CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO #2
Elizabeth smiled. "Indisputably."
Bingley and Darcy coped differently. Bingley hovered visibly, carrying trays and pillows. Darcy became efficient: ensuring physicians, warming rooms, reviewing routes, and checking fires. Sir Thomas called both forms noise.
One night, Darcy stood with Elizabeth in the old nursery at Longbourn. A cradle waited near the hearth for Jane's child. The pencil marks remained beside the door.
"Our child will know this room," Elizabeth said.
"Yes."
"And Pemberley."
"Both."
"If it is a girl, will you be disappointed?"
Darcy's answer came at once. "No. Pemberley requires an heir eventually, but I require no particular child to satisfy an estate. A daughter would be loved. A son would be loved."
"And if we have neither after this?"
"Then this child will be loved and the entail will follow where law directs. I will not make our family a servant to fear."
Elizabeth leaned against him, comforted beyond words.
From the bedroom below came sudden movement, then a servant's hurried steps.
Jane's labor had begun.
* * *
Longbourn changed from home to waiting place.
Mrs Jones, experienced in confinements, arrived within the hour. Mr Jones followed to examine Jane and was expelled by his wife after offering three instructions she had already given. Lady Bennet removed her bracelets, tied on an apron, and became calm.
"Heat more water," she told the servants. "Not all at once. Keep the passage clear. Mary, take Kitty and Lydia to Netherfield. Lizzy may remain if Jane asks for her."
Sir Thomas watched his excitable wife become the most capable person in the house.
"You have done this five times," he said quietly.
"And you read through three of them."
The old wound carried no poison now, only truth.
"I am sorry."
"Then make yourself useful to Charles. He looks ready to faint before Jane has begun properly."
Bingley paced the library. Darcy sat near the fire, appearing composed enough to enrage him.
"How can you sit?"
"Standing will not assist Mrs Bingley."
"Nor will sitting. Nothing assists. That is the horror."
Sir Thomas entered. "You may assist by remaining where Jane can find you if she asks, eating something before morning, and not requiring every servant to report upon matters they cannot discuss."
"How long will it be?"
"No one knows."
"That cannot be the answer."
"It is the only one."
From above came the muffled sound of Jane's pain.
Bingley went white.
Darcy stood then and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Breathe. If she asks for you, do not carry your terror into the room."
"How?"
"I do not know. But Sir Thomas did it for Georgiana, and I did it badly until he corrected me. We shall practice."
The unlikely lesson occupied minutes, not hours. Hours refused occupation.
Elizabeth sat beside Jane when permitted. She cooled her face, supported her during pains, and offered no cheerful lies.
"I cannot," Jane gasped once.
"You are."
"Knowing it does not make this easier."
"No. But this pain will move. You need survive only the one that is here."
Lady Bennet stood on Jane's other side. "Crush Lizzy's hand, not mine. She is younger."
Jane laughed and cried at once.
Near dawn, Mrs Jones sent Elizabeth out. Lady Bennet remained. Bingley was summoned briefly because Jane asked for him.
He entered trembling and came out twenty minutes later transformed by helpless love.
"She told me to stop apologizing," he said.
"Then stop," Sir Thomas replied.
"I apologized for apologizing."
Darcy put a cup into his hand.
The sun rose. Breakfast cooled untouched. Footsteps crossed overhead. A door opened and closed. Sir Thomas stood at the library window watching light reach the trees where Jane had played as a child.
He could not run toward this danger or read it away. He could only remain.
At half past nine, a cry sounded from above.
Not Jane.
A thin, furious infant voice entered Longbourn.
Bingley's cup fell to the carpet.
The library door opened. Lady Bennet stood there exhausted, tear-streaked, and smiling.
"A girl," she said. "A beautiful little girl. Jane is well."
Bingley made a sound none of them had heard from a grown man and ran past her.
Sir Thomas caught the back of a chair. Darcy looked away, giving him the dignity of tears.
Elizabeth came downstairs later carrying the child wrapped in white.
"Papa."
Sir Thomas took his first grandchild with more fear than he had taken any royal document. The infant's face was red, her dark hair damp, one fist pressed beside her cheek.
"She is very small."
"She was considerably larger to Jane," Lady Bennet said.
Sir Thomas laughed through tears.
The baby opened her eyes briefly.
"Emma Jane Bingley," Elizabeth said. "They chose Emma because they liked it and Jane because Charles insisted."
"He could not insist upon his own name?"
"He proposed Charles if it was a boy and admitted defeat."
Sir Thomas looked at Emma. "You will know your father from the beginning. See that you appreciate the advantage."
Jane received visitors that afternoon in carefully limited numbers. Bingley sat beside the bed holding the baby and looking as if he had discovered both terror and divinity.
"She has Jane's nose," he told everyone.
"She is six hours old," Mrs Jones said. "She has a baby's nose."
Darcy stood with Elizabeth near the door. His gaze moved from Emma to Elizabeth's still-flat figure.
She knew what he felt because it moved through her too: relief for Jane, wonder at the child, fear of the autumn waiting for them.
He did not speak of it until they were alone that night.
"I thought I understood courage," he said. "I did not understand waiting while someone you love enters danger you cannot share."
Elizabeth lay beside him at Netherfield, his hand spread protectively over their unborn child.
"Papa learned that today too."
"And you?"
"I learned that Mama is magnificent in a crisis and intolerable afterward. She has already advised me to bring Mrs Jones to Pemberley."
"Should we?"
"Fitzwilliam."
"I am only asking."
She covered his hand with hers. "We have time."
This time, waiting did not feel empty. It held a heartbeat too small to hear and a family ready to receive it.
* * *
Emma Bingley was christened beneath the same church roof where her parents and the Darcys had married.
She slept through the sacrament, woke during Mr Collins's congratulation, and expressed her opinion with sufficient force to end it early.
"A Bennet," Lady Bennet declared.
"A Bingley," Charles said proudly.
"A baby," Jane corrected, taking her daughter back.
Jane recovered steadily. Motherhood tired her, surprised her, and occasionally reduced her to tears over matters as small as a dropped spoon. She did not become less serene; her serenity became more honest.
"I love her," she told Elizabeth during a quiet morning at Longbourn. "And sometimes I wish someone would carry her out of the room for one entire hour."
"Both may be true."
"Mama says she never wished to be away from us."
From downstairs came Lady Bennet asking Hill whether Emma had been taken to the nursery yet.
Elizabeth smiled. "Mama edits memory."
Bingley learned to walk the nursery at night. Sir Thomas held Emma during estate meetings, claiming she improved everyone's brevity. Darcy, who had rarely held an infant, accepted her as if receiving a parcel of unstable glass.
Emma grasped his finger and refused to release it.
"She likes you," Elizabeth said.
"She has no judgment."
"A serious flaw."
He looked at the child with wonder. "Will ours be this small?"
"I sincerely hope so."
Spring altered more than the family tree. Mr Avery requested Sir Thomas's permission to address Mary. He came to Netherfield with sensible income, honorable references, and an admission that he knew little of estate life but was willing to learn.
Sir Thomas asked what he loved about Mary.
"The way she listens," Mr Avery said. "She hears structure beneath noise—in music, in argument, in people. She does not speak quickly, but when she does, I discover the conversation has been waiting for her."
Sir Thomas gave consent.
Mr Avery proposed in the music room after listening to Mary play a new piece. He did not kneel until she had set aside the final page.
"Mary, I do not ask you to make my house musical or my life respectable. I ask because I love the mind that makes the music and the woman who has learned to trust it. Will you marry me?"
Mary said yes so softly he asked again. Then she laughed and repeated it.
Elizabeth embraced her, remembering the frightened girl who had once feared Mr Collins might corner her into a proposal. Mary held Mr Avery's hand without hesitation.
Lady Bennet produced the tablecloth count within ten minutes.
Kitty was invited to spend part of the summer at Pemberley, where she would sketch the Peaks and study with an artist in Derby. Lydia prepared for presentation the following year on her own terms. Miss Harwood announced she would retire afterward.
"You cannot," Lydia said.
"I can. You are nearly eighteen."
"Who will tell me when I am foolish?"
"Apparently I have permanent employment," he said.
Elizabeth and Darcy returned north in May.
Lady Bennet packed enough baby linen for triplets.
Mrs Jones supplied instructions for the Pemberley midwife.
Sir Thomas gave Darcy a private letter containing practical advice and one underlined sentence: Do not make Elizabeth bear your fear as well as her own.
At the carriage, Emma slept in Jane's arms. Mary wore her new ring. Kitty discussed summer sketches. Lydia promised to write every scandal and remove only the names.
Elizabeth looked at them and felt the old grief of leaving, changed now by certainty of return.
"Christmas at Netherfield," Sir Thomas said.
"If the baby and roads permit."
"I shall improve the roads. You manage the baby."
Darcy shook his hand. "A fair division."
The carriage moved north beneath spring leaves.