Chapter Fifteen

Darcy took a long walk the next morning with Emily.

He carried her on his shoulders for a while and put the girl down whenever she wished to run about. Emily played with flowers, dug at stones, and found several used wads of tobacco that someone had spat out onto the ground.

His mistake had not been one of action, but one of how he thought about himself. Why exactly would not marrying another woman have honoured Anne?

It certainly did not honour her wishes.

There had been features of his marriage which he had not liked. It had been a marriage of family duty, and the parties in such marriages were frequently not so attracted to each other as occurred in a freely chosen companionate marriage.

The simple fact was — Darcy’s thoughts were interrupted when Emily climbed onto a bench they walked past and tried to rapidly walk back and forth on it. He went over to take her hand, so she would not fall, and then stood ready to grab her if she fell after the aid of that hand was refused with a shout of “Baby!”

At last, she turned to the less frightening entertainment of climbing off the bench, and then back onto it, again and again.

Slowly Darcy began to realize, and to truly believe that he had nothing with regards to his marriage to be deeply ashamed of.

Feelings were impossible to control, though they could be influenced.

It had likely been a mistake to contract the marriage in the first place. As much as it had been beneficial to Anne to be removed from Lady Catherine’s control, he had not felt towards her then what a man ought to feel towards his wife. Further, by marrying her, he had prevented her from ever forming an attachment to a gentleman who would love her as much as she loved him.

Though, Lady Catherine would have still done her best to manage that task.

Nothing of the situation had been the way things ought to be, or the way that they would be in Thomas More’s Utopia , where the bride and groom were presented to each other naked before they married, so that they could see if the other had any undesirable defects covered by clothes. But Anne’s life while married to him had been happy for her.

And what of his guilt that it had been his seed that spawned the child which killed her?

Anne had chosen that risk also. She had wanted a child. And Elizabeth had been correct again, Anne did look down on Emily from heaven, and she was happy to see her daughter.

Oh, but it would have been better had she lived, and had Emily been able to know her mother.

The clouds that had been blowing in from morning had become quite threatening, and Emily had become tired. Darcy picked her up and carried her in his arms back to the mansion. She babbled at him, and he replied distractedly, but half way back Emily quieted and fell asleep on his shoulder.

Elizabeth thought that he tended to self-flagellation.

But would he do wrong things if he did not feel guilt?

In any case… things seemed easier.

Colonel Fitzwilliam caught him staring out the window when he went to the drawing room, and said, “You look like a moonstruck calf. And you’ve barely said a word since yesterday. Come, man, you dragged me here. Entertain me.”

“Had you not said that your father insisted that someone from the family show attention to Lady Catherine?”

“It amounts to the same.”

“No, not at all.”

“Come, I require conversation. At least a game of billiards.” Colonel Fitzwilliam changed his voice to make a very bad imitation of Emily’s, and he said, “Play, play. Dar make play — hahahaha! I see your grin, you are amused.”

“You have no sense of shame.”

“What is on your mind?”

“Chiefly,” Darcy smiled, “I have been engrossed in contemplation of the many ways that I have frequently been a fool.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “I knew that—” He lowered his voice, glancing about to make sure there were no servants, and that Lady Catherine was not hiding like a bat behind the curtains, “Will you at last come up to scratch and ask Miss Bennet for her hand?”

“Oh,” Darcy waved his hand vaguely, and with an intentional tone of nonchalance he said, “That, I believe I did that yesterday.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s eyes bulged, and then a wide grin crossed his face. He clapped Darcy on his shoulder. “Congratulations, man.”

“Ah, you see, she refused me.”

His cousin pulled back in startlement. Peered at Darcy closely. Pursed his lips. Then he laughed. “Gave you a proper set down, didn’t she? I’d thought well of her, but didn’t know she had it in her. You still have hopes, do you not?”

“She did suggest that if, after I have thought for an appropriate period, I ask again, her reply might be more favourable.” Darcy grinned, unable to repress his happiness.

While Elizabeth definitely had not promised to agree, he did not think she would refuse when he asked her again, and he would ask her, and he would be able to tell her that he truly wanted to marry her, and that she was right, and that until now he had been a fool.

“By Jupiter and Mars,” Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed. “By Zeus and Ares. I dare say she’ll manage you . Better than I imagined. What did she say? I wish I’d been there to see it.”

“Mainly that she would only marry me if I could promise that I would not spend the rest of my life feeling guilty over having abandoned my plan to not marry again. I believe her words were ‘No sensible woman would marry a man so obsessed with the ghost of his previous wife.’ And other things.”

“Zeus and Ares!” Colonel Fitzwilliam grinned. “I so wish that I had been there to see it.”

“Do you think that I often feel culpable for matters that no reasonable person would?”

The instant Darcy asked that, he regretted having said so much from the mischievous grin that spread across his cousin's face.

“Oh, never mind. I shall simply take Elizabeth’s advice on such matters.”

“No, no — you must allow me to answer the question. At length, at great length.”

The next hour proved that Darcy had been correct in his regret, but oddly he enjoyed being teased more than he had imagined he would.

That afternoon Darcy walked across to the parsonage with Emily, who had mentioned Be-ne repeatedly. She was his excuse this time, though he would not dislike it if he had an opportunity to speak to Elizabeth at length. But itwas not yet time to ask her that question.

He found Elizabeth sitting out with her sisters in Mr. Collins's garden.

That poignant scent which came after a rain, as all the flowers and grasses slowly dried, filled the air.

Emily ran over to Elizabeth on seeing her, without giving Darcy an opportunity to say anything to explain his call. Soon she had them all playing with the ball she’d brought, and the doll she’d had her father carry for her.

Elizabeth looked at him with warm eyes, and he sat around the stone table with her while Emily ran in circles, and happily ate the early berries that were offered by Jane. They all talked, but about nothing of importance. Darcy felt relaxed, more relaxed than he had thought he would be able to be around Elizabeth.

They spoke of how Jane had decorated the nursery, about Mr. Collins’s planned sermon, about how soon the babe would come. “I spoke with the midwife yesterday, and she said it might be any day,” Jane said. “I confess that while I can bear it so long as I must, it is difficult to be quite so large as I am at present.”

Later Darcy had a chance to briefly speak with Elizabeth alone, when Mary had returned indoors to start her studies once more, and Jane followed ten minutes later to do some small task indoors. From her manner Darcy suspected that Elizabeth’s sister was intentionally giving them a chance for a private interview. Private that is, except for the presence of Emily, who was occupying herself by hopping about and shouting, “Croak,” with every leap.

“Energetic creature,” Elizabeth said, pointing at the girl.

Darcy smiled and looked at Elizabeth.

Elizabeth then added, “You are in a better mood.”

“I do believe I am. I have been thinking a great deal, as you suggested.”

She raised a finger then. “I approve of your thinking, but your time of thinking cannot end until the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”

“You are strict in your strictures,” he replied.

“I am a merciless woman. A creature such as — Emily, do be careful, there are thorns on the rose bush.”

Ignoring Elizabeth’s worry, Emily pulled a branch with an early bloom to her nose, took a theatrical deep sniff of it, and then let it go.

“It is my fault,” Darcy said. “I taught her that she ought to smell the roses.”

“I would not like to see her get a cut that might become infected.”

“She never does. She is quite cautious, and it is not so easy to get a deep cut from a rose bush — but you were describing yourself I believe. A merciless woman?”

“Ah, yes. The sort of woman that poets write about. The one who never bends to the begging of her gentleman swain.”

“Then I must fulfil the task you have presented to me and face the heavy burden of thought upon the brain for another day.”

Elizabeth laughed. “My mother would believe me insane. To not seize on something of this sort, and never let go.”

“Your mother has her own mode of thinking about the world, and it is very different from yours, and I far prefer yours.”

They were quiet for a while. They watched Emily run to and fro. She chased a butterfly.

The light was dimming, the air was sweet. The lowing of the cows in the fields could be heard.

“I am so frightened for Jane,” Elizabeth said suddenly. “And remembering how Anne died makes it worse — you do not mind that I have come to call her by her Christian name in my mind?”

Darcy took Elizabeth’s hand and briefly pressed it. “It is a terrifying time.”

“Jane seems to not worry at all. But I cannot believe she is not frightened.”

“Perhaps she is not. Colonel Fitzwilliam told me how in battle he dedicates himself to the Almighty, and that somehow… he does not think about the chances of death, but simply what is in front of him. Maybe Jane is like that.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth pressed her hand to her mouth. “I forgot that men also sometimes face the trial of a particular day where they must face a great risk of death. Worse even than what Jane shall face. It is so easy to think that all the burdens are upon women, but terrible things are faced by all.”

Darcy looked down at the stone grain of the table, and a deep scratch in it. “I often feel guilty that my position as the first son, and a great landowner, meant that it was not my place to join the army to defend us against the French.”

That brought a light laugh from Elizabeth. “You can buy a commission, despite your wealth and lack of elder brothers, and I think you have proven my point once more, that you have a tendency to feel guilt over matters that no reasonable person would.”

Darcy’s lip twitched.

Elizabeth then looked back towards the house with that same worried expression.

“I do not think you should worry so much,” he said. “Anne never had good health. She had nearly died of a fever when she was born, and she always was small and frequently bled.”

“Oh.”

“You know there is reason to worry, so I will not pretend there is not. But there is much less reason to worry than with Anne.”

“And if I believe Lady Catherine, which I never do, you did not let her walk,” Elizabeth said with a frown at the table. “We have made Jane walk a great deal, even though she never liked the exercise. I am sure—”

“Anne could barely manage to stand for the last month. And the man who attended her thought it would be best if she chiefly kept to her bed, so she did. As for whether… I have read doctors who espouse each view. Rest is essential. Exercise is essential. I am sure that in many cases exercise is more beneficial, but I cannot pretend to know for sure. But it seems to me that there is little doubt that a woman who can easily walk when her condition has progressed so far as your sister is more likely to handle the difficulty of birth well than one who could not. And there is, the, uh, width of the hips. I was told by Anne’s accoucheur that it can make a great difference.”

“Aha!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “You noticed my sister’s excellent figure.”

“She is not nearly so beautiful as you ,” was Darcy’s immediate and unhesitating reply.

Elizabeth blushed, but soon they were joined once more by Elizabeth’s sisters, and Emily grew bored with finding her own entertainment in Mr. Collins’s garden and demanded attention from them all.

The next evening the Hunsford party came once more to dinner at Rosings. Except for glances and a great deal of smiles, Darcy and Elizabeth behaved in a more restrained manner under the watchful eye of Lady Catherine than they might have otherwise.

But he felt deeply happy.

He had continued to do a great deal of thinking, but it was all variations upon the same themes: He loved Elizabeth; seeking his own happiness was not wrong; he often was a fool.

Try to be less foolish in the future.

Darcy suspected that would not be such easy advice to follow. While making such a request might be bringing coals to Newcastle, he would strongly encourage Elizabeth to tell him any time she noticed him being particularly foolish.

When the parties separated after dinner, neither he nor Colonel Fitzwilliam were particularly desirous of sitting over tobacco and cognac, and so after a ceremonial fifteen minutes of listening to Mr. Collins praise them and their aunt, Darcy departed for the nursery to retrieve Emily, who exclaimed “Be-ne,” on seeing him, and immediately grabbed his hand so that he could help her walk down the stairs.

Which she did, jumping three of them at a time, and doing her best to pull her father off his balance.

Fortunately, she did not even weigh two stone, so her efforts were in vain, no matter how enthusiastically she pursued this end.

Darcy gained little further opportunity to speak to Elizabeth as Emily immediately took her hand, walked her about the doll house, and involved Elizabeth in a game where Emily was feeding thin gruel, Darcy presumed, from an empty wooden bowl to her doll.

Occasionally, Elizabeth was offered the imagined substance, and she always made a show of lip smacking delight.

Emily did not need a mother, but he thought she would like very much to have a Be-ne in her life. That was, of course, if he was not presumptuous in thinking that Elizabeth would actually give him a favourable reply when he offered once more for her hand the next day.

The main point, Darcy thought, was that he must avoid saying anything foolish and offensive. No speeches about how lowering her connections in trade were — besides, from what Elizabeth had said, he would like them. Certainly nothing should be said about how frustrating he found her mother. Darcy was well aware that Elizabeth found her mother deeply frustrating, but she was still most dear to her, as she ought to be. The woman was her mother, and it would be Darcy’s place to respect her as such.

Assuming, of course, that he received an affirmative response.

Darcy began to feel nervous once more.

Near what Darcy thought would be the end of the evening an increasingly sleepy Emily started to scream loudly, in joy, as she ran about the room, and Lady Catherine took it upon her to grab the girl as she ran past, and shout at her. “Be quiet! Children are to be seen not heard!”

Emily tried to pull away.

Lady Catherine shook her again, and said, “Promise that you will keep your noise to a reasonable level. You understand me! I know you understand me. Say that you will behave as a decent girl. Decent girls do not run about everywhere.”

Emily sobbed, and Lady Catherine went to shake her again.

Darcy grabbed his girl from her grandmother and bounced her up and down on his shoulder until she calmed. “Madam,” Darcy said, “I will beg you kindly to leave such decisions about how to teach Emily to behave to me.”

“She makes a spectacle of herself.”

“It is a matter of harmless pleasure for her. If she climbed over someone, or became a bother, I would curb her, but, madam, I believe you chiefly are frustrated that Emily is not behaving in a decorous manner, not that she was damaging the pleasures of others.”

“She’ll be a hoyden, and then she will run off with your steward’s son, just like that girl did, and then everything I ever did in my life will have been wasted. My daughter is already dead, do not force me to believe that I will eventually wish that my granddaughter had died.”

Darcy opened his mouth to give an angry retort. But something about what Lady Catherine said struck him as terribly poignant and sad. Instead, he said, “It pains me to see that you think your whole life will have been wasted if you do not approve of Emily’s future behaviour.”

She stared at him, and Darcy was keenly aware that the whole room, including Elizabeth, watched this argument.

Lady Catherine finally said, “Our purpose is the children we bear. And—”

Suddenly Jane exclaimed, “Oh, oh, oh. That hurts. Lord!”

The eyes of Elizabeth’s sister went very wide.

Jane then let out her breath and pressed her hand against her forehead. “Do forgive me, Lady Catherine.”

The woman unsteadily stood up, wavering on her feet as Mr. Collins came to her side.

There, a pool of wetness had soaked through Jane’s dress and into the sofa below her. At first Darcy had a spasm of fear that it was blood, but upon coming closer it was clearly more like water.

Jane’s water had broken.

“Oh no, oh no!” Mr. Collins exclaimed. He dropped Jane’s arm and pointed at the pool of liquid. “The cushion shall be ruined. Dear Jane, you ought not have sat down! Look what you have done! Lady Catherine, do forgive me. I shall do anything I must to make amends for what my wife has done. And we shall return to the parsonage, immediately, so that—”

“Oh, oh, oh. Ohhhhh.”

Jane pressed her hand to her stomach, Elizabeth supported her arm now, and Mary had come to the other side.

Lady Catherine came near and said, “To the guest room. The one off the hallway. No need to make Mrs. Collins manage the stairs. And we have an old birthing stool from my time in the attic.”

“I shall never forget the shame of the ruination my wife scattered upon your divan!” Mr. Collins exclaimed. “We cannot impose upon you! We must return home!”

“Oh, do be quiet,” Lady Catherine snapped, as she led Jane, supported by both of her sisters, to the door. “I bore three children, though only one survived the first week. Do you think I did not know what might happen when I invited a woman so far advanced to dine?”

Mr. Collins immediately snapped his mouth shut, apparently fearing that he would draw the wrath of his patroness upon him by further apologies. Darcy suspected that the gentleman was not at all unhappy that Lady Catherine would not expect him to replace the cushion.

Lady Catherine led the women to a neatly appointed guest room.

As she walked servants were called and ordered about. “Send for the midwife — no physician! One was in attendance when Anne died — bring down the birthing stool. Set a fire, yes it should be roaring. A great many worn linens, the more the better. Even when all goes well there is a great deal of blood and mess. Do settle yourself, Mrs. Collins. It is my firm belief that anxiety upon the part of a woman always worsens her chances. If women never feared the birthing chamber, most of those who die would live. Just sit here till the—”

“Oh, oh, owwwww!”

And then seeing them standing around uselessly, all watching, Lady Catherine fiercely turned to the gentlemen and shouted, “Out, out, all of you! Out. Gentlemen have no place in a birthing chamber! Go chop wood and drink yourselves silly. That is what Sir Lewis always did.”

“You need not give me that command a second time,” Colonel Fitzwilliam, who leaned against the door frame, and thus was the only one of them to not have fully entered the room, said. He had a green look, as though despite the time he’d spent on the battlefield, he found the birthing chamber unsettling. “You need not ask me a second time to drink.”

Darcy knew that his presence had been a great comfort to Anne, but a single glance at where Jane sat on the bed, with Elizabeth having her arms around her and Mary holding her hand, convinced him that Mrs. Collins had ample sources of comfort without Mr. Collins.

And a single glance at the pale, wide-eyed way Mr. Collins stared at his wife would have convinced Darcy, had he not been already convinced, that if he forced Lady Catherine to permit the man to stay in the room, that the gentleman would provide quite the opposite of comfort.

“Come man, come,” Darcy said to him. “Not your place here.”

Mr. Collins seemed in a daze, so with the arm that was not occupied holding Emily, who watched the whole proceedings wide eyed and fascinated, Darcy grabbed Mr. Collins and pulled him from the room.

Soon as the gentlemen had returned to the drawing room, Colonel Fitzwilliam walked to the stand and poured a thick glass of brandy for Mr. Collins. He pressed it into the gentleman’s hand, and said, “Drink up. Do you think we are required to actually chop firewood? I’ve a notion to skip straight to being foxed.”

Still acting like a struck steer, Mr. Collins drank the tumbler away.

Colonel Fitzwilliam poured another glass full, but Darcy walked up and stopped him. “It might be best if Mr. Collins retains a little of his wits.”

The officer studied his cousin and shrugged. He then poured a cup for himself and another that he pressed into Darcy’s free hand, and said, “You might know better than I do — efficient servants, they have already taken the cushion away to be cleaned.”

“You do not think I need to offer restitution to Lady Catherine,” Mr. Collins stammered out. “For all the burden.”

“She likes to be useful,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied as he sipped his own brandy. “You have provided her an opportunity. She ought to pay you. But as she appointed you to your present position, I dare say the matter is even.”

After Darcy took his first sip of the brandy Emily reached for it, of course. “No, dearest,” Darcy said.

“Baby!”

“My dear,” Darcy replied, “This beverage is quite unhealthful for young children. You must wait until you are older to taste it. Besides, you would not like it.”

Emily reached again. “Baby!”

Colonel Fitzwilliam chuckled when Darcy put the tumbler down on a windowsill to keep it from his daughter’s grasping hands. He said, “I cannot cease to find it hilarious how you attempt to reason with the wild creature.”

“She can understand much of what I say, can you not?”

Emily nodded. “Uhn.”

“See?”

“You are already wrapped around her finger.”

There was a sound of a low guttural groan from the other room, and Mr. Collins winced. Colonel Fitzwilliam also pressed his hand against his stomach. Darcy realized that the wall of the guest room that Lady Catherine had placed Jane in was one of the walls of the drawing room.

Darcy walked to Mr. Collins and said, “Stiff chin. Your wife will be well. It is a normal thing.”

“It is the decision of the Almighty if she passes through this travail,” Mr. Collins said mournfully. “Might you permit me to have another drink of whisky?”

Darcy waved his hand towards the stand with the alcohol, and Mr. Collins gratefully bounded over, apparently thinking that he must follow Darcy’s will in this matter.

There was another groan, this one more like a scream.

It brought back unpleasant memories to Darcy. Anne’s pale face. How she gripped his hand so hard that it bruised. Her own screams. The blood-soaked towels.

He drank his own brandy, and he held Emily tight, though she squealed at it. He sniffed her hair, needing that reminder of life.

Despite the very Mr. Collins-ish way he behaved, seeing him clearly affected by his wife entering labour gave Darcy a better opinion of the pompous and servile man. He at least had some feelings, beyond concern for what Lady Catherine said.

After a while Emily fell asleep, and Nell was called to carry her up to the nursery.

The three gentlemen settled around the table and brought out cards to pass the time. Their chief purpose was to distract Mr. Collins, and both Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam kept up a continuous stream of conversation, and they made a point of encouraging Mr. Collins to speak as much as possible.

Even under these circumstances it was not difficult to get him to embark upon long winded and often nonsensical speeches. But when they heard Jane’s moans and occasional screams, he inevitably lost track of what he was saying, and it was impossible to bring him to speak again for half a minute.

The gentleman was soon clearly foxed, though not so far gone that the only thing to be done with him was to spill him in a bed.

Not much more than half an hour after Jane’s labour began, the midwife from the village came in and she was bustled into the birthing room. Other than briefly seeing her when they opened the hall, there was no business between her and the gentlemen.

They settled back to their cards, interrupted by the increasingly loud and frequent moans of pain. At first both Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam won shillings and occasionally guineas off of Mr. Collins, but then Darcy began to make a serious effort to lose to the increasingly morose gentleman, while at the same time minimizing how much money he lost to his increasingly feral looking cousin.

“I do hope Mrs. Collins will be well,” Mr. Collins said, “And that it will be a healthy son. Lady Catherine said it is likely to be a son.”

“I dare say that Lady Catherine knows no more about the matter than my horse,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied.

“She is so wise and beneficent!” Collins replied, drinking a little more, and letting both of them see his cards. “And always so confident and sure of herself.”

“So is my horse,” was Colonel Fitzwilliam’s instant reply.

“I love her!” Mr. Collins exclaimed.

“Mrs. Collins?” Darcy asked slowly to confirm the matter.

The clergyman blearily looked at him and then replied in a sober voice, “I, of course, speak of the Lady Catherine de Bourgh.”

Whilst the nature of that love had not been specified, this preference expressed for Darcy’s aunt, rather than his own wife, did much to reverse the slight rise the gentleman had made in Darcy’s estimation.

Another scream from the room, much louder than before.

“Think of this to comfort you,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said dryly, “Lady Catherine is almost certain to survive tonight unscathed.”

“I thank you very much for putting once more into mind the blessings that God has heaped upon my head,” Mr. Collins replied. “I will cling to what you said through the travails of the night. Even if the Almighty sees fit that my wife and child die, and call them to be amongst the angels, Lady Catherine shall live.”

After saying that, he began a series of drunken hiccups.

Either Mr. Collins was insane, or he turned into a fine humourist when deep in his cups.

Colonel Fitzwilliam patted him on the back and pressed a glass of water into his hands while looking at Darcy with a disturbed expression that showed he also had not expected to hear the clergyman make such a declaration of love about their aunt.

“I shall always remember, till the day I die, the occasion when I was first brought before Lady Catherine. How fine her carriage! The excellence of her bearing! What she wore,” Mr. Collins said after coughing. “I had a presentiment as I approached the drawing room that I stood before the turning point which would change the whole course of my future life.”

“Indeed,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said sceptically.

The distraction of those amusing things which Mr. Collins said helped Darcy. Even as they spoke, the memory of Anne’s death was before his eyes. His hands shook, and it took Darcy an act of will to not drink as much as Mr. Collins, or even more.

A little less than two hours after the midwife arrived the sound of Jane’s screams and groans became louder and nearly continuous, and Darcy thought he could perceive underneath the sound a woman firmly ordering her to push, and then again to pause.

His heart beat harder in worry.

All three of them became silent, and they ceased to play cards.

This perhaps was the time of crisis, but Darcy knew that reaching the point of the child coming out relatively quickly, if that was in fact what had happened, was a promising sign.

Anne had laboured for nearly an entire day after her pains had begun.

There was another loud scream from Jane, and then quiet.

Mr. Collins pulled his hands through his hair. “I so hope Mrs. Collins is well.”

And then a child wailed.

Mr. Collins’s eyes grew wide, and a slow smile crept over his face.

Darcy’s own heart fluttered, and it was impossible not to smile as well.

“A healthy sounding set of lungs,” Colonel Fitzwilliam commented.

Mr. Collins nodded.

That sound quieted soon, though it started up again irregularly, but with enough fierceness to make clear that the occasional quietness was from the child receiving what it wished, and not from it being too weak due to ill health.

Fifteen minutes after the first sound of the babe’s crying, the door to the drawing room opened and Elizabeth came in, carrying the tiny child wrapped in those lighter cloths that were replacing the old habit of tightly swaddling the child.

A touch of blood stood on Elizabeth’s cheeks, but she smiled widely.

Upon seeing her, Darcy’s own tension and anxiety released. She would not be smiling if a large pool of blood was flooding out of her sister.

Darcy still hurried to her, moving in front of Mr. Collins, who had far more right to approach the child. “Was the placenta expelled correctly?”

Elizabeth smiled at him. “Immediately when we gave the child to my sister to suckle after he’d been cleaned.”

She turned to her cousin, who tottered up to them and looked at the tiny, perfect, little wrinkled face with wide eyes.

“Mr. Collins, here is your son.” Elizabeth held the child up.

His whole manner and expression changed. “Oh, oh, oh. It is like looking at the face of my mother.”

“You can hold him,” Elizabeth said softly.

“But won’t I drop him?”

“You are not likely to. It only takes a little practice.”

Collins gingerly took the little boy, and then rocked him softly back and forth. “Hello, hello. Welcome.” He looked up at them all. There were tears in the clergyman’s eyes. “Is he not perfect?”

“Yes,” Darcy and Elizabeth spoke together at once. They looked at each other and smiled.

The astonishment of the miracle of life was in Elizabeth’s eyes.

Colonel Fitzwilliam, in an abominable expression of indifference, shrugged.

Darcy felt tears in his own eyes.

“We shall name the child Bennet, in honour of the family,” Mr. Collins said. “Oh, he is so perfect.”

“You should go to Jane,” Elizabeth said. “Come, come.”

He followed her, holding the child with greater confidence.

Colonel Fitzwilliam yawned when the two left the room. “The excitement is over now. The child looks healthier than I do. I dare say, I’m off to bed.”

Darcy sat back down at the table, with the abandoned cards and small pile of coins. He let out a long breath.

There were still dangers for Jane, and even more for Bennet. A great many children, even those who appeared healthy upon birth, died soon enough. But Darcy had a sense, a confidence or intuition, that Bennet would live.

He picked up the remains of the glass he’d sipped for the whole night and drank the rest of it away. The lights had burned low.

After a few minutes, Elizabeth returned to the room, glowing happy.

She smiled at him as he rose to greet her and came up to him. “I am glad you were here, in the other room the whole time.”

“Everything is well with your sister?” Darcy asked again.

“The midwife is wholly satisfied. And do not tell me all the ways, which I am sure you are familiar with, that a mother might still die after such a successful birth.”

“After Anne died, I read several books written by doctors upon the science of obstetrics,” Darcy sheepishly replied.

“I had guessed as much.” Elizabeth smiled at him. “Oh, it was so wholly perfect to watch the crown of the head come out.”

Darcy nodded.

As though by instinct they embraced each other. Elizabeth gripped him tightly. “I grew frightened during the course. But I had to be strong for Jane.”

In reply Darcy stroked his hand slowly up and down her back.

She was perfect, she was worth everything to him.

“I was so glad you were here,” Elizabeth repeated.

“Elizabeth, I—”

“Yes?” She pulled back from him, while still keeping her hands on his arms. “What?”

Instead of answering Darcy went to the inner pocket of his waist coat and pulled out his watch. “The deuce, it is only half past eleven.”

Elizabeth laughed. “You have a half hour left of your thinking duty?”

“A duty placed on me by you,” Darcy replied.

He could not look away from her face, her eyes, her lips, her cheeks. They looked at each other from only a few inches away. He brushed her cheek.

“Even lacking a half hour, three days is enough time for a great deal of thought.” Elizabeth tilted up her face towards his.

“All I can think of now is how much I would like to do this.”

And Darcy kissed her.

Elizabeth kissed him back, at first tentatively, and then fiercely. She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed herself tightly against him.

He wrapped his arms around her back, and all the world was perfect.

When she stepped back, they grinned at each other.

“Elizabeth, would you—”

“No, no.” Elizabeth waved a grinning finger in front of him. “I am the woman without mercy, giving my knightly lover a task he must complete. We must complete the half hour, before you might ask anything. Though I now can promise that I intend to reply favourably.”

“Teasing woman.”

“My mother again would consider me insane.”

“No, no,” Darcy replied seriously. “I suspect that if you wished to press a breach of promise suit, what we have already spoken would be sufficient.”

“Lord! What a lawyerly thing to say at such a time!” Elizabeth giggled. “I do love you, but you have an odd notion of the romantic.”

Darcy grinned widely back, suffused, he thought, with more happiness than he had ever felt before. “You love me?”

She boldly kissed him once more.