Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
On the first day of their travel, Darcy and Elizabeth were like strangers, careful and pleasant with one another until they arrived at the inn where they would break their journey. It was not yet the hour they preferred to dine, and Elizabeth decided she would like to walk.
The village wherein they stayed was a lively market town, its populace thronging the streets even at a time close to the dinner hour and in such cold weather.
Elizabeth was soothed by the bustle, her observation of these strangers diverting her mind.
She walked slowly, and when she heard someone call out the time, she was surprised that well over an hour had passed.
She hurried back to the inn, rushing to her chamber where she encountered Darcy in the process of ordering his man to gather up some of the inn’s workers to search for her. “I am here,” she announced as she entered the room.
Darcy’s face was white with rage, but he remained calm as he dismissed the servants and requested dinner trays in their sitting room for an hour hence. As the door clicked shut behind the servants, he pulled her to him, kissing her gently on the top of her head. “Are you well?”
“Perfectly so,”
Then, pushing her back, he bellowed, “Where on earth did you go? What were you thinking to vanish in such a way? Jervis had no idea… I had no idea… Do you have any notion of how frantic I have been?”
It was too much. The days of worry, the sleepless nights, and the feeling—unreasonable though it might be—that he had abandoned her, all coalesced into powerful anger.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but your speech strongly resembles husbandly concern.”
“No one knew where you were, darkness was nigh, there are villagers all about the streets—”
“What do you care!” she cried out. “Now you choose to be a husband? You have scarcely said two words to me, and now you wish for an accounting of my whereabouts?”
“Do not dare suppose you know how I feel. I am being torn in two—”
“You are cold and silent, and I am in agony! You make me feel like Netherfield Park!”
She began to weep, and Darcy looked at her in utter bewilderment. “Like Netherfield? What does that signify?”
Elizabeth cried with increasing vigour, and she felt Darcy’s hand upon her back, guiding her over to a small sofa by the fire. She slowly gained her control as he sat close by.
“I am a leased property, and now the owner wants to return, and you will walk off without a look back.”
Darcy sighed and reached over to caress her face. “Of course not.”
“It certainly seems so to me. I am discarded.”
For several moments he said nothing, and when he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse with the effort of suppressing his emotion.
“This is difficult, but I do not know a different way. I do not wish to hurt you or abandon you, but you…you will abandon me. You will return to your former life with a man and a son you love, and I shall be left with nothing and no one. If I think about it, it will destroy me, so I do not think of it.”
He inhaled deeply with a small shudder. “I want you to be happy, even if it is not with me. If it transpires as I believe it will, you will walk away, and I hope—truly I do—that you will go gladly.”
“How can you speak so?” She was weeping again, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Because it will occur. Every part of me wishes to scream and rage against it, but that will not help. It will only make this more difficult for you. So I am frozen in my silence, just hoping I do not make it worse.”
She pressed her wet eyes to his shoulder. “Do not be silent with me. It is not yet done, it might…it might…” She stopped, feeling the futility of her words.
His lips pressed into her hair. “Just know that I love you with all that I am, and I shall love you forever. No matter that you can no longer be my wife, I promise you that I shall remain your husband, always.”
Elizabeth watched Darcy as the carriage rolled on in the mid-afternoon of their second day of travel.
Her eyes gently traced his handsome features in repose.
Both had slept poorly for several days, and particularly after their argument the previous evening, so it could be no surprise that he had fallen asleep.
She thought of the sentiments he had expressed the night before, and in them, she understood the trueness of his love. He wished her to be happy—this man, the best man she had ever known. Never could she love a man more, and never had she understood it better than now when all love must be in vain.
For so long, for so many months, she had done little more than bemoan the loss of Henry.
She had longed for him, felt the unfairness of her widowhood, and cried bitter tears of love and yearning for her dead husband.
So why, when it seemed she would now have everything she had wished for, was she so despondent?
She whispered quietly to Darcy’s slumbering form. “Loving you is like nothing I ever knew could be possible.”
Had she ever loved Henry? She had, she knew she had, with all the ardour of a seventeen-year-old girl who had known nothing of men or of life.
While not so many years had passed since then, a world of experience had marked and changed her.
She had come to understand loss and deceit, duty and responsibility.
She had become a mother. She had changed from a vivacious and, at times, impertinent country girl to a woman who had to run an estate, honour a title for her country, and care for a family.
Neither Lady Courtenay nor Mrs Elizabeth Darcy was the same as the girl, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, who had given herself so freely to Henry.
Although prudence would dictate that it was fortunate she had not borne Darcy a child, particularly a son, how she wished that she might have.
She longed to have that connexion to him: a bind to Darcy that could not be untied.
She wished to have a son or daughter at whom she might look and think, oh she has her father’s eyes, or he is tall like his father.
That would be yet another complication to this tangle though, so she supposed it was for the best that it was not to be.
The inn where they stayed at the end of the third day of travel was of superior quality, and the proprietor quickly had them installed in his best rooms, promising hot baths and a hearty dinner to be served shortly.
He held true to his word, and soon enough, they met to dine in the sitting room adjoining their bedchambers.
The food was excellent though neither Darcy nor Elizabeth could do the meal justice, both picking disinterestedly at what lay before them.
By unspoken agreement, after they had dined, they remained in the sitting area, both attempting to read books whose pages did not compel them until an acceptable hour came to retire.
Sleep would provide no relief, failing to find either of them. Elizabeth tossed and turned for several hours, sleepless, restless, and sad. The feeling of foreboding upon her was unbearable, especially as the very one she needed to relieve her was the one she felt so certain she would lose.
She rose from her bed, going to a window to stare at the town beneath her.
It was a neat little town, prosperous due to the colliery, and all below her looked well ordered and nicely kept.
The cold caress of moonlight fell upon the streets, making all appear unreal and ghostly, and she shivered with the ominous feel of it.
It was shortly after midnight when Elizabeth finally succumbed to her wishes. She knocked softly at Darcy’s door and pushed it open, seeing him sitting in a chair by the fire, a book closed on his lap.
He did not speak, regarding her in silence as she crossed the room towards him.
He held out his arms, inviting her into his embrace, but she knelt instead and laid her head on his lap.
He entangled his hand in her hair, caressing the back of her neck gently with his fingers.
They sat in this manner for some time until she spoke, her voice hoarse. “Take me home.”
“Home?”
“Pemberley, London…wherever.”
He did not reply.
“Or…or perhaps we can…can you take me away? Take me away, please.”
His fingers stilled for a moment. “Away?”
“Ireland, America, the colonies, the Indies…wherever you would like. A place where no one has ever heard of the Earl of Courtenay or the Darcys.”
“Would you truly wish for that?” His tone was gentle. “This man could be Henry, whom you love and for whom you have yearned these past years. The father of your son.”
She tilted her head up to look at him. “Fitzwilliam, I want you. I want our life together. I loved him once, but he left me, and I left him, and I do not want to go back.”
She thought she saw a tear glint in his eye. “You cannot choose. If it is he, then you are still married to him, and he will be your husband. You are his by law and by God.”
“And so, I beg you,” she whispered hoarsely, “leave with me now before the choice, or lack thereof, finds me.”
A long silence enshrouded them. At last, he said, “I cannot. Heaven help me, I cannot.”
As dawn broke upon the town, Darcy and Elizabeth strolled together slowly towards a pretty little wilderness not far from the inn. He offered his arm and she took it, winding hers around his and pressing the side of her body against him, her head resting against his shoulder.
By unspoken agreement, they indulged in their happier memories as they walked.
They laughed about their time in Hertfordshire, reminiscing on the assemblies and the Netherfield ball.
They spoke of their wedding and of the days following when they scandalised Darcy’s household by remaining in his bedchamber with no respite.
They did not speak of her son, the son he had called his own for an all too brief time.
It was too painful and unfair to mention this reminder that Darcy would not only lose his marriage but his son as well.
They returned to the inn for breakfast hours later, both picking uselessly at an assortment of breads and meats until their purpose could be denied no more and they set out to complete the dreaded task.