Chapter Twenty-one

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MR. DARCY HAD been the man in the hood. He was gratified that he could at least use the money that Wickham had given him towards whatever money he was giving the couple so that they could be settled.

But he agreed to giving Wickham more money than he would have liked. He bought Wickham's commission, too, so he could remain on at the regiment—after deserting twice. Really, Darcy didn't understand why they kept taking him back.

He and Elizabeth decided to stay out of the business.

The official story was, as had been suggested by them, that Lydia and Wickham had been in a carriage accident and therefore been stymied in their attempt to get married. Now, however, the nuptials were completed, and the news was conveyed to the Bennets, all of whom were quite pleased to have it settled.

Mr. and Mrs. Darcy invited the family to their London town house to dine with the newly wedded couple. Wickham seemed to dote on Lydia in a way that he hadn't before.

The Darcys were unsure if Georgiana's theory would prove correct, if such a gesture would produce lasting change in Mr. Wickham. It did seem to mean that he was markedly happier in his marriage than they might have predicted. Maybe he would be a better man henceforth.

If such a thing didn't prove true, however, neither of them would really be surprised.

The family dinner was quite an experience, for Elizabeth had often felt embarrassed by her family when she was in Mr. Darcy's presence, but this time, she didn't worry. He would not reject her, no matter what her family did or said.

They were going to be better now, because they were going to communicate and everything was going to go much easier from now on.

She firmly believed this, and it did seem to be true thus far. Everything was going much better than it might have been even a few months ago, and neither of them were nearly as worried as they had been hitherto.

Anyway, everyone was there, with the exception of Jane, who was married now, and Elizabeth had not been there for the wedding. She realized now that there was no barrier to her having gone. If she had spoken of it to her husband, he would have been sure to see to it for her.

She had already been given free rein with many of her husband's resources since they were communicating better, anyway. She now knew that she was allowed to command the carriage herself (of course she should have known this already, but it was better to hear it from her husband's own mouth) and that she was allowed to dictate her own comings and goings. Her husband had been a bit horrified to think she was considering herself his "prisoner" as he had termed it. Elizabeth, you are the lady of the house. You go where you must. It is up to you, not me.

It was all much improved, though she was saddened to have missed Jane's wedding.

If it could have gone differently, it would have, but it hadn't. Now, everything was settled.

But then, that night, the night that her parents came to dine, she had a dream, like the dreams she'd had before Mr. Darcy had come to propose marriage.

She and Mr. Darcy were snug in each other's arms, sleeping together in his bed in the house in town, but in her dream, they were back outside of that burning house. In her dream, Mr. Darcy was shot dead. He lay there on the ground, with the house smoking behind them, and those men leered at her and they laughed and they put the barrel of the rifle under her chin and—

She woke up gasping, her heart pounding, but nonetheless safe, here with her husband, who was very much alive.

"Lizzy?" he said sleepily. "What is it?"

"Only a dream," she whispered, burrowing into him. "Nothing at all, my darling." But she put her fingers to his chest, seeking out the scar the bullet had made. She knew it was there, obviously, but until this point, she had never touched it, and they had never acknowledged it. Of course, when they weren't wearing clothes, they had not been wont to speak overmuch.

She trailed her fingers back and forth over it. She made little whorls around it with the tip of her finger.

"That tickles," he yawned.

She let her fingers come to rest there.

He sighed and his breath went even again. He had fallen back to sleep.

THE DREAMS WERE back.

They did not happen exactly often, however, maybe once every several weeks, but they began to occur with a certain frequency. The second or third time she dreamt of it, she told Mr. Darcy what she had been dreaming of, and he told her that he had dreams like that all the time.

"Sometimes, they're dreadful," he said. "Sometimes I lie there, bleeding out, watching them do awful things to you. Sometimes, I triumph in some way. I wrench the pistol out of that man's hand and turn it on them and we make an escape. I think it's quite normal to have dreams about these sorts of things. It's the body's way of working it out of us, perhaps. It's only dreams."

Yes, she thought, but she had thought these dreams were over since she was married to him. She had thought everything was now sorted and safe.

She worried about the dreams. Why had they come about now? Was there any significance to it? Should she try to stop them? If so, should she address the fears in the dreams or attempt to bury them?

She would sit outside, staring out at the fields of Pemberley, as the dogs ran and gamboled and sometimes came to put their dear, wet little noses into her lap, and worry.

They had not gone straight back to Pemberley from London, however. They had lingered in the area for a time, making several day trips to Hertfordshire, once to spend the afternoon with her parents and younger sisters—though only Mary and Kitty were now still at home—and three or four times to Netherfield, to spend time with the newly married Bingleys. There were plans for Jane and her husband to come and spend some time in Derbyshire by and by as well.

But now, they were home again, and she was back with her dear, sweet dogs and the summer days were growing shorter.

One day, during a long stretch of worrying, she realized that she had thought that the dreams had originally been chased away by Mr. Darcy's proposal. However, what if they'd been chased away by her worry over whether or not Mr. Darcy loved her? The dreams had been a manifestation of fear and anguish. The fear and anguish hadn't gone away. It had simply changed form.

Had she felt such fear and anguish before the carriage accident?

She thought about it, and she didn't think that she had, not in this way, this unending and somewhat oppressive way, where she must go through and through a thing, turning it this way and that, trying to nail it down and come to some conclusion about it.

But why would the carriage accident have wrought this change in her?

She thought of that moment, in which she'd realized that she was out of touch with her body—it was crying, but she was detached from herself in another way—had something gotten out of sync within her?

Perhaps she'd simply touched something, a dark something. A veneer on the world had been peeled away for her, and she had experienced the truth about her existence intimately. It was fragile. Her life could be snuffed out in a moment.

Danger was lurking in that way, lurking all over, ready to pounce on her. She knew it was there before, she supposed, in an abstract way, but now it had shape and form. Now, it was real.

She'd worried about small, personal things recently, things about her own being. Did she love Mr. Darcy? Were her lady parts deformed and mannish? Perhaps some part of her had wished to contain the fear, to bring it inside her, so that she could tease it out and untangle it, make it tame.

But it wasn't that way, was it?

Would she always worry like this? Would she ever be able to go back to the carefree woman she'd been before, the one who dearly loved to laugh?