Chapter 6 Love is Smoke made with the Fumes of Sighs #2
“What wishes do you have for our family?” Mr Darcy wondered.
Elizabeth’s breath hitched. What if I never beget a son?
Her husband must have sensed her unease and seized her hand.
“Tell me,” he urged.
“I want as many children as the Lord will grant me, though I cannot promise they will be sons,” she whispered.
Mr Darcy hauled her into his lap and tucked her head under his chin.
“There is no entail on Pemberley, so a daughter could inherit, and even if we are not blessed with a child of our own, Georgiana’s would.”
“What if Georgiana never marries?”
“Judge Darcy is next in line, then Augustus, and after him Clarissa. I dare say that between the five of us, at least one will produce an heir or heiress.”
Elizabeth sighed in contentment and nuzzled deeper into the embrace.
“Methinks we need more practice if we are to make a Darcy baby. Even the vicar emphasised the importance of avoiding fornication except for the creation of children…”
Mr Darcy laughed and complied with her expressed wish. They hardly left their bed for the coming week. The rented cottage had no live-in servants, only two maids and a cook, who came to serve breakfast at ten in the morning and went home after dinner.
A week into their honeymoon the Darcys were enjoying a lazy breakfast. With Easter Sunday only four days away, the tradition of Mr Darcy’s annual visit to his formidable aunt was about to be broken. They had no plans to leave the cottage for a month complete and would join the Season in mid-April.
“You are missing your yearly Easter sojourn to Kent.”
“Yes, but it is by no means a deprivation,” Mr Darcy assured her, though he did not meet her eyes.
Elizabeth’s encounter with Mr Darcy’s venerable aunt had not convinced her that Mr Collins’s lavish praise and devotion was deserved.
However, she had met the lady but once, her behaviour had been confusing at best, and Mr Collins could hardly be deemed a reliable source.
Her final judgment must await further intelligence.
“We could have indulged in clandestine assignations in the lanes of Rosings Park as Mrs Collins invited me to join her and her husband for Easter. Of course, that was months before we married. She might have rescinded the invitation in fear of having to entertain the illustrious Mr Darcy in her humble abode, and that would surely have sent her husband into a fit of nerves rivalling my mother’s. ”
Elizabeth’s merry laugh died in her throat at her husband’s wrinkled nose and pursed lips.
“We would have resided at Rosings rather than Mr Collins’ small parsonage,” Mr Darcy corrected her.
“Will you not tell me something about your family? You have met nearly all of my relations, but I have yet to encounter any of yours except Lady Catherine and her daughter.”
Mr Darcy shifted in his seat. It was strange that none of his family had been present at their wedding, though she supposed the delay must take some of the blame.
By the time they finally married, the House of Lords was already in session, and the colonel cousin he spoke so much about was busy with his army affairs on the continent.
But Miss Darcy was a girl of seventeen summers and could not have so many pressing matters to occupy her time, though she supposed the lack of a male relative to convey her to Longbourn might have been the reason for her absence.
“I have a small family. On the maternal side I have Lady Catherine and her daughter, whom you know. She is the widow of the knight Sir Lewis de Bourgh. Her brother is the Earl of Matlock, who married Lady Audrey Montgomery. They have two sons, Viscount Crawford and Colonel Fitzwilliam. Viscount Crawford is married to Annabella née Cavendish, and they have a son and a daughter. On the paternal side, I have Judge Darcy, who was my father’s younger brother.
The judge has a son and a daughter, Augustus and Clarissa. ”
“Well, you have more than me. My father was my grandmother’s only child, and I must be content that my mother had a brother and a sister. They are my only close relatives. Mr Collins is my father’s third cousin thrice removed, and we have some distant cousins in Scotland but I have never visited.”
She could not help but smile at his slight grimace.
Mr Collins’s obsequious civility he had borne with calm forbearance.
He had listened to Sir William with decent composure and only shrugged his shoulders once their neighbour was out of sight.
Mr and Mrs Phillips’s vulgarity was another matter that had sorely tested his patience during their long engagement period.
Mrs Phillips was a lady of mean understanding with an insatiable thirst for gossip, and she was not so much in awe of Mr Darcy that it prohibited her from asking probing questions, whilst the stuffy Mr Phillips’s penchant for port wine exceeded his sense, and he showed a partiality for the society of the officers that rivalled Lydia’s.
If not for Uncle Phillips, they would never have been introduced to a single soldier.
Mr Darcy deserved a sainthood for enduring incessant social obligations that had taken much of the pleasure from their curtailed season of courtship. She rose and rounded the table to wind her arms around his neck and kiss his cheek.
“Do not think me ungrateful for the plight you have suffered these past four months. I would rather thank you again and again.” She kissed his neck and reckoned that all talking was at an end.
“I rather hoped that you had not noticed my discomfort.”
“Of course I did. That is why I anxiously tried to keep you to myself or guide you in the direction of those in my family one might converse with without mortification.”
“The Gardiners are pleasant, fashionable people. I would not mind furthering the acquaintance.”
Elizabeth flushed but then remembered her aunt and her husband sharing reminiscences about the delights of Lambton, whilst her uncle had engaged him in speaking about various enterprises.
#
It was the last day of their honeymoon. Tomorrow they would travel to their London home to partake in the rest of the Season before they moved to Pemberley at the height of summer.
If Elizabeth were apprehensive about the coming months, Mr Darcy’s resemblance to a Greek God chiselled in Bianco Carrara marble did much to appease her anxiety.
With the confidence of Zeus, he strutted about the room in his birthday suit.
To study him was an occupation Elizabeth would not mind making permanent.
“Are you ogling me?”
How did he know? He had his back turned, and what a marvellous behind it was. The muscles played a symphony beneath his skin when he walked, but when he was at ease, dimples appeared.
“Yes.”
He turned and smirked. Elizabeth wiped her chin in case she had drooled. It was dry, but she did not know where to rest her eyes. She settled on his face, even if his expression was too smug for comfort. A pang settled in her heart, knowing they would soon depart this sanctuary of wedded bliss.
“I dread leaving this place where we have spent the happiest four weeks of my life.”
“We shall be equally happy in London, with its diversions, and happier still when we travel to Pemberley. The house is well kept and comfortable, but I suppose you will adore the grounds even more. It is backed by a ridge of woody hills, and in front, a trout stream swells into a charming lake.”
Elizabeth sighed in contentment at the happy portrait Mr Darcy painted of her future home.