Chapter Twenty-One #2
As Darcy picked up Emily, Elizabeth groaned and threw herself back onto the bed.
She stared at the ceiling. “Is it a general rule then that I should not wipe her nose? Must she manage always on her own now?”
“You also should not let her wake you up in the morning.”
“I thought,” Elizabeth replied sharply, “that I was supposed to be her mother, and to always be present. I have done that. But I am sorry that I did not realise baby lions must wipe their own noses.”
“She is not a baby lion.”
“Yes, she is,” Elizabeth replied, almost angrily. “She has declared it solemnly.”
“That does not mean anything,” Darcy said. And then he frowned. “Why are you arguing on this point? Would it not be easier for you if Emily would wipe her own nose?”
“I do not want to do things the easy way! I want to do them right. I have been trying so hard, and I have…I have…and now you tell me that I have done it all wrong. That I am a poor mother because I am permitting her to develop bad habits, spoiling her, and because I…I cannot even guess at why you are unhappy that I have let her wake me in the mornings.”
Elizabeth suddenly leapt from the bed.
She was crying too.
Emily ran over to her and wrapped her arms around Elizabeth’s legs. “Mama Lizzy, what’s wrong?”
Darcy fought an impulse to snap at Elizabeth angrily and to sarcastically apologise for not being the sort of husband that she had hoped he would be.
But the memory of the way he would argue with Mary stopped him, and he really looked at his wife.
She was so unlike Mary had been.
She was trembling, and she looked so alone, despite the child clutching at her legs. She was tired, with big dark circles under her eyes.
He remembered once more that she was a fragile creature under his care, and one whom he could harm.
He had not done a good enough job of caring for her.
Darcy went to Elizabeth, following an instinct that told him to do the opposite of what his habits with Mary had become, and he embraced her.
She desperately turned to him and buried her face against his shirt.
She was so much shorter than him.
He rubbed his hand up and down her back. “There, there. There, there. It will all be well. It will all be well.”
Elizabeth tilted up her head, and then she reached up and desperately kissed his mouth, holding him against her.
Then she shuddered, put her head against his chest again, and just embraced him loosely.
“I apologise,” she said. “I have not slept enough—I do not know how. I do not want to ever make Emily feel unwelcome. These dinners have been important. And…I miss my family. It is Christmas, and they are opening their presents, and my uncle Gardiner and his wife are there, and I do not know when I shall ever see them again, or my little cousins. And I never have time to write to anyone. It is all so large and so different. There is always so much that I must learn and do. And…and…pay no attention to me. I am only overwrought. I shall be well as soon as I sleep more.”
“You wish to fulfil every duty you have.”
“I promised to be a good wife. That was what I agreed. When you…saved me. I owe you this. I must do everything. I…I must not…not…fail you.”
“Elizabeth.” Darcy tilted her chin up so he could look her in the eye. “I want you to be happy. Why have you told me nothing about this?”
“I would not complain.”
“No,” Darcy said. “I would not have either. We are much alike in that—perhaps too much alike.”
He tugged at his whiskers and studied Elizabeth.
She yawned widely.
“Well, first you must sleep more,” Darcy said. “Emily, can you help me put Lizzy into bed?”
“Oh! Yes! But we must read a bedtime story to her.”
“Then you had best pick a book.”
“I will!”
A book was instantly selected from Emily’s shelf, and Darcy took Elizabeth’s soft hand to lead her across the hall.
She smiled. “I am not confident that listening to Emily pretend to read will be conducive to quickly falling asleep.”
Darcy grinned. “As you said, it is difficult to deny her.”
They went through their sitting room and into Elizabeth’s bedroom. The way the room looked by candlelight and moonlight had become quite familiar to Darcy over the last weeks.
In the morning light, with Elizabeth’s maid dusting in the corner, it looked fresher.
Less magical and more lived in.
The appearance of the room had not changed much in the few weeks since she had moved into it, yet there was something subtle about the whole that proclaimed to Darcy that the room was now Elizabeth’s.
“Apparently Mr. Darcy agrees with you,” Elizabeth said to her lady’s maid, who was arranging the gowns in her closet. “He and Emily are come in state to put me back to bed. I am a great personage, you understand”—she winked at Emily—“who cannot go to sleep without a parade of attendants.”
Emily giggled at this. “You are like a duke!”
“No,” Darcy corrected her, “a duchess.”
“I like to consider myself a queen,” Elizabeth said. “Like the French ones but more fortunate than the most recent possessor of the title.”
Now Darcy laughed. “Elizabeth, to bed with you. And I shall read you to sleep.”
“No, I read, I read!” Emily exclaimed. And she took the book from Darcy’s hands.
Elizabeth grinned at him in that warm, sunny manner of hers as he let Emily take the book and sit on the bed. She opened the collection of nursery rhymes, then ‘read’ Little Tom Thumb and the story of Red Riding Hood, repeating them nearly word for word from the book.