Dreadfully Ever After (3 page)

“And you presume to speak for the Darcys now, do you?” the doctor said. His one rheumy eye swiveled back and forth in its socket, swinging his gaze from Elizabeth to Georgiana and back again.

Oh
, Elizabeth thought.
He’s one of
those.

Not everyone in Derbyshire had accepted the warrior woman of inferior birth who had married their precious Fitzwilliam Darcy. Even after years at Pemberley House—years in which she’d never once worn her katana in public—she still caught the occasional whiff of disapproval. The resentment seemed to stir up most whenever her mother visited, yet Elizabeth could never be certain when it might arise. And here it was again at just the moment it might do the most harm.

Elizabeth didn’t just have two responses to choose from. She had two Elizabeths: the former warrior who would bend the mulish old fool to her will by sheer force, and the gentleman’s wife who could try to coax and wheedle her way to what she wanted.

Georgiana spoke before Elizabeth could make her choice.

“She doesn’t
presume
to speak for the family, Doctor,” the young lady said firmly. “
Mrs. Darcy
simply
does
.”

Dr. Oxenbrigg let his glower linger a moment on her and then shrugged.

“I am a healer, not a butcher. It is no hardship for me to leave my hacksaw in my bag. I will do so now, with my pledge of silence.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Elizabeth said.

The old man waggled a gnarled finger at her. “Don’t make me regret it. If I hear Mr. Darcy has been running around picnicking on people’s brains, I will be seriously put out.”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said. “I have but one more question before you go: If his wound hadn’t been from a dreadful, might Mr. Darcy have lived?”

Dr. Oxenbrigg heard the hint about going; he rose to his feet grumbling and snatched up his bag. “He’s lost much blood, some skin and sinew, too, but nothing vital. A strong man like him, in excellent health? Yes. He’d have pulled through.”

“Thank you again.”

The doctor grumbled something about sending a bill, bowed to Georgiana, and shuffled away.

“I do not understand, Elizabeth,” Georgiana said once he was gone. “Do you mean to contrive some more honorable death for my brother?”

“No.”

Georgiana blanched. “Then I should go and fetch your katana?”

“No.”

Georgiana seemed to sway a little, as if she were standing on the deck of a ship rocking gently on the sea.

“And no—I do not mean for you to fetch yours, either,” Elizabeth said. “There is hope yet. One alone, and very dim, but it exists.” She allowed herself the indulgence of a sigh. “We must send for your aunt.”

“Lady Catherine? Why, even if there
were
something she could do to help ... well ...”

“Would she?”

Elizabeth went to her husband’s side again. His face was so waxy he could have been one of Madame Tussaud’s famous creations—a lifeless simulacrum of himself. Yet breath still passed through his parted lips, and his eyes seemed to be darting this way and that behind closed lids.

“That is what we must find out,” Elizabeth said. “Lady Catherine’s hatred for me runs deep ... but does her love for your brother run deeper?”

Lady Catherine de Bourgh didn’t bother sending a reply to Elizabeth’s letter. She simply sent herself.

Just three days after Elizabeth’s note was dispatched—barely enough time for it to have reached her ladyship’s estate in Kent—a chaise and four came charging up the drive toward Pemberley. Despite the swiftness of the carriage’s arrival, there could be no doubt who was inside. The horses’ armor-plated harnesses, the steely-eyed ninjas serving as coachmen, the distinctive rose-and-crossbones crest upon the doors—all announced the coming of Fitzwilliam Darcy’s aunt. And Elizabeth Darcy’s greatest enemy.

Elizabeth and Georgiana waited on the front steps as the carriage came to a halt and the ninjas went springing off in all directions. The black-clad assassins bounced around the nearest hedgerows and parapets, frightening the gardeners with their somersaults and back flips. Just a few years before, Elizabeth had killed a dozen such men not far from that very spot. It had been a week to the day after her wedding, and they’d been sent to kill her.

Once the ninjas were sure the area was secure, two of them rolled out a red carpet from the coach while a third placed a black stepstool under the door facing the house. When all was in readiness, the ninjas lined up along the carpet and lowered their heads and the one nearest the coach opened the door without looking at it. Only then did Lady Catherine de Bourgh deign to grace Pemberley with her presence.

An exceptionally tall woman, she had to stoop mightily to make her way through the carriage door. Once her feet touched the ground, she straightened to her full height—an act she performed with such grave, stately deliberation, it seemed (to Elizabeth, at least) to go on for minutes. When she was fully erect, Lady Catherine seemed to tower over the coach itself. Indeed, she projected the air of one who rose above everything and everyone, and she came gliding up the carpet as slowly, smoothly, and unstoppably as a windblown cloud. Her gaze never once strayed, remaining locked firmly on the door just beyond Elizabeth and Georgiana.

“Your ladyship,” Elizabeth said as she approached, “I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you—”

“I would see him,” Lady Catherine interrupted. She stopped in front of Elizabeth, but her cold gray eyes remained on the door. She in no way acknowledged her niece, who had committed the cardinal sin of accepting, and even embracing, her brother’s low-born wife.

“Of course,” Elizabeth said, leading the way inside.

“What is his condition?” Lady Catherine asked. She was looking at the top of the staircase now, and she kept her gaze there as they started up the steps.

“He has shown little improvement since the accident,” Elizabeth said. “He remains extremely weak, and consciousness comes and goes. When he is sensible, he has great difficulty speaking.”

“He seems to be plagued by horrible nightmares,” Georgiana added, keeping her voice low to avoid being overheard by the genuflecting servants down in the foyer. “He sometimes struggles and cries out in his sleep.”

“So,” Lady Catherine said, “it has begun.”

As they approached Darcy’s bedchamber, she slipped nimbly around Elizabeth and darted through the door.

“I will speak to you in the drawing room,” she said, whirling around to look Elizabeth in the eye at last. “Alone.”

Then she firmly closed the door, leaving Elizabeth and Georgiana in the hall.

“She has not forgiven us,” Georgiana said as they walked away.

“Forgiveness, I suspect, is one of the few things her ladyship is incapable of. As is mercy.”

“Yet here she is.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. She couldn’t help feeling, however, that forgiveness and mercy had little to do with Lady Catherine’s decision to come.

After sending Georgiana off to Pemberley’s Shinto shrine to meditate and pray, Elizabeth settled in the drawing room and waited. And waited. And waited.

The last few days had been torture. Keeping her impassive mask in place, hiding her torment from Georgiana, lying to the household staff and the worried friends who’d come to call. “Disguise of every sort is my abhorrence,” Darcy once said to her, and now his final days might be nothing but disguise, untruths, deception.

And the biggest lie of all, Elizabeth feared, was the one she kept telling herself: that, should Lady Catherine fail her, she would end her husband’s fall into darkness with the stoic calm of a warrior. That her heart wouldn’t shatter forever as she put her sword through his neck.

It occurred to her, as she pictured that moment against her will, that Darcy’s aunt might have taken the responsibility upon herself—might in fact, at that very moment, be revenging herself upon the nephew who’d disobeyed and disappointed her. The old woman was a widow and thus free to walk about with her sword at her side. She’d gone into Darcy’s room with a katana. Is that why she’d insisted on going in alone? Would she come downstairs and announce that she’d done what Elizabeth, ever the unworthy wife, had foolishly put off?

To look at Elizabeth, one would never have known this tempest of doubt raged within her. She merely sat upon a divan, eyes closed, hands clasped in her lap, and tried to focus on the image that most soothed and centered her
ch’i:
her darling Darcy on their wedding day. When even that brought only more heartache and agitation, she instead pictured Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s bloody, broken body at her feet. It proved a more comforting thought.

Eventually, the real Lady Catherine appeared. Elizabeth rose and stood silently while the old woman claimed the room’s largest, most thronelike bergère. Once she was sitting, she signaled, with a downward jerk of the chin, that Elizabeth could seat herself as well. Then she spoke.

“I am most displeased.”

To Elizabeth’s relief, her self-control was complete. She did not raise an eyebrow. She did not say what first leapt to mind:
Aren’t you always?
She’d been waiting for more than half an hour to learn what the future held. She could wait another few seconds.

Lady Catherine gave her a long, imperious glare before continuing.

“My nephew was once one of the greatest warriors England has ever produced. Then he spurned me. Spurned my daughter, his true intended. And what comes of it? He is laid low by a stricken
child
.”

Elizabeth had to suppress a flinch. Her letter hadn’t mentioned the specifics of the attack that had—perhaps—damned her husband to living death. She’d simply said he’d been infected and time was of the essence. Lady Catherine must have examined the wound and somehow seen the truth. Say what one would about her (and there was much Elizabeth could never say, inappropriate as such language was for a lady), few people in the world knew the dreadfuls better than Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

The old woman shook her head in disgust.

“I told him the path he chose would end in ruin.”

“Must it, though?” Elizabeth said quietly, careful to sound neither too demanding nor too weak. Both could bring the full weight of Lady Catherine’s considerable contempt down upon her. “Years ago, you were able to help my friend Charlotte Collins after she contracted the strange plague. You delayed her dark descent by months. I pray that you have since perfected the serum you once used on her.”

“I have not. I have no cure.” Lady Catherine paused, lips pursed, obviously gauging Elizabeth’s reaction.

Elizabeth refused to give her one. Here was one butterfly who wouldn’t writhe for her ladyship’s pleasure, no matter how cruelly pinned.

“However ...,” Lady Catherine finally said.

Thank heavens!
thought Elizabeth, though her face remained as still as a stone Buddha’s.

“... that does not mean no cure exists. I merely lack access to it at the moment. Procuring it would require me to extend myself. Substantially. And I’m not certain I should make the effort on behalf of those who have treated me with such insolence and disrespect.”

“What must I do to sway you?”

Beg
, that was what Elizabeth expected to hear in reply. But Lady Catherine had something else in mind. Something more.

“You know that I have always considered you an exceptionally presumptuous and obdurate creature,” the old woman said. “So I must ask myself whether your pride will allow you to save the man whom you have seduced into dishonor and disaster. If I told you there was but one path to his salvation—and it was also the path to your utter degradation—would you, I wonder, be able to bend that stiff neck of yours and do what you must?”

“What is it you propose?”

Lady Catherine was silent. And so she remained until Elizabeth realized what she was waiting for.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I will do whatever you ask, if it might save my husband.”

A look of grim satisfaction came over Lady Catherine’s wrinkle-creased face, and her puckered lips spread slightly into what might have been the beginnings of a smile.

“Good,” she said. “Then the first thing you must do is give him to me.”

For days, Darcy dreamed of sausages. Blood sausages packed with pig meat straight from the grinder. Uncooked. In his mouth.

He dreamed, too, of liver pâté. And haggis, of all things. And oysters he slurped from the shell, one after another. And sashimi from his beloved Japan served so fresh it was spongy with blood.

He dreamed he was a wolf eating a man alive.

He dreamed he was a man eating a wolf alive.

He dreamed he was a man eating ... oh, now his skin
really
crawled! His dream had shifted in that sudden, lurching way of the worst nightmares, and everything had changed.

He found himself in his bed, his neck and left shoulder burning as his fearsome old aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, sprinkled crimson liquid on him from a small glass vial. Then she was bringing the little bottle to his lips, pouring an acidic trickle down his throat, saying as he coughed, “Not so bitter as what I’ve had to swallow from
you
.”

Then it was back to the haggis, only the stomach it was being served in wasn’t a sheep’s. It belonged to his wife ... and it was still attached to her by slimy ropelike cords of flesh. “Eat up, my dear,” Elizabeth said as he chomped in, and she reached into her abdomen and pulled out a glazed ham. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

Darcy felt as if he would throw up. Yet, in his dreams, he kept eating and eating and never was full.

Eventually, the queasiness subsided and he stopped dreaming about food; his eyes fluttered open. He was in his bed, as in his nightmare, and his neck and shoulder hurt in just the same way, too. He reached up and touched the side of his neck and found what felt like bandages there.

Then he remembered.

“Oh, thank God,” someone said.

He turned—how difficult it was just to swivel his head a few inches to the left—and saw Elizabeth kneeling next to him.