Chapter Twenty
BUT IT TOOK three months.
And so, they were married only a bit ahead of schedule, in the spring.
Georgiana had just come out for her Season and was so overcome by all of the balls and suitors and excitement she had quite forgotten about Neithern or Wickham or Bingley or how she was doomed to be jilted by every man who found her winsome.
She would not be the Duchess of Neithern, but she would be quite all right, in the end. She was Georgiana Darcy, and her brother was devoted to her happiness.
As for the new Duchess of Neithern herself, she was different.
Caroline seemed subdued in a way that she had never been before.
She was not nearly as complimentary as she had once been.
She was quiet, her smiles small, her expression shrewd, taking everything in.
She often had her hand to her belly, even before she was showing the child growing there, as if she knew quite well that the babe was the one thing that was protecting her.
What if it were a girl, Elizabeth wondered. What happened then?
She saw the duke and his duchess on several occasions, for she was being invited to all manner of things by the dowager duchess, her grandmother. She was beginning to feel as if this was, in fact, her family.
Eventually, she got the chance to speak to Neithern about it. They were not exactly alone, for there were others in the room, but they were out of earshot of anyone else.
“You would be appalled to hear what my uncle did to her,” Neithern muttered.
“Well, she overheard our conversation,” said Elizabeth. “She would have been aware of the danger when she agreed to marry him. I daresay she had no one to blame but herself.”
“That’s my wife you’re speaking of,” said Neithern, giving her a disapproving look.
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “Oh, is it that way between you two? And here I thought she had tricked you into it, that she had demanded to be made a duchess or she would expose your true parentage.”
“No, no,” said Neithern. “She’s too shattered for that sort of behavior, really.”
Elizabeth was rendered speechless. What had Caroline done to make Neithern feel this way about her?
“It was my idea, you see,” said Neithern. “My grandmother was quite willing to do absolutely nothing for her.”
“Even after she knew about the child,” said Elizabeth.
Neithern’s gaze flicked off and then back again. “No, obviously, she didn’t know about that until I brought that up.”
Elizabeth folded her arms over her chest. “That is your uncle’s child, is it not? You didn’t impregnate his widow and pass it off as—”
“No,” said Neithern, affronted. “To take advantage of poor Caroline in the wake of such a thing! What do you take me for?”
Elizabeth eyed him.
He cleared his throat. “You know, you and I have shared a number of secrets, madam, but that does not mean you are entitled to know everything about my personal life.”
“I suppose I’m prying,” she said.
“I suppose you are,” he said.
“My apologies,” she said. “I am quite pleased you and Caroline are so happy together.”
“Thank you,” he said. “We are, actually. Happy. And she is different than she was, you know, and I wonder if all she’s ever really wanted is someone to appreciate her.
She appeared desperate, but that was only because she was so sad and lonely.
I know what it’s like to be sad and lonely, and to feel worthless, and…
she and I suit each other, it turns out, in a number of ways. ”
“Yes, perhaps I see that,” said Elizabeth.
As it would happen, Caroline’s first child would be a boy child, a little dukeling. Whether that duke actually had a drop of Sulles blood in him, well, Elizabeth would never know the answer to that. The boy himself would primarily resemble Caroline.
It was not only Caroline who was expecting a child, but Elizabeth’s sister Jane as well. She was only a few months along, so she was there at Elizabeth’s wedding.
And, of course, Elizabeth was increasing during her wedding as well, though no one else besides her and Mr. Darcy were aware of this.
Elizabeth found it rather hilarious, really.
Her first exposure to anything carnal with a man had meant that she thought it was disgusting and horrifying, and to be the way she was about it now, with Mr. Darcy, to be unable to stop herself, to be eager and hungry and so very, very satisfied by her husband—well, her husband-to-be, as scandalous as it was—it was quite the reversal.
So, yes, he’d already gotten her with child when she was saying her vows, and it was probably her own fault.
Mr. Darcy was always trying not to spend inside her, but she was always begging him not to remove his thick trunk of a prick from her when they were joined, because she had never felt such a thing as that.
She thought her husband was shaped in just the way to pleasure her, and when he was pleasuring her, she was not capable of making sensible decisions.
“Lizzy,” he would say, laboriously, “if I do not pull free, I shall spend in you.”
“Oh, spend in me,” she would cry. “Spend in me, please, please.”
And he would rest his forehead against her clavicle and let out noisy breaths in the wake of his climax and say that there was no man on earth who could be strong enough to resist that, and she would pet the back of his head, drunk on pleasure, her own climax washing out like a summer storm, and say, “We shall be married soon, though.”
Except it wasn’t until the spring.
And then, once it was done, she wondered at herself for having resisted it all for so long. She spent so little time in anyone else’s company that the business of her reputation seemed superfluous.
She spent the first year of her marriage increasing and then taking care of a newborn. Their daughter was named Nora, and she was the missing piece of their hearts, the sweetest of sweet babes, their own darling.
Nora grew up with cousins, with Jane’s little girl, who was only a bit older than her and with Caroline’s little dukeling, who was only bit older than both of the others—though the Neitherns and the Bingleys didn’t mix often, as a general rule.
Nora and the future Duke of Neithern grew up together, and that little boy was fiercely protective of Nora, was always bringing her little bits of glittering rocks or flowers he had picked or sometimes things like tiny frogs—he was a little boy.
He adored her, however, and Nora took all this as her due, for everyone adored her, and she was rather used to it.
Their daughter was regal, Elizabeth always thought, not spoiled or entitled, but simply quite capable of handling praise, wearing it well.
It would be hilarious, Elizabeth thought, if they did end up married, after all of the way she and Mr. Darcy had attempted to protect their children’s choices. It would be just exactly the sort of thing that would make her laugh helplessly at the way of the world.
They had only one other child, a boy, three years younger than Nora.
Elizabeth found it was much easier to tell her husband to spend outside of her body when she had the memory of childbirth, after all.
Jane, however, had a brood of children, six in total, four girls and two boys, and Caroline birthed three girls after her little dukeling.
Sometimes, they all visited the Houseman estate.
He’d eventually married, and he and his wife had their own brood of three children.
If they were all there—the Bingleys and the duke and duchess and Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy—all of the children would run like a pack of shrieking and laughing hyenas over the grounds in front of Barralds while the adults would peer out at them, wincing and calling out to them now and again to be careful of this or that.
Sometimes, Elizabeth would have an odd moment during these sorts of gatherings, and she would think of Richard, out of nowhere.
She would think to herself that Richard would have grown to be a good husband to her, that she would have loved him, that it would not have been an unhappy ending for her.
She would think that, and she would still feel that awful spark of gladness that she had gotten Mr. Darcy instead.
Perhaps this was why she didn’t think of Richard nearly as often as she should have.
It was a guilt that would not fade. Colonel Fitzwilliam had been a good man, and she had loved him.
It was only that the way she and Mr. Darcy loved each other, it was a love that could not be comparable to anything else.
They were rather unbelievably happy with each other.
So, during these afternoons, the children shrieking happily in the distance, a drink in her hand, surrounded by family of all stripes and sorts on every side, her husband’s hand would brush against hers and she would look up at him, and she would feel a waterfall of gushing intensity rush through her.
They were older now, but Mr. Darcy looked better the longer she knew him. Each of the lines on his face, the stray bits of gray in his hair made him dearer to her. She had never found a man quite as handsome as she found him. And he still wanted to hold her hand, after all these years.
When he touched her, just a brush of his hand against her hand, she overflowed with love for him.
They’d had to wait for each other, but the wait had been worth it, and now they were simply part of each other.
Now and forever.
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