CHAPTER 70
A Letter from Rosings
Elizabeth had never imagined announcing a child by fainting in front of her husband’s relations.
Upon reflection, she could not recommend it.
She had come back to herself yesterday upon the sofa in the north parlour, with the curtains drawn, Mr. Grant looking professionally grave, Lady Catherine looking affronted by the existence of weakness, and Fitzwilliam’s hand closed round hers as if he had discovered it was possible to hold a person in place by will alone.
That had been bad enough.
Waking the next morning in Fitzwilliam’s old Pemberley chambers was, in some respects, worse.
The rooms were too carefully managed to be accused of neglect.
The curtains had been drawn against the morning glare; the linen had been changed; a basin of cool water stood near the bed; and Mrs. Doddridge had placed herself by the window with her work, as if August itself had been put under supervision.
Elizabeth had been given toast, weak tea, and no opportunity to argue with either.
Fitzwilliam sat beside her with a book he had not opened.
“I had intended a more orderly disclosure,” she said.
He looked at her over the closed pages. “You had intended no disclosure at all.”
Elizabeth turned her head upon the pillow. “That is unjust.”
“It is accurate,” he said, with a gravity that was made worse by the tenderness beneath it.
“You were waiting for the proper moment. Breakfast was too public, dinner too crowded, my father’s room too solemn, the library too warm, the girls too cheerful, my aunt too present, my uncle too observant, and every afternoon too late to begin such a subject.
I begin to think you objected not to the moment, but to time itself. ”
She would have liked to contradict him. Unfortunately, contradiction required either innocence or strength, and she did not possess enough of either.
“I was being discreet.”
“You were dragging your feet.”
“That is a very ungallant description of delicacy.”
“I am taking advantage of your reduced ability to leave the room.”
Mrs. Doddridge’s needle moved with perfect regularity. “A rare opportunity, Mr. Darcy. It would be a pity to waste it.”
Elizabeth looked at her.
Mrs. Doddridge did not look back.
Fitzwilliam’s expression softened then, and whatever pleasure he took in being right gave way to something quieter. “Everyone knew enough.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” he said. “But near enough that the only person still persuaded of secrecy was you, and even your confidence in it had begun to weaken.”
Elizabeth looked away toward the drawn curtains, where a thin blade of light had found the edge of the fabric.
The child itself was not her shame. She could admit that, at least to herself.
The shame lay in the manner of its discovery: her body choosing its own announcement, Fitzwilliam’s relations gathered like a court, Lady Catherine present to make even unconsciousness feel ill-bred.
“I dislike having been surprised by myself,” she said.
“I know.”
“And I dislike that everyone was kind.”
He took her hand where it lay upon the coverlet. “That seems an unusual ground of complaint.”
“It gives me nothing proper to resent.”
His thumb moved once across her fingers. The small motion steadied her before she had decided to be steadied.
For several minutes no one spoke. Somewhere beyond the room, Pemberley continued in subdued motion: a door carefully closed, the soft passage of feet, the distant order of servants determined that Mrs. Darcy should not be disturbed and therefore making an extraordinary number of quiet arrangements around her.
At last Fitzwilliam set the book aside.
“There is another matter.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. “That is a dreadful phrase.”
“It is only common sense.”
“Worse.”
He came to sit nearer, but did not take more of her space than she allowed.
“Mr. Grant will not make commands where advice may serve. But the advice is plain. By autumn the roads will be worse, and by winter you will be less fit to bear them comfortably. London is a long way. Any return to Portman Square would be undertaken chiefly to prove that it could be undertaken.”
Elizabeth looked down at their joined hands.
Portman Square rose before her at once: the rooms she had opened, altered, and argued over; Mrs. Albright’s keys; the bedchamber, dressing room, and work room prepared before Fitzwilliam knew how thoroughly he was expected.
It was not merely her house now. She had made a place for him there with paper, linen, ink, shelves, shaving light, breakfast, and all the small tyrannies by which a household declared a man belonged.
Pemberley had given her no such gentle beginning.
For all its size, Pemberley had not yet become theirs.
Fitzwilliam’s old chambers were handsome, comfortable, and more than sufficient for any gentleman who belonged to the house by birth and habit.
They had been arranged for the son and heir: a bedchamber, dressing room, sitting room, and writing space, all proper, all convenient, all marked by a life begun long before Elizabeth had entered it.
They had served well enough in an emergency. They had held a sick husband, a frightened sister, a newly restored father, too many papers, too much heat, and a wife who had not meant to faint before the assembled relations.
But they had not been made for her.
Not truly.
“You think we should remain for the winter,” she said.
“I think it would be safer for you.”
She noticed the order of it: not first the child, not first Pemberley, not first his father’s convenience.
For her.
It made objection more difficult.
“I had not meant to be claimed by Derbyshire.”
“No.”
“I have a perfectly good house in London.”
“You have it still.”
“One I prepared at great trouble.”
“I remember.”
“You ought. You were most of the trouble.”
His mouth softened, but he did not answer too quickly.
“And Portman Square is not abandoned,” she said.
“Never.”
The word came without hesitation. It mattered more than she wished to show.
“If we remain,” she said slowly, “it must be because travelling would be foolish, not because Pemberley has become master of the question.”
His hand closed more securely over hers. “We remain because moving you would be foolish, and because this house can be made to serve you. Not the other way about.”
That did what argument would not have done. It settled something.
Elizabeth breathed out, not quite a sigh and not quite surrender.
“Very well,” she said. “Pemberley for the winter. But not like this.”
Fitzwilliam’s attention sharpened. “Not like what?”
“In your old chambers.”
“They are comfortable rooms.”
“They are excellent rooms for Mr. Darcy, son of the house.” She glanced about them: the handsome furniture, the sober hangings, the writing table placed for a gentleman’s convenience, the dressing room beyond, all proper, all sufficient, and none of it quite hers.
“They have served us very well in an emergency. But if we are to remain here through the winter, with a child expected and half the county apparently determined to correspond with us through catastrophe, we require proper rooms.”
His expression changed at once, not into objection, but into understanding.
“For us,” he said.
“For us,” she agreed. “Not merely chambers in which I may be deposited when the stairs are judged too ambitious. Rooms where I may sit without feeling I have invaded your former life, write without moving your papers, rest without being on display, and receive without apologising to the furniture.”
His mouth softened. “I had not thought of it so.”
“No. You were thinking of roads, physicians, and whether I could be persuaded to eat toast.”
“I was not wrong to think of those.”
“You were not complete.”
He bowed his head a little. “Then we shall be complete.”
Elizabeth liked that answer too much and therefore looked away.
“And I reserve the right to complain of Pemberley while improving it.”
“I should be alarmed if you did not.”
“Then Mrs. Reynolds must be consulted. Not today,” she added, before his face could become too attentive. “I am very obedient today. Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall be obedient in a different room.”
Fitzwilliam took her hand and kissed it.
“I shall warn the house.”
“Do,” said Elizabeth. “It has had every advantage of size. It is time it acquired sense.”
That, at least, was a tolerable principle.
By the time Elizabeth was dressed and settled in the sitting room of the same chambers, with a writing slope before her and a shawl about her shoulders despite the heat, she had decided that the morning had already demanded too much courage.
Unfortunately, courage, like correspondence, seemed to multiply when neglected.
Now that the news was known at Pemberley, she must tell those who had a right to hear it from her.
If she did not, the fact would travel by servants’ letters, relations’ phrases, or some distorted version of Lady Catherine’s indignation, and Elizabeth had not survived Longbourn, Portman Square, Wickham, and Pemberley only to let her own child be announced by family traffic.
She prepared the necessary letters: to her father, and through him to her mother, with the information that she and Mr. Darcy expected a child and would remain for the winter at his ancestral estate in Derbyshire; to Gracechurch Street, with her love for Lydia; to Mrs. Albright, for the continued management of Portman Square; and to such London friends as would be wounded by silence and satisfied by brevity.
Each contained the news, assurances that she was well, and greetings for those under the same roof.
None contained faintness, heat, or household commotion.
Elizabeth had no intention of setting alarm loose merely because truth required a messenger.
Hartwood’s letter was the most practical, and therefore the most frightening. It did not require congratulations. It required consequence.