beyond me. I cannot manage it.”
“You mean you refuse to manage it,” Elizabeth replied.
“Quiet,” Mr. Darcy said without opening his eyes again. “No quarrelling.”
George played with blocks that Georgiana had found for him the previous day.
The discordant piano playing of Emily came from the other end of the room.
“I do not believe that we are quarrelling,” Elizabeth said as she sat down. “Merely engaged in a dispute. I like disputes; they are so much like arguments, yet not.”
Mr. Darcy half coughed, and a smile widened across his face. “Mrs. Wickham, I have already begged you to show mercy.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam looked between them with a queer frown.
For a while neither of them said anything. Emily was entertained by Georgiana playing the tune to a lullaby as she kept the girl on her lap.
Mr. Darcy did not open his eyes, and his face became looser and more relaxed. After some minutes, Mr. Darcy’s breathing evened out and became nasal. He was asleep.
Colonel Fitzwilliam looked at Elizabeth, and then he said quietly, “I do not like it. Why are you here? He killed your husband. Does that mean nothing to you? It would mean a great deal to me.”
“I have no place that I wish to be,” Elizabeth replied. “Nor where I belong. This will do for a short time. I assure you that I know I cannot stay here forever.”
“I shall observe you closely, I promise.”
Elizabeth smiled back at the officer. “Your concern for your cousin does you justice.”
“He is not in his right mind. A mix of guilt, half an expectation of death—I swear, from his manner that he thinks death far more likely than either of us do—and a fey lightness. I shall not permit him to be abused.”
There was a clash of piano keys, and carrying Emily, Georgiana came close to them again. “Do you really mean that? Richard, do you really think that he will not die?”
The military officer waved his hand dismissively. “Until the wound has been closed and healed for a three month there is always a chance of a bad outcome.”
“Oh.” Georgiana gave Emily to Elizabeth and embraced her cousin. “Oh! I thought Mrs. Wickham and the doctor merely meant to deceive me. But he has a fever.”
“Every wound of this sort leads to a fever. But some infections are healing—my regimental surgeon believes that the white pus crowds out the ability for gangrene or St. Martin’s fire to set in.
Nineteen times out of twenty, when a wound looks like Darcy’s at this stage, it heals without much difficulty. ”
“The ribs were also broken around the sternum by the shot,” Elizabeth said, perceiving from Georgiana’s manner that she would be comforted more by a suggestion of all the horrible things that might happen than by an insistence which pretended that they could not.
“An inflammation might settle in the breaks.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam looked at her. She thought there was approval in his expression. “Yes, that could happen. Not often, though.”
“Oh, but I had been so sure!” Georgiana exclaimed. “I cannot help but feel relieved, even if there is still great danger.”
Emily pointed at Elizabeth’s breasts. With a smile Elizabeth stood from her chair and bounced her a little. “I must retreat for a little privacy with the little one.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam nodded, but Georgiana said, “Why? You do this frequently with her when she is upset.”