26. All Fall Down
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ALL FALL DOWN
Elizabeth’s cheeks burned as she left the library, her steps measured with the precision of a woman determined not to flee.
Her chin lifted, she was perfectly aware of her husband’s gaze upon her back, as if he might summon her for one of those tedious performances husbands so often attempt when caught in their own mischief.
Her vision blurred, but she fixed her gaze forward.
To look back would be to surrender, and she was not merely wounded but ablaze with indignation.
No retreat to bed, no convenient fit of vapors for her.
She had come to Pemberley to mother Little Tom, and she would not be found wanting in that charge.
A serving maid appeared on the landing and curtsied; Elizabeth acknowledged her with the barest tilt of her head, ascending as though the evening had been unremarkable.
As though she had not discovered that the man she loved had made her the unwitting mother of his own child, all under the guise of brotherly duty.
Yet she had come to love the child, and could hardly retreat to Longbourn and confess herself defeated in the very art she had always claimed as her own.
She, who fancied herself a connoisseur of character, had been outmaneuvered by a man whose armor was reserve, propriety, and a most elaborate sense of duty.
The nursery door stood ajar. Elizabeth pushed it open and found Hartley seated by the window, mending a torn seam on one of Thomas’s breeches. The nursemaid rose immediately. “Mrs. Darcy! I did not expect—is everything quite well, ma’am?”
“I am Thomas’s mother.” The words came out too sharp, defensive in a way that made her wince. She softened her voice with effort. “I wished to see him before he sleeps. There is no need to stand on ceremony.”
Hartley’s eyes surveyed her demeanor, but she was too well-trained to comment. “Of course, ma’am. I was just about to fetch biscuits from the kitchen. Master Thomas has been asking for them for the past quarter hour.”
“Then by all means, fetch them.” Elizabeth moved further into the room. “I shall manage perfectly well in your absence.”
Hartley curtsied and slipped away, the door closing with a hush. Elizabeth lingered in the nursery’s entry, drawing in the mingled scents of lavender, milk, and that elusive sweetness peculiar to small children, granting herself three precious seconds of stillness before the inevitable storm.
“Lizba!”
Thomas hurtled toward her from the corner where he had been playing, his small legs pumping with the unsteady determination of a cavalry charge.
Harley bounded alongside him, ears flapping, tongue lolling, utterly convinced this was a game and he was winning it.
They both collided with Elizabeth—Thomas wrapping himself around her knees, Harley leaping at her skirts—and the force of their combined enthusiasm staggered her backward a full step.
“Goodness.” She reached down to steady the boy while fending off Harley’s enthusiastic tongue. “What a welcome. Have you been waiting for me?”
“Lizba, play!” Thomas tugged at her hand, attempting to drag her toward the corner. “Come see! Come see!”
She let herself be led. The nursery’s corner was a battlefield: tin soldiers sprawled in ignoble defeat, a menagerie of carved beasts presiding over the carnage, and a precarious edifice of painted blocks that, with charity, might be termed architectural.
“Wall,” Thomas announced. “Big wall. Strong.”
“I see.” Elizabeth lowered herself to the floor. “It is indeed a very impressive wall. What is it keeping out?”
Thomas pointed at Harley, who chewed on a rag cat made of old socks. “Harley bad. Eat boot.”
“Did he? A serious offense indeed.”
“Wall, keep him out!” Thomas seized a block and hurled it at his own creation. It collapsed, scattering blocks in every direction.
“Boom. Boom.” He shrieked with delight, already gathering the blocks to begin again.
“How about we build a tower for a bigger boom?” Elizabeth helped him stack the colorful blocks, only to have Thomas swat them down before she had three.
“Wall!” He proclaimed, lining the blocks in a row. Harley shook his ears, and the wall came tumbling down.
“I do bigger boom,” Elizabeth said, gathering up five blocks. “Make bigger tower.”
Thomas stuck his thumb in his mouth and watched as she piled three, then four, then five blocks into a wobbling tower.
“Big boom!” His thumb popped from his mouth, and he knocked it down, squealing with laughter.
Elizabeth’s smile escaped her control as Thomas declared, “Tower. More tall.”
He started the stack, putting one block, and then two.
Elizabeth placed a block carefully atop his stack. It wobbled but held. Thomas clapped his hands. “Lizba make big.”
She added another. And another. The tower grew—six blocks, seven, swaying with each addition. Thomas bounced on his heels with anticipation, his eyes fixed on the precarious structure.
“Big tower,” he breathed. “Biggest—”
He seized a block and hurled it at the tower’s base. The entire structure collapsed, blocks clattering across the rug, and Thomas threw his head back with a crow of triumph.
“Boom! All fall down! All fall down!”
Elizabeth surveyed the cheerful wreckage, blocks strewn in bright disarray, while Thomas, undaunted, was already marshaling them for another campaign.
All fall down. Like her marriage and her life.
The tears came without warning, sliding down her cheeks, warm and silent.
She tried to suppress them by holding her breath, only to choke on a sob.
And she kept her hands busy piling blocks.
Thomas did not notice, too absorbed with his walls and towers.
But Harley, sensing her sadness, abandoned his rag cat and padded over to put his nose in her hand.
She scratched his ears with trembling fingers. “Good boy. Good, ridiculous boy.”
He licked her wrist and then, apparently satisfied that his duty was discharged, turned his attention to the ribbon trailing from her sleeve.
Within moments, he had it in his teeth, tugging with the determination of a puppy who believed all ribbons existed solely for his destruction.
The fabric tore with a soft rip, and Harley retreated triumphantly with his prize.
Elizabeth let him have it. What was one more casualty, when all she had not dared to want had already been taken?
And then, Thomas reached for her, his small face puckered with concern. “Lizba sad?”
“A little,” she admitted.
“Why sad?” He patted her with a jam-sticky hand. “Harley bad?”
A laugh escaped her—watery, ragged, but genuine. “No, darling. Harley is not bad. I am sad about something else entirely.”
Thomas considered this, then reached into his pinafore pocket and extracted a somewhat mangled biscuit. He thrust it toward her with the air of a physician prescribing a sovereign remedy.
“Biscuit make better.”
Elizabeth accepted it. What choice had she? The biscuit, bearing the unmistakable signs of long residence in a small boy’s pocket—nibbled, linty, and adorned with a generous helping of dog hair—rested in her palm like a rare jewel.
“Thank you, Thomas.”
“Eat,” he instructed. “Make sad go away.”
“Oh, Thomas, thank you.” She took a small nibble and gave it back to him. “Lizba better.”
He smiled at her, shy and fleeting, the very image of his father when he believed himself unobserved.
Darcy’s son. The thought circled again. A serious, solid boy—the living evidence of an indiscretion Darcy spent years concealing. And then she remembered Meryton—the arrogant, proud man who’d looked down on her family. Who had come to her with a proposal that saved her family.
She had made her sacrifice and fancied herself clever for it. She had even kept a journal, dutifully recording every observation, constructing her little theories with the zeal of a natural philosopher, and congratulating herself on insights that proved entirely false.
And she had told her sister she was falling in love with him. All the while, he had been lying.
“Lizba still sad?” Thomas climbed into her lap, abandoning his blocks. He pressed his small body against hers and patted her face with both hands, smearing stickiness across her cheek. “No cry. Thomas here.”
She gathered him close, his downy hair brushing her cheek as he leaned in with the same quiet steadfastness his father had shown during her illness.
The tears came faster, for she remembered Darcy sitting by her side, reading softly, pressing a kiss to her brow when he believed her asleep, watching her with those same grave, yearning eyes—so dark, so full of sorrow and longing.
Thomas swiped a grubby hand across her eyes, and she could only blink and smile, noticing how much he resembled his father—especially in the way he regarded her, as if she were some wounded creature in need of rescue.
“More biscuit?” he asked, pressing the crumbly, damp biscuit.
“No, thank you. One biscuit is quite sufficient for the level of humiliation I am presently experiencing.”
“Why?” he asked as he devoured the rest of his saved biscuit.
“I have been spectacularly stupid,” she said ruefully.
“Your father must have laughed himself sick every time I theorized about poor, devoted Darcy and his unrequited love for Lady Amelia. I constructed an entire Gothic romance in which he was the noble, ignored hero, pining away for a woman who chose his brother. I very nearly pitied him. I was prepared to comfort him.”
“Da come?” Thomas asked, craning his neck toward the door.
Elizabeth’s stomach tightened. “Not tonight, I think.”
“Why?”
Because I cannot look at him without seeing every falsehood mapped across his face.
Because my anger is such that I might say something unforgivable.
Because if I must endure that desperate, pleading expression once more, I may be driven to strike him—or worse, to kiss him—and I am not at all sure which would be the greater humiliation.
“Because Da sleeping,” she said aloud.
“Love Lizba.” Little Tom rubbed his face against hers, and Harley enthusiastically joined in, licking both of them. Elizabeth didn’t have the heart to push the boy away, but the dog’s slobber was too wet to be tolerated. Just then, the door opened, and Thomas jumped up, shouting, “Da!”
Elizabeth startled, her traitorous heart filling with dread and anticipation, but it was only Georgiana, his sister, standing there with red-rimmed eyes, wringing her handkerchief.
“Elizabeth.” Georgiana’s voice cracked on the name. “I… may I come in?”
“Please,” she said. “Join me on the carpet. It seems we are both in need of a refuge from the sudden honesty of a Darcy.”
Georgiana crossed the room and sank on the floor. She patted Little Tom and let Harley lick her hand.
“He told me.” Her voice was small. “And I hit him.”
Despite everything, Elizabeth felt her lips twitch. “Did you?”
“With my fists. On his shoulders.” Georgiana demonstrated the motion, her hands curling into ineffectual weapons. “It did not hurt him, I am sure. But I wanted to. I wanted to hurt him as much as he has hurt me.”
“An understandable impulse.” Elizabeth shifted Thomas in her lap; he had begun to drowse, his head heavy against her shoulder. “I considered several options myself. Throwing the inkwell was among the front-runners.”
“You did not.”
“I did not.” Elizabeth’s voice hardened. “I took the key to Lady Amelia’s cabinet instead. It seemed more useful than a dramatic gesture. Though I confess the inkwell would have been satisfying—especially the stain over his white and well-starched cravat.”
“I can be clever too,” Georgiana said. “I told him his love grew faster than his lies could keep up.”
Elizabeth rocked Thomas, stroking his hair as the boy began to snore. “One might equally observe that his lies were simply better planned than his declarations.”
“Elizabeth, he doesn’t mean to—”
“Does he?” Elizabeth’s voice was cool. “He orchestrated this entire affair with military precision. I was chosen, you see, as the most desperate candidate available. He promised we would live separate lives, each on our own side of the door, raising his supposed nephew, abandoned by a wayward brother. Then, of course, he must carry me upstairs in a rainstorm, nurse me through a fever, ply me with sweets—much like his son here with the damp biscuits—and finally profess his love, all while neglecting to mention that the child in my care was his own.”
Georgiana flinched.
“Forgive me.” Elizabeth’s voice did not soften. “I should not speak so plainly in front of you. He is your brother, after all. Your beloved brother, who apparently lies as easily as he breathes.”
“He does not—” Georgiana stopped, then started again. “He lies badly, actually. To me, at least. I always knew when he was concealing something, even if I did not know what. The way his jaw tightens. The way he will not quite meet my eyes.”
“How fortunate for you.” Elizabeth’s tone was acid. “I, apparently, lack your powers of observation. I watched him tighten his jaw for months and merely thought him constipated.”
Georgiana’s hand dropped. The laugh escaped—guilty, horrified, entirely inappropriate—and once begun, it could not be stopped. She pressed both hands to her mouth, her shoulders shaking, tears streaming afresh down her cheeks.
“I am sorry,” she gasped. “I should not… this is not funny… he has hurt you terribly—”
“He has.” Elizabeth’s voice was strangely calm. “And yet, here we are, two women who love him, sitting on a nursery floor while his son sleeps in my lap and his puppy drools on my hem. If we do not laugh, we shall drown in the absurdity of it all.”
“Or the tragedy.” Georgiana’s eyes grew wide. “I believe my brother when he says he loves you.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and drew Thomas closer.
“Spare me the sisterly appeals for mercy. It would have been far kinder had he refrained from uttering words like love and devotion, family and affection. If only he had kept it strictly business—separate lives, mother the boy, indulge the puppy, the snails, the inevitable hedgehog or two. But he must needs outwit me, make a jest of poor, unclaimed Elizabeth, and see if he could coax me to…”
She could not finish, for he had succeeded.
She had invited him to her bedchamber, prepared to lie perfectly still and let him have his way, undone by nothing more than a spoonful of syllabub, a borrowed line of poetry, and those imploring eyes—so like a basset hound’s when longing for that fat soup bone.
And this time, she could not suppress the sobs and the weeping as Little Tom stirred in her arms, and Harley, that sweet, slobbering dog with the ears too long and the eyes too big, licked her slowly and thoroughly, his tongue wetting her face faster than she could weep.
Like a man whose love grew faster than his lies.