CHAPTER 61 #4
“I thought—I did not think he would wish it, not truly. But they spoke as if he must. As if everyone knew except me.”
“That is how such lies become cruel,” Fitzwilliam said. “They borrow the sound of duty.”
Kitty sniffed once, fiercely, and then pretended she had not.
Georgiana looked between them. “Will he tell me?”
“If he is strong enough,” Fitzwilliam said. “If not today, another day. But you may know it now.”
She nodded. The tears had not fallen.
“I would like to see him.”
“Then you shall.”
The elder Mr. Darcy was awake when Elizabeth entered the sickroom first, though wakefulness in him now seemed less a state than a labour.
The room had been shaded from the strongest light.
Fresh linen had replaced the more visible signs of the night, and the tray by the bed was no longer untouched.
Mrs. Reynolds had already begun to make the chamber answer method.
Mr. Grant stood near the window. Mrs. Reynolds remained by the table. Elizabeth approached the bed and curtsied.
“Sir.”
The elder Mr. Darcy’s eyes moved to her. Recognition came more quickly than it had the day before, though displeasure came with it. That was promising. Displeasure required strength.
“Mrs. Darcy.”
His speech was rough and uneven, but intelligible.
“I shall not keep you long.”
His mouth moved at one side. It might have been irritation at the common falsehood of visitors.
Elizabeth ignored it.
“Mr. Grant has supplied directions for your recovery. Mrs. Reynolds has them. I have arranged them into a schedule, because advice which remains general is merely an invitation to disobedience.”
Mr. Grant turned his face slightly away, which she chose to interpret as professional emotion.
The elder Mr. Darcy’s brows drew together.
“No business,” he said.
“Some business,” Elizabeth corrected. “But not before food. Not before rest. Not when you are fatigued. Not long enough for pride to mistake itself for strength.”
His eyes sharpened.
“You have much to repair,” she said. “With Fitzwilliam. With Miss Darcy. With this house. I do not say that to distress you. I say it because you know it already, and because I dislike wasting truth by pretending it is news.”
His hand moved once against the coverlet.
“If you wish to make anything right with your children, you must recover enough to do it. That is your first duty now. Not command. Not papers. Not refusing broth to prove you remain master of the spoon. Recovery.”
The sound he made was very nearly a protest.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I expected you would dislike the method. It includes sleep, nourishment, silence, and obedience to Mr. Grant. None of these is glorious. All are required.”
“Fitzwilliam?”
“With Mr. Latham. He will come when Mr. Grant permits another visit.”
“Georgiana?”
“She is to come next.”
His eyes shifted.
“She has been told,” Elizabeth said, “that Mr. Wickham never had your sanction.”
His hand gripped the coverlet.
“Never.”
“Good. Then that is the first kindness done today.”
His breathing had grown heavier. Mr. Grant shifted.
Elizabeth’s voice softened, but only a little. “She wishes to see you. That is not to be wasted by making her witness a struggle over timing, strength, or old guilt. Let her find you glad to see her and content to rest after. That will be enough for one visit.”
His eyes closed.
“She is safe,” Elizabeth said. “Fitzwilliam will tell her what else she must know. Or you may, when you are strong enough to do it without injuring either of you.”
He opened his eyes again.
Elizabeth curtsied. “I shall leave you to perform the noble duty of being very obedient about broth.”
For one moment she thought he might be offended.
Then something moved in his eyes which was not humour, not quite, but near enough to suggest that George Darcy Senior, damaged and guilty and ill as he was, had not wholly lost the faculty of recognising plain dealing when struck by it.
She left before either of them could become sentimental.
Georgiana’s visit was brief.
Elizabeth did not attend it. Fitzwilliam did. Kitty remained outside the room with Mrs. Doddridge and a piece of sewing she had no talent for but much determination over. When Georgiana came out, she was pale, and her eyes were wet, but she was not undone.
“He said it,” she said to Elizabeth, very quietly.
Elizabeth took her hand. “That was a good beginning.”
“He could not say much. But he said that.”
“Then it is enough for today.”
Georgiana breathed out as if permission had been given after all.
The day continued.
That was the indignity of crisis: it did not end after important scenes.
It required dinner. It required clean linen.
It required notes answered, trays returned, servants redirected, Mr. Grant consulted again, and Mrs. Wickham’s second message declined without allowing the bearer to discover whether refusal had become more interesting since morning.
By evening, Elizabeth felt she had spent a fortnight at Pemberley and seen almost none of it beyond passages, sickroom doors, servants’ faces, and the enemy country of breakfast trays.
She found Fitzwilliam in the small sitting room attached to their chambers. Mr. Latham’s papers were not with him, which proved either restraint or theft. He stood near the open window, looking out toward the darkening lawn, his face turned half away from the room.
“Are you hiding from papers,” she asked, “or have the papers hidden from you?”
He turned at once.
“I was thinking.”
“That is worse. Papers at least can be tied up and put in drawers.”
“You are tired.”
“I am making an effort not to become a household ghost before I have been properly introduced to the county.”
He came toward her. “Elizabeth—”
“No,” she said, holding up one hand. “Do not yet look as if you have personally invented invalid fathers, corrupt stewards, and dependent female connexions with a genius for intrusion.”
His mouth closed.
She sank into a chair with less grace than Mrs. Marwood would have approved and far less than she cared.
“Do you know,” she said, “I had a scheme.”
His expression changed. That, at least, could still summon him. “Had you?”
“A very good one. After The Laurels I thought I should contrive, somehow, to get my husband into the country for part of the summer. Privately. No callers, no committees, no wounded fathers, no fugitive stewards, no physicians, no Mrs. Wickham invoking Lady Anne over invalid broth.”
There it was: guilt, quick as a shadow.
She reached for his hand before it could settle.
“No. Do not look so. I am not sorry to be here. I am only informing you that this is not at all the summer retirement I had imagined.”
He let her take his hand, then closed his fingers around hers with the almost immediate surrender which still moved her more than she liked to show.
“What did you imagine?”
“Walks. Late breakfasts. You looking less as if every room had first to justify your presence in it. Perhaps a great deal of highly improper idleness conducted under perfectly respectable hedges.”
His mouth softened.
“Respectable hedges?”
“I was prepared to be flexible about the hedges.”
“Then I shall make time for walks after breakfast.”
She looked at him.
“Fitzwilliam, there are physicians, papers, servants, Mrs. Wickham, Mr. Latham, your father, Georgiana—”
“Yes,” he said. “And after breakfast, there shall be walks.”
It was said with such grave determination that she almost laughed.
“You are very decided for a man surrounded by disaster.”
“I must be.”
The answer quieted her.
His thumb moved once over her hand. “Pemberley may require a great deal of me. I will not let it take everything.”
“Fitzwilliam.”
“I have spent too many years letting this house decide what I may keep. I will not begin my marriage by teaching you that Pemberley has the first claim upon me.”
She was silent.
“It has a claim,” he said. “So does my father. So does Georgiana. I do not deny any of it. But you are my wife. You are not to be given the scraps of whatever strength remains after every old injury has been obeyed.”
Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment.
Then, because if she did not answer lightly she might answer too much, she said, “That is a very noble speech for a walk after breakfast.”
His mouth warmed properly this time. “Then you must not make me repeat it before coffee.”
“No. I should not like to be responsible for heroism before coffee.”
“Pemberley is worth seeing,” he said more quietly. “I should like to show it to you while I can still remember that it is more than this. But more than that, I should like you to know that I remember you.”
Her fingers tightened around his.
That, too, was a kind of recovery.
“Then we shall walk.”
“After breakfast.”
“After breakfast,” she agreed. “Though I reserve the right to complain if the scenery contains solicitors.”
“I shall endeavour to keep Mr. Latham from the shrubbery.”
“See that you do.”
He drew her up from the chair, and she went because there had been enough chairs, schedules, and respectable distances for one day.
At the window, the first darkness lay softly over Pemberley.
The house behind them was still unsettled, still compromised, still full of old claims and new necessities.
Somewhere below, Mrs. Reynolds was making Elizabeth’s schedule into fact.
Somewhere above, the elder Mr. Darcy was being forced, with all possible dignity, to recover.
Georgiana was safe in her own rooms. Kitty was near her.
Mrs. Wickham had been refused and would not forgive it. Mr. Latham waited for morning again.
Elizabeth leaned against Fitzwilliam’s side.
For the present, Pemberley might wait.
After breakfast, it would have to share him.