Chapter Twenty-two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

AUTUMN WHISPERED INTO Derbyshire with the scent of mulled wine and woodsmoke. The dogs still capered in the afternoons, but now, often the mornings were too cold for either Elizabeth or the dogs to go out. Cleo especially went out to do her business and then ran back to the door, anxiously wagging her tail to be let back into the warmth.

There were still jars and jars of blackberry jam, made up at the height of the summer, but outside, the leaves curled and changed colors and everything seemed to grow dimmer, as if the world itself were turning down an oil lamp and ready to go down for a long night's sleep.

Her bleeding was late.

She hadn't noticed it herself, which wasn't so strange, really. She had never been in the habit of counting the days until its arrival. It almost always caught her by surprise.

It was Mr. Darcy who mentioned it. They were taking off their clothes to get in bed together one night, in his room. They always slept in the same bed. As the months had passed, the feverishness of their early joining had waned, much like the autumn, but it seemed right to Elizabeth in a way she couldn't quite describe.

Perhaps they'd been so desperate to be connected because they were terrified of losing the other one. Perhaps, back in that horrible time, when they had faced down the bandits and Mr. Darcy's wound and the cold nights in that abandoned house, they had forged some bond. Perhaps they wouldn't quite feel safe without the other there. Perhaps joining their physical bodies so frantically had been some attempt to reassure themselves the other one was still there.

It still happened, and with frequency, but not every night and not every morning. It wasn't necessary anymore, because they were certain of each other. It was too frantic a pace to keep up forever, she thought, that kind of frenzied passion. This was better, stronger, warmer, like a fire built up in a fireplace burning strongly instead of the crazed sparks of a blaze trying to catch.

"Is your bleeding late?" he said, sitting down on the bed and running a hand over his jaw. He looked over at her with dreamy eyes, as if she were the most perfect and beautiful thing in his entire world, and she felt consumed by that gaze, awash in his love.

"Is it? I'm afraid I've never been good at keeping track," she said, sitting down on the opposite side of the bed.

"I think it is," he said.

She gave him a little smile. "Well, there we go. Heir and spare, and then I shall be off to bed all the rakes in London."

He snorted, pulling aside the covers. "You're never going to let me forget that I said that."

"I am," she said, climbing into bed. "I'm only gently teasing, Fitzwilliam."

"Do I tease you about thinking your clitoris was somehow a prick?"

"Well, that would be cruel," she said.

He gave her a pointed look.

"Oh, it is not the same thing," she said.

He pulled the covers to his chin, very prim.

"Is it the same thing?" She rolled onto her side, worried now. "Am I teasing you in a way that makes you feel horrible? I'm so sorry, Fitzwilliam. I never meant—"

"No, no, I was teasing you," he said with a gentle smile.

"Well, it's not nice to make fun of a lady when she's carrying your child."

He grinned. "Do you think you really might be? Carrying my child?" His voice lilted around the words, as if they filled him with wonder.

"I hope so," she breathed.

And then they made love.

And now, she waited, and her bleeding didn't come.

The days grew colder and colder, and the dogs began to shiver around her skirts when she walked with them.

One afternoon, she and Mr. Darcy were walking together through the grounds, and everything was looking decidedly brown and drab. Cleo was whining at her husband's fingers. She wanted him to pick her up, something he had done often when she was a puppy.

"No, no, Miss Cleo," Mr. Darcy murmured to her, scratching the top of her head. "You are far too big for such things these days."

Then a shot rang out through the air and his face went white and he went entirely still.

Her heart stopped.

She seized his hand and her heart pounded again, and they looked into each other's eyes and their breath came in noisy gasps, in the same rhythm. She pulled his hand into both of hers and tugged it against her chest, between her breasts.

"Likely some farmer chasing foxes out of a hen house," he said breathlessly.

"Yes, of course," she said. She had grown up in the country. The sound of a gun being fired was hardly a strange sound to her, and yet… and yet…

They hurried back to the house anyway, the dogs all around them, yipping at their heels as if they had caught their anxiety.

There was more lovemaking, then, this time in the afternoon for the first time in a very long time. This time there was something desperate about the way they moved against each other. He was over her, his gaze holding hers all the time, saying her name again and again, like a chant to ward something off, to ward off that darkness.

But then, as the winter stole over the countryside, and they began their plans to go back to town for Georgiana's season, she began to wonder if she didn't have it wrong.

Her joining with her husband, it wasn't like the seasons, and this part now, it wasn't autumn or even winter. It wasn't dimming and it wasn't losing its passion. Rather, they had come together in a clash of chaos and pain and fear. And now, they were settling into safety together. Things were coming together into strength and steadiness. This was the way things were supposed to be. This was home.

She was sure her belly was curving a bit. She placed her hands on it in the mornings before Harmony dressed her for breakfast and she whispered good morning to the little one who must be growing there, who was coming to complete them in a way that was exactly right, that was closing a circle, that was mending all the ragged places and making them smooth.

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