B006O3T9DG EBOK (19 page)

Recognition lit his eye, but that was not the end of it.

“Can you tell me why she advocated this particular name?”

Sally had not thought of it over-much. At the time, she believed that it had just been a caprice. Tapping her finger upon her chin, she did what she could to recall precisely what Daisy had said about it.

“It was her half-brother’s name. She said he’d escaped from Newgate and if Wickham was to try to use it he might get pinched. Still, when we left him, Wickham wasn’t goin’ no where....”

Mr. Darcy’s face lost a bit of its colour, giving Sally to recall the rest of the story. She did not know if she should expound on the subject or not.

Before she could, Mr. Darcy said, “Is Miss Mulroney witting of the fact that her brother is dead and that he died at the point of my sword?”

His gaze was keen. So was Sally’s.

She said, “Yea, both of ’em.”

Again, he asked, “Beg pardon?”

“She knows that Tom’s dead and that you kilt ’em—both of ’em. She had two bothers, you kilt ’em both.”

Not one to shrink from possible reckoning, Mr. Darcy stood a little taller.

He said, “I see.”

Sally would have liked to hear the hows and the whys of that story, but he did not offer them.

What he said next was not exactly a question.

“And she aided me nonetheless?”

“She didn’t know her kin well—they were older’n her and didn’t share the same father. She said that Tom was no good and that he probably duped poor Frank into some bad business.”

All Mr. Darcy had to say was, “It was a bad business, indeed.”

More to herself than to him, Sally said, “Maybe that’s why she kept her share of the money. Due compensation.”

When she looked up, Mr. Darcy was gone.

———

There is little doubt that, left to his own devices, Mr. Darcy would have taken the scroll little Miss Arbuthnot brought to him and hidden it away—never to be looked upon or thought of ever again. His wife was not disposed to allow him that just then.

Sally had just withdrawn from the room when Elizabeth turned to her husband and extended her hand.

“Pray, may I?”

Tucking an expression of amused trepidation in the corner of his mouth, he responded mildly, “I am quite sure I have no idea to what you refer.”

“Do not be mischievous when I am in such a state of curiosity. Pray, is it signed?”

“His signing this document means nothing,” Darcy reminded her. “It alters nothing.”

Upon speaking those words, any hint of frivolity evaporated. Try as she would to check any recognizable vexation from his expression, she was reminded of the full measure of grief he had suffered—and suffered yet at Wickham’s hand. Injury to her husband was injury to herself. That was as it always would be.

“Indeed, what does it matter? George Wickham is dead,” she said softly. “It is done.”

He repeated firmly, “It is done
.”

———

In fortune, the foremost chin-waggers in service at Pemberley were not privy to Mr. Darcy’s conversation with the little girl from London. The walls of Pemberley were thick, but not impenetrable. Mr. Darcy was aware of this above anyone else. Little went on in any room of such a vast house that was not overheard, glimpsed, or eventually sniffed out. He chose his moment for conversing with Sally with great care.

Sally was known to most in service at Pemberley as the girl who served as Mrs. Major Kneebone’s nursemaid. Other, more senior servants knew of her connection to the boy, John Christie who had once been a stable-hand. There were other, darker tales passed round.

In the year ’16, they were considered by most as just talk—Sally kept what she knew to herself.

Chapter 26

Heart & Hearth

Two years after Sally’s call on the Darcys, little had altered within Pemberley’s august halls when it came to gossipry.

Those who served within were free to discuss more urgent matters—like whether or not Mr. Darcy did or did not rip Mrs. Darcy’s fancy new drawers to shreds. For society had it on good word and general observation that Mr. Darcy’s directive on any matter within his manor was inviolate.

No member of his household argued this presumption. Yet it was not entirely true. Upon occasion, Mr. Darcy’s opinion was countered. When it was, his wife was the violator. Had society presumed to know of what passed between Mr. and Mrs. Darcy in their most intimate moments, they might have thereby believed that Mr. Darcy’s word on the matter of her undergarments was infrangible too. That would beckon a misapprehension. By his own words, one might have understood Mr. Darcy did not favour his wife’s wearing such an indelicate garment. No one, save her maid, knew this for certain.

Although the tattered lady-breeches had been stashed away, word of their condition soon escaped by way of a nosy upstairs maid. Back-stairs tongues wagged. It might have been said then that the newest in fashion was all for nought. It might have been said, but that would have been wrong—quite wrong. As it happened, Mrs. Darcy continued to wear her drawers—and not just when a chill was in the air.

As a woman who had been taken to the straw three times and had two children live beyond infancy, Elizabeth Darcy was much more fortunate than many mothers. That did not mean she was not wary. She saw it her duty, however, not to allow her own apprehension to be apparent to her husband. Indeed, when the coming event entered their conversation, she invoked an expression of false gaiety that elicited more trepidation than any other she could have invented. Darcy was uncertain whether to allow her to think her disguise was successful or not. In the end, he permitted her that.

They soldiered on their usual fashion, each of the opinion they were a balm to the other. In a roundabout way they were counterirritants. Her determination to commit a ruse and his indecision upon whether to expose said ruse successfully diverted much of their attention—time that might otherwise been spent fretting over the outcome of her pregnancy.

There was no possible circumstance that would have influenced him to leave his wife’s side during her confinement. Indeed, he kept to her side so diligently that she had to shoo him away to tend to her indisposition. For each morn inevitably brought a bout of sickness with it. The only food she could keep down was a broth that Georgiana concocted. It was vile-tasting, but it kept nausea at bay.

Although Georgiana had two small children to see to of her own, she brought them and their nurse with her to Pemberley for Elizabeth’s laying-in. The children played happily, and Geoff was pleased to have other little girls to tease than just his sister.

It was known to everyone that Georgiana and Elizabeth loved each other as sisters. Because it was never alluded to in company, few people knew that Darcy’s sister was in want of repaying an enormous debt to his wife. The weight of Georgiana’s duty became even greater upon the birth of her own child. She fully understood what Elizabeth must have suffered whilst her brother was off
trying to recover her from her own impetuosity. She had been so determined to reach her love, Colonel Fitzwilliam, she thought of nothing—and no one—else.

Guilt plagued Georgiana. She could not repair the past, but she meant to do all she could to see to the future. Once Elizabeth’s morning sickness had subsided, it took all of her powers of persuasion to convince Georgiana that nothing would be more pleasing than to have her retire to Whitemore and return for her labour. Pleased with the arrangement, Georgiana did.

As dear as she held Georgiana, it was Elizabeth’s fervent wish, for the time leading up to her delivery, to be one of solitude. (Such a sequestration suited propriety quite well.) Privacy was needed for her to indulge herself in ways that others might find odd. Her husband certainly did.

Although they both knew her pregnancy had not yet outgrown her own dressing gowns, she drew her husband’s enormous robe about her. When he questioned it, she explained that it alone was commodious enough to encase her growing belly. As a gift, he had a blue velvet robe made up just for her, lined with satin and bedizened with gold braid. She told him that she loved it and he believed that she did, but she eschewed it for his day after day.

“Pray have more dressing gowns made, have a dozen. I believe we can bear the expense.”

That was hardly the point. Some caprices men did not comprehend. With a merry tone to her voice, she said, “Whilst you were detained upon the Continent, your wife cared not to employ a seamstress. She was far too enormous for a bolt of patterned fabric to cover.”

“You were not,” he said mildly.

“I beg otherwise. There was a fine bolt of Madras, but we had to save it for the draperies. My amplitude was enough to tempt an eastern potentate. I am astonished one did not hear of me and arrive at the gates of Pemberley atop his elephant.”

“I am not at all certain potentates ride elephants,” he said dryly.

She ignored him, claiming, “Thereinafter, I was as large as a wash tub—or perchance yon dresser. I told Jane to throw a table scarf across me and be done with it.”

“I am sorry in all ways I was not here to witness that,” he replied.

“There would not be enough room in this bed for the both of us.”

“No?”

He had always been entertained by her wit. It was appreciated then more than before, for it was a far greater pleasure to think upon that perilous time with humour than the alternative. He spied a silver box in her hands.

“What have you there?”

“This contains my dearest treasures.”

When she opened it, he observed that it held several cuttings of hair. All three were different shades of brown and tied with different coloured ribbons. He held out his hand and she laid two locks of hair across his palm. Seeing the ribbons, one pink and one blue, he presumed them to be locks of their children’s hair. Another lock was still in the box. It had a dark blue ribbon attached.

“What is that one there?”

“That one is yours,” she smiled. “I had Goodwin collect your hair trimmings for me.”

His brow furrowed.

She held it up admiringly, “It is of uncommon length because it was gathered after your sojourn across the water. Your hair hung below your collar....”

He remarked, “I had no notion....”

“I assure you that you looked quite dashing,” she said.

Also in the box was a single ribbon. It was from the first gift he had given her. She had treasured it for one reason alone—the bow was so badly done that she had known that he had tied it himself. She did not show him that. He was gazing upon her and her box with adoration (albeit a trifle indulgently) and he might not be so pleased to be the object of a condescension himself.

When he finally inquired why she kept the box so near, she said simply, “I take comfort in it.”

He was happy to look upon her whimsies as just that and ignored her sudden penchant for sleeping with an old shirt of his clasped tightly in her fist. It was still a mystery as to why she clung to that particular shirt. It was spun of the softest gauze, to be sure. But it had been stained with sweat and dirt from a day he spent in the saddle. She was of fastidious habits; therefore the reason for the shirt was just as capricious as the robe. It was not for a husband to wonder what fancy pleases a woman when with child. If such small rebellions provided her comfort, he was happy of it.