Chapter 12 Confessions in the Dark #2
Elizabeth spoke of Mrs Bennet in terms that had never occurred to Darcy.
He had often seen her blush for her mother’s behaviour and had never thought of the older woman in any other terms than as a source of embarrassment to the rest of her family.
It was edifying, in a way that reflected very poorly on him, to hear Elizabeth speak proudly and tenderly of her mother’s devotion to her family, her well-meant endeavours to do well by a husband and five children, each of vastly different temperaments, with limited means and an even more limited imagination at her disposal.
Worldliness, refinement, intelligence—none of these things mattered to Elizabeth half as much as affection and goodness.
Qualities the ostensibly unsophisticated Mrs Bennet apparently possessed in abundance.
It may not have been her object to humble him, but Darcy was nonetheless shamed. Why was it that every conversation with Elizabeth led to another facet of him being undone?
I must make an apology. I have grossly underestimated your mother if it is from her that you have learnt your remarkable compassion.
She looked taken aback and even blushed a little. “Do not all mothers teach love and affection, by dint of loving us?”
He was not sure. His mother had given him good principles but spoilt him, he supposed, in not directing him more stringently on how he ought to follow them.
Elizabeth looked at him intently and bit off two attempts to speak before finally venturing, “Will you tell me about yours?”
Darcy baulked. He rarely talked about his mother.
My mother is dead.
Of course, his bluntness did not deter Elizabeth as it would most people—as it had been intended to do.
“I know that, sir,” she replied softly. “She was still your mother.”
He shifted in his seat, ignoring the way it pulled at the healing flesh upon his neck.
She has been dead a very long time.
“May I ask how long?” she enquired gently.
He opened and closed all five fingers of one hand three times to indicate that she had been dead these past fifteen years.
“So young.”
Darcy knew not whether she referred to him or his mother so gave no response.
“She died birthing your sister?”
He replied in the negative with an extended finger and wrote,
A fever, unrelated. We never discovered the cause.
“And your sister an infant still?”
He touched the back of one hand with a finger of the other to confirm it.
“I am sorry. I imagine it was a dreadful time—for you and your father.”
My father was away and unable to return in time. I held my mother's hand until she was gone. And for a day and a half afterwards.
He stared at the words, not knowing why he had written them.
The only people who knew that tale were his housekeeper, Mrs Reynolds, and the long-deceased Mr Wickham Senior, Pemberley’s steward at the time.
It had been necessary for the latter to forcibly remove him from his mother’s chamber, for he had refused to leave of his own accord.
He dared not look up, for the admission made him feel intolerably exposed.
He did not need to lift his eyes to see Elizabeth lean forward to take the pen from his fingers and write beneath his last line,
That tells me all I could ever wish to know about your mother. Thank you.
He scowled furiously at the paper until he won the struggle to steady his belaboured breathing. Then he took the pen back.
Nay, I thank you. It is difficult to know what to say, for I recall very few details nowadays. My memories are mostly impressions now. I knew my father for longer.
“Was it necessary for you to sit with him also at the end?”
I had no time to sit. He was hale and hearty until the moment he suffered an apoplexy and dropped dead in front of me.
Elizabeth raised a hand to cover her mouth, and he might have felt bad for shocking her but for the expression in her eyes. He did not usually enjoy people’s pity, but hers gave him greater comfort than he had felt in many years.
“How old were you when you lost him?” she enquired with the utmost tenderness.
He showed her on his fingers.
“Two and twenty? That is but a year older than I am now. I know not how I should cope being charged with responsibility for Longbourn, let alone a vast estate and any one of my younger sisters. It must have been terrifying.”
The room was dark and cold and unfamiliar. It felt a thousand miles away from anything Darcy knew—as though no one would ever know if he made the confession that crouched, leaden, upon his tongue. He dipped the pen in the ink and wrote, slowly,
It still is.
He raised his eyes to hers. She said nothing but placed her hand over his and squeezed it. She may as well have taken hold of his heart and squeezed that.
“It is too easy to assume that wealth and privilege assure smooth waters. I daresay both your parents would be incredibly proud of you.”
Never had he wanted to kiss her more—especially when a log collapsed in the fire, sending a plume of sparks and ash up the chimney and making her jump in fright, then laugh heartily at herself for it.
He smiled indulgently at her, enjoying the glow the enlivened flames cast upon her countenance.
The impulse to pull her into his embrace was so great he almost scrawled out a proposal there and then, and might have, had a wave of lightheadedness not sent any such fanciful notions scuttling from his mind.
“There, you see, you are not as well as you think,” Elizabeth said, her amusement quashed by concern. “Perhaps you ought not to have sat up for this long.”
Darcy thought he had sat up for longer yesterday but was not in any way to argue. Despite her urging, he declined any food but accepted her help to stagger back to the bed. A bubble of unease arose in his stomach when she touched her hand to his forehead. “Fever?” he mouthed.
“Nay, I think it is only that you are still weak. Go to sleep. I am sure you will feel better in the morning.”
Darcy was sick of sleeping. He was sick of hurting, too. He wished to be better—strong again, and clean, and home—and married. Indeed, there was but one good thing to have come out of this entire damnable mess. He smiled at her as best he could with lips rendered unwieldy by exhaustion.
“Would that my parents could have met you, sweetest Elizabeth. Then they would have been truly proud.” He closed his eyes, hoping that if he must sleep again, it would at least be punctuated with dreams of her.