Chapter 5 #2
He exhaled slowly, fingers trailing across the rise and fall of his chest. The release had been powerful.
Yes, he’d imagined her too vividly to help it.
She was too real in his mind, her laugh, her scent, the way her eyes lit when she teased him, the shiver in her voice when she said his name when they climaxed together…
The nagging truth came unbidden - he would never know what Elizabeth’s climax sounded like, or worse, her loving endearments.
* * *
Their journey ended as the carriage drew into the yard of the Lambton Inn.
Elizabeth leaned forward, peering through the small, rain-flecked window.
The village was precisely as she remembered it from previous visits.
Smaller than Meryton, quieter than London, and infused with a kind of gentle wear.
Stone cottages, weathered and moss-streaked, lined the narrow lane.
A modest church steeple rose at the far end, half-shrouded in mist. The air smelled faintly of lavender, damp stone, and peat smoke.
“It’s just as I remember,” Mrs Gardiner said with a fond sigh as she stepped down onto the cobbled walk. “I used to think this the most romantic little place in the world.”
Elizabeth smiled faintly. “It is charming. Sleepy, perhaps, but I can see the appeal.”
In truth, she was grateful for the stillness. London had become a tangle of noise and expectation; her apothecary walls had felt suddenly too narrow, too echoing. Here, at least, the quiet did not demand explanations.
Inside, the inn proved modest but clean, with a broad hearth and the scent of baked bread drifting from the kitchen.
A stout innkeeper emerged to greet them, his cheeks ruddy from years of ale and laughter.
“We’ve made up the rooms just as requested,” he said, bowing slightly.
“And welcome back to Derbyshire, madam,” he added with a nod to Mrs Gardiner. “It’s always a pleasure to see you.”
He turned to Elizabeth with an amiable grin. “If you fancy a bit of fresh air before supper, ma’am, the gardens behind the inn are well kept this year. Though not as grand as those at Pemberley, of course.”
Elizabeth arched one brow. “Pemberley?”
“Aye,” he said with cheerful reverence. “Best-kept estate in the county, if you ask anyone. Mr Darcy’s a quiet one, but he’s fair. Just last month, he saw that the school roof was repaired after a storm took it half off. Paid for it himself.”
Elizabeth blinked. Something fluttered low in her stomach.
Mrs Gardiner, ever the diplomat, smiled. “We’ve heard the Darcys have long been good stewards of their land.”
The innkeeper nodded, already moving to retrieve their trunks. “That they have. If you stay long enough, you might even catch a glimpse of the master himself.”
Elizabeth said nothing. She didn’t trust her voice.
They had scarcely finished their light luncheon when a commotion erupted in the inn’s entrance hall. Raised voices and hurried footsteps drew Elizabeth’s attention from her tea.
The innkeeper burst into the dining room, his ruddy face now pale with concern. “Forgive the disturbance, but is there anyone here with medical knowledge? Our Mrs Reynolds has taken gravely ill at her cottage, and the apothecary has been called to Matlock.”
A murmur rippled through the small assembly of guests. Elizabeth set down her cup with quiet determination.
“I have some experience,” she said, rising from her chair. “My late husband was a physician, and I maintain his practice after his passing.”
The innkeeper’s expression shifted from desperation to uncertainty as he regarded her. “A lady doctor?”
“A physician’s widow with some knowledge to help,” Elizabeth corrected firmly. “What are her symptoms?”
“Fever, ma’am. Terrible cough. The apothecary’s apprentice is with her, but he’s hardly more than a child himself.”
Elizabeth was already gathering her shawl. “Take me to her.”
Mrs Gardiner touched her niece’s arm. “Lizzy, are you certain?”
“Someone is suffering, aunt,” Elizabeth replied softly. “I have the skill to help. I cannot turn away.”
* * *
The cottage stood just off the lane, cloaked in ivy and shadow. Smoke no longer curled from the chimney. The shutters were half-drawn. Elizabeth felt her stomach tighten the closer they came. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.
Jacob, the trembling apprentice, fumbled with the latch and pushed the door open. “I… I knocked,” he said, his voice cracking. “I called her name, and then I saw the state of her…” he swallowed a sob.
A wave of stale air hit them: peat, must, illness.
Elizabeth stepped in first. “Open the window,” she said at once.
The interior was dim. A fire smouldered low in the hearth, barely more than ash and smoke. Dust floated in the shaft of grey light that fell across the narrow bed.
An old, frail woman lay curled there, tiny under the blankets, her frame shrunken with fever. Her breathing was laboured, loud, rasping. Her skin gleamed with sweat. Her cheeks were too red, her lips pale. A bowl of untouched porridge sat on the side table, congealed.
Elizabeth dropped her satchel and moved to the bed. She touched the older woman’s brow, burning. Her pulse, when she found it, was rapid and thready.
“Dehydrated. Burning up. Lungs full.” Elizabeth’s voice was low, precise.
Mrs Reynolds stirred slightly. “Master Fitzwilliam…” she murmured, the name cracked and thick. Her head turned toward the sound of Elizabeth’s voice but her eyes didn’t open. “He’s all alone… can’t stay alone… He’s a good boy…”
Elizabeth swallowed. Her chest tightened, not from alarm but from the soft, startling familiarity in the woman’s tone. She sounded like a mother mourning an only child.
“Jacob,” Elizabeth said briskly, turning away. “There’s a kettle in the corner. Get it boiling again. And a clean cloth, if you can find it. We’ll need to cool her.”
He obeyed at once, grateful for instruction.
Elizabeth moved around the room quickly now, her hands deft: opening shutters to let light in, stoking the fire with fresh peat, shifting the blankets from Mrs Reynolds’ overheated limbs. She propped the woman up slightly with a second pillow and dabbed a damp cloth across her brow and chest.
“Can she drink?” she asked Jacob.
He shook his head. “Tried. She coughs too hard.”
Elizabeth frowned. “Then we shall have to be clever.”
She unrolled the small linen kit she always travelled with; her vials and dried herbs, little pouches of bark and blossom carefully labeled in her own hand. “I need an elderflower. Mullein. Lobelia, very little. Willow bark, if you have it. And honey.”
The boy looked lost.
She softened her tone. “You’re doing well. Truly. I just need more to work with. You’ve an apothecary, haven’t you?”
He nodded mutely. “Just… Just up the green.”
She scribbled a list on the back of a scrap invoice. “Take this. And tell the clerk to charge it to me, Mrs Morley of London.”
Jacob blinked. “But… ”
She met his eyes. “I will pay. Go.”
He bolted, clutching the list like a lifeline.
Elizabeth turned back to the bed. Mrs Reynolds’ lips were moving, but no sound came now, only the occasional hoarse breath and wet cough.
Elizabeth took her hand gently, brushing her thumb over the dry, papery skin.
“You’re not alone,” she whispered. “You’re not. Not tonight.”
* * *
The night deepened, and with it, the fever.
Elizabeth knelt by the narrow bed, her skirts damp at the hem, her bodice wrinkled from long hours leaning and lifting and wiping. The fire had steadied, casting the room in flickering gold. The tinctures brewed beside it, a slow, fragrant distillation of her knowledge and hope.
She had managed to coax a few spoonfuls of honeyed tea into Mrs Reynolds’ mouth, just enough to soothe, not enough to satisfy. Every cough wracked the older woman’s body. Elizabeth winced with each one, as if her own chest bore the ache.
She reapplied the damp cloth, brushed a stray lock of white hair from the woman’s temple, and hummed. A quiet melody she didn’t quite recall learning. Something her mother used to sing when Jane had nightmares.
The woman stirred.
“Master… Fitzwilliam…”
Elizabeth stilled. Who was this woman?
Mrs Reynolds’ eyes remained shut, but her mouth moved. “You are alone too much,” she continued, voice rasping. “Too proud to ask. Too noble to take…”
The hand in Elizabeth’s trembled.
“You will be such a good father…”
Elizabeth pressed her fingers over Mrs Reynolds’ wrist, not to check the pulse, but to steady herself. The weight of those words pierced straight through her and her eyes burned…
“I wish to see you happy, Master Fitzwilliam. Let me live long enough to see your children.” the old woman whispered, her voice barely audible now. “I am sorry, I’ve grown old. I’m tired, Mr Darcy. So tired.”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together, a tear running down her cheek, smoothing the white hair back from the woman’s damp forehead.
“You’re not alone,” she whispered.
Whether she meant it for Mrs Reynolds, or for the man who now filled her thoughts entirely, she could not say.
Outside, the sky paled, first to ash, then to gold.
The birds began to stir, faint chirps slipping through the shutters as if the world was holding its breath.
Elizabeth sat slumped in the armchair beside the bed, her head resting against its back, her fingers still curled loosely around the edge of the blanket.
Mrs Reynolds slept. Fitfully. Fevered. But slept.
Elizabeth could not allow herself to close her eyes.
Time lost meaning.
The cottage shifted through shades of gold, grey, and shadow… Then gold again. Elizabeth sat curled in the straight-backed chair, her limbs cramped from holding postures too long, her eyes stinging from smoke, from strain, from holding back tears she couldn’t afford to shed.
She had not left. Not once.