Chapter Fourteen
Elizabeth woke up the next morning with George flopped over her stomach while Emily still slept in the crook of her arm.
She needed to use the chamber pot.
Quiet, peaceful, and she did not want to move. She smiled as she listened to the slow breathing of her children.
Had she really agreed to marry Mr. Darcy yesterday?
The heavy weight of George on her chest made it impossible for Elizabeth to panic.
Obviously, she had planned to never marry again. Trusting herself to another man was impossible.
Yet…she trusted Mr. Darcy.
Darcy was trustworthy.
And having a father would be good for George. She had already seen the benefits of Darcy’s influence on the young boy in the weeks since they had lived here.
She tried to feel calm, warm, and not scared at all.
And then was she kneed in the side and shaken wildly.
“Mama! Mama! Are you really marrying Mr. Darcy?”
“Yes, dear, I am going to marry Darcy,” Elizabeth replied to George with a smile. “Do let me get up.”
George held her cheeks between his hands and excitedly shouted, “I’m gonna have a papa. I’m gonna have a papa!”
Sick pit her in her stomach. Spasm in her chest.
What if she trusted Darcy? Completely. What if she forgot to fear being abandoned, and then one day he was simply not there? Like Wickham.
Elizabeth stood.
Why hadn’t she simply said ‘no’?
George bounced, grinned, smiled, and hopped down the stairs. Elizabeth made him hold the banister so he did not tumble all the way down.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was already wholly awake and dressed, and John was shaving Mr. Darcy when Elizabeth entered the drawing room.
George immediately hopped over to Darcy, who invited him to sit on his lap while the valet finished his work. This made Elizabeth more than a little anxious, but the young boy, oddly, was for once perfectly still.
She then changed Mr. Darcy’s bandage, though at this point it was much less of a production than before.
She had switched to using dry bandages to cover the wound, where the chief remaining purpose of the bandages was to keep the wound clean, and to catch the modest amount of exudate that was still produced by the wound.
The tissue beneath had filled up, and now it was time for the skin to close, after which point the chief part of the process would be complete and almost all lingering worry about erysipelas would be at an end.
Mr. Darcy smiled at her in an almost unsure manner as her fingers, inevitably, touched his chest.
The smooth feel of his skin, the peppery male scent mixed with the cologne that John had applied, the hair upon his chest.
Elizabeth’s stomach felt light, and if she concentrated upon his scent, her hands would shake for a wholly different reason.
They were going to marry, and then they would join together.
She was eager, desperate for it.
After breakfast Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Time to part, time to part. I’ll be heading off now.”
He kissed Georgiana, shook Darcy’s hand, and then shook Elizabeth’s hand. “It has been an odd experience to meet you, and I cannot help but like you. The more I think upon the matter, the better I think this shall be for Darcy.”
“That is the sort of compliment I like best,” Elizabeth replied. “One whose honestly cannot be doubted.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam grinned.
“And since I am to marry your cousin, I know that I shall see you again. When is that likely to happen?”
“Soon enough, and often enough I imagine. We are happily enough being kept for at least another year on the island instead of being sent to either India or the continent. It is tradition at Christmas for Darcy to visit my father’s estate. I shall see you then at the very least.”
Oddly, Elizabeth found herself to feel no anxiety at the thought of meeting the august and distinguished family of Mr. Darcy—a collection of people whose high noses she had heard described extensively by the questionable authority of Mr. Wickham. They were merely rich and powerful.
She smiled to Colonel Fitzwilliam, “The earl! I shall meet an actual earl. I do not believe I’ve ever had a chance to meet anyone of greater prominence than a baronet.”
“Oh, a baronet! A baronet! Such small persons. Not peers. They bought their meaningless honors. But we let them pretend to be impressive, so long as they throw their support to the Tories.”
“I’m a Whig,” Darcy said.
“Have no anxiety on my part, now that I shall be connected by marriage to an actual peer, I shall be behind no one,” Elizabeth said, “in insisting that baronets are of no significance.”
“I thank you for that.”
“Do tell your father, when you describe all of my mercenary tendencies, and other character flaws, that I give due homage to his grandeur as The Earl.”
“It is my brother who shall be charmed by that.” Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “But do not worry, I shall send a scrupulously honest description of my true views of your character.”
“Oh my,” Elizabeth said, in fact feeling a little concern. “That sounds ominous. Scrupulously honest—and when you see that all your dark imaginings about my schemes have been fully justified by the fact.”
“Ah, do you intend to insist to everyone that you are mercenary, as Darcy insists that he is driven purely by duty?”
“Richard,” Darcy said sharply. “This is my duty.”
He then looked at Elizabeth with some concern. Their eyes met, and Elizabeth felt that sharp sense of awareness of him again. The jolt in her stomach.
“And are you purely mercenary, with no attachment to Mr. Darcy at all?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked.
“Richard!” Now it was Georgiana who made an exclamation against him. “How can you say such a thing. Elizabeth likes my brother very much, and the whole is romantic, even if Elizabeth insists that it is most unromantic.”
“Ah, so you are mercenary,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, grinning widely.
“Richard,” Elizabeth said laughingly, “I hope you do not mind if I Christian name you, since everyone else insists upon doing so; my dear Richard, I only tell you to write what you think to be true.”
“But I wish to hear what you say of yourself.”
“If I did not have the highest confidence in Mr. Darcy’s character, I would not risk marriage with him.
But my duty to my children must be my chief aim.
I thought about this matter over the night, and I am convinced that I never would have trusted myself sufficiently to enter a marriage upon a ‘romantic’ basis. ”
She looked at Darcy, wondering how he would take this.
Their eyes met.
His expression was at first serious, but then he smiled at her.
Georgiana said, “Lizzy, you cannot say that—I hope to marry someday. And I hope for it to be romantic. I must believe that one can make a serious mistake in such a matter and still exercise happy and good judgement in the future.”
“I do not deny you, your right to trust your own judgement. I only note that when I examine myself, I realize that I do not trust mine—Mr. Darcy, I hope that this profession of my own deficiencies does not leave you with a sense that the ‘prize’ which you have won has less luster than you imagined.”
“Elizabeth, I trust you, and your judgement.”
Something in her stomach fluttered.
“Oh, come now, come. Do not both look at each other in such a manner.” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Not till I have absented myself. But Mrs. Wickham, as you are to marry my cousin, I beg you to not think more highly of his good sense than you ought.”
He grinned at both of them.
“What do you mean by that?” Darcy asked.
“Only that you are an idiot. If you were a clever man, you would marry her because she was a fortune hunter, but as you are not, you shall marry her even though she is not one at all.”
“What?” Elizabeth tilted her head. “I do not think I follow your reasoning.”
Darcy though rolled his eyes. “I do well enough. But he is wrong. And it was badly phrased.”
“If you think I badly phrased what I said, perhaps you misunderstood,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied.
“But the time has come for me to absent myself.” He bowed low to all.
Hands were shaken, and he embraced Georgiana, looked at her closely, and then said, “Take care of yourself, and do continue to listen to Mrs. Wickham, especially once she is Mrs. Darcy.”
“Of course,” Georgiana replied.
Colonel Fitzwilliam took Emily for a minute, swung her around several times, and then solemnly and in a most gentlemanlike manner took his leave of little George with a shaken hand.
And then the officer was off, whistling as he walked to the inn yard where Darcy’s carriage stood to take him along the first stage of the journey.
Later that day Georgiana seemed to have a notion that the two of them must wish for some privacy, and so she eagerly took the children off to the beach again, while leaving Elizabeth with Darcy in the too warm drawing room.
It was reasonably proper. The room was open to a full house of awake servants, and they were in any case engaged, but Elizabeth felt a frisson go through her when she found herself alone with Darcy.
She changed his bandage again, and the open portion of his wound was visibly smaller than it had been only two days before, with the scab crusting over on the inside.
Just a few more days before it would likely stop leaking anything, but she imagined that there would be some pain from the inner wound for a long time, perhaps forever.
But despite that, Mr. Darcy had wholly given up the use of the laudanum a week prior, stating that he simply did not feel enough discomfort for it to be worth speaking of.
Elizabeth sat near Mr. Darcy, trying to find something to say.
Her heart hammered. She could not look at him, and she knew she must not look at his lips. Elizabeth picked up a fine blue painted cup from the tea tray and she turned it around and around in her fingers. She admired the Wedgewood mark on the bottom.
“Elizabeth,” Darcy said.