Elizabeth Darcy was not mirthlessly inclined. Indeed, she was known to be blessed with a keen mind, frank tongue, and a quick, but not cutting, wit. Through more than one or two entanglements from judgemental lapses, she had become a fairly wise woman as well. Such pessimism was most atypical of her. She despised self-pity in others and abhorred it of herself. Hence, upon this occasion, one must assume that it was not necessarily hers to control but born of those dark forces which are a woman’s plight. To her merit, she could often be shrewd in her assessment of situations and those who peopled them. But, as is often the case, objectivity of her own straits was not always at hand. Therefore, her ill-spirits were not deigned by her as such. They were taken as accurate and true. As would be expected, a misconception such as the one under which she laboured could not be improved by fair appraisal for so long as it remains undiscovered.
Moreover, not unlike most persons who were inherently open and artless, she could not make her mind think other than forthrightly. She had used her every wile, called forth all her cunning just to lure her husband to their romantic tryst in the glen. It was her conclusion that because she had invited him to join her there, the next move was his to take. She may not own a fraction of the pride he held, but she certainly had her share. She would not go again to him, he must come to her.
That self-sufficiency was put daily to the test. Evenings were her most interminable trial. In the day, Darcy might see to his accounts or take interviews with his employees. (Without fail, his daily duties included a visit to the stables where he made a point of inspecting Boots to assess her foaling—which invariably cost him a bit of temper.) But come the night they all sat in what had once been her second-favourite room in the house. Darcy sat in his chair reading the paper, Cressida curled at his feet. Each time he turned the page he reached out and gave the dog a pet. Of late, Elizabeth had become ever more jealous of that enfeebled dog. Mr. Darcy’s dog certainly received more attention upon those hours than Mr. Darcy’s wife. If that slight was not insult enough, he had taken to striding about the room in a most indecorous fashion. Upon these perambulations, his usual costume was a pair of buff-coloured moleskin breeches and his favourite riding boots. As was his habit, the tops of the boots were folded just below the knee, this particular habit accentuating the muscularity of his thighs. Not since their courtship had she occasion to despise the fashionable tautness of masculine trousers, for a man like her husband they left very little to imagine (or recollect—and her memory was then quite her adversary). Was that not injury enough, she knew that he was well aware of that peculiarity of her libido that endowed his boots (or rather his boots when containing his legs) with an aphrodisiacal quality; still he leapt from his chair and pranced the length of the room in the most provocative fashion. If she had not known his nature as well as she did, she might have accused him of deliberately incendiary behaviour.
An alteration of their daily mode had begun when Elizabeth was well enough for ladies to begin to call. That he gave himself leave to escape for hours upon end when it was he who held their most eagre interest remained one of her most prominent vexations. When it was announced that he was not about, looks were exchanged and great understanding professed, but it was all quite insincere. Everyone knew it was, indeed, an escape. He sought respite from the unrelenting temptation of his wife, but she saw it as outright desertion—just when she most needed his encouragement to endure what she must on behalf of their station and deserved the sympathy for weathering it. She had no doubt that he felt he had been entrapped with her. It was clear by the half-cornered expression that occasionally overspread his countenance when she found reason to brush against him. And she had (to slight contrition) begun to brush against him upon every opportunity. She told herself that she did so only to ascertain any alteration in his expression, but in truth, it was not. As exceedingly indecorous as it was to contemplate, she was sorely tempted to reach out and caress him.
“That, no doubt, would alter his expression,” she sniffed to herself.
As closely (if surreptitiously) as she eyed his privates, she was certain that upon occasion she detected certain convexities particular to the tumescence of arousal. As closely schooled as she had been in various levels of excitement (and, it must be admitted, the sheer amplitude) of the Master’s Unruly Member, that was something he could not entirely hide from her. Despite this noticeable priapism, he neither invited her attentions nor approached her. In her heart, she knew that he awaited her to again propose intimacy, but she steadfastly clung to her demand that, this time, he come to her. Still smarting from certain undeniable physical failings, she knew that was both an excuse and an evasion.
An ugly conviction overswept her. At one time the thought of her husband not attending her would have been unthinkable—but no more. Upon those occasions her time was her own, he did not join her. It was as if the life they had once enjoyed was no longer. She feared that they had embarked upon a different road—one where they walked side by side, but not hand in hand. It made her heart ache to think of it.
So she did not.
She saw herself making a life with her children, scurrying from one to the other, rarely allowing Nurse any duties at all. It was as if the hollow in her heart called out for relief and she could only imbue it with the substituted passion of a maternal nature. That may have been keen, but it was not, however…him.
As time marched on and time between the babies’ feedings grew, cradles and infant paraphernalia gradually made their way into the morning-parlour. Elizabeth’s own disposition had a tendency towards one particular evil of indulgence for her babies beyond those proprietary, and that involved proximity. For convention demanded the nursery be situated on the top floor of the mansion-house, nanny, under-nurse, nurseryman all with adjoining rooms. Mrs. Darcy, however, took her own counsel on that custom like all others—if not actually defying it, at the very least bending it into her own. With them installed across the corridor, she then began to go to the babies to nurse, rather than the reverse. If she had an ulterior motive for this rearrangement, it remained unspoken. A half-dozen se’nnights after their birth even she knew that rekindled amatory rites were in order. Some sort of odd standoff had been reached—each awaiting the other to open sexual negotiations. Her patience, however, was wearing thin.
Their bedroom privacy restored had not the result she intended. At odd times in the late afternoon, she began to find her husband face down across the bed, still booted, often wearing his frock-coat as if he had just fallen over in a dead faint. But that was ridiculous, he would not swoon. But so deeply did he sleep, she would have to shake his shoulder to rouse him. She was wholly unwitting that before he had begun to take to the saddle daily, he had recompensed his lack of sleep by taking forty-winks here and there. Now he had not that chance and the weeks of sleep deprivation had begun to tell upon his vigour. Having no idea how little sleep he was managing each night, how much fencing he was engaging in, and the incalculable strain that his inflamed virilité were subjecting him to, Elizabeth was sorely bewildered. She knew that unavoidable alterations came to a marriage, but the ones that she was witnessing were wildly beyond her expectations. Clearly, something was amiss. The longer their romantic impasse continued the more it became evident to her from whence it sprang.
She was not amused, nor was she particularly sympathetic. Indeed, the longer the little seed of jealousy festered in the confines of her bosom, the more deadly it became.
21
The Inquiring Mind of Mrs. Darcy
As often occurs when two parties are at odds, when they do begin discourse the topic is not the true issue. As Elizabeth Darcy suspected, what was of great aggravation to her husband did not begin nor did it end with so simple a matter as a fence-jumping stallion. Her supposition, however, was a bit far afield of truth as well. Her misapprehension lay unchallenged for the length of what was to become a very discomfiting conversation.
***
When in the course of time those very human events that were once regarded as miraculous gradually transmute to the merely mundane, thoughts occasionally wander to occurrences which, at the time, seemed insignificant. A heart unburdened by concerns of life and limb betimes recollects those episodes with a clarity unbeneficial to any of the parties involved. Such was the case of Elizabeth’s late-pregnancy audience with a personage in London to learn of her husband’s fate upon yonder shores. The information came not in letter form, but by way of a woman whose knowledge of Darcy and his doings was not only pertinent but, insofar as yesteryear, scandalously intimate. When her heart was torn by near-hysterical fear for Darcy’s life, such an acquaintanceship seemed quite insignificant. At the time, all Elizabeth cared to know was that her beloved was alive and unharmed. It was only with the continuing lack of imperilment to his well-being that her equanimity was eventually restored. But that very calm allowed her to wonder had his virtue remained as unscathed as his constitution.
It only took one particularly trying afternoon with a nattering group of gentlewomen (fresh from the season and rife with London’s latest gossip) for her to have had quite enough of intimations and insinuations. If she heard one more female inquire “What could possibly have kept Mr. Darcy so long away?” she thought she might just slap the inquisitor forcefully enough to spin her a full rotation. Her husband had, so far as she was aware, always lived in a way to despise slander. If she could not put the speculation to an end once and for all, she intended to have him answer a few inquiries of her own. Therefore, no sooner had the last carriage betaken its occupants away, Elizabeth set out upon her mission.
She did not have to venture far. She found her husband once again prone across their bed, sound asleep in late afternoon. Upon this occasion, either he or Goodwin had ridded him of his coat. His boots, however, still bore enough dirt for Elizabeth to know that he had not taken a stop in the dusting room, and therefore Goodwin’s intervention was unlikely. Doubtless, he had come the way of the postern steps. Although there was a time when she had erroneously mistaken Bingley’s philandering as her husband’s, she had never questioned his faithfulness again. Nor did she believe that his odd behaviour necessarily pointed to any deceit on his part then. His strange conduct and her general pique conspired to bid her fear that he was in the grip of some sort of waywardness of heart. If he was, the time had come to find out the truth at whatever the cost.
With great purpose, she crossed the room and demanded, “Darcy!”
He stirred but little.
Seeing far greater measures were necessary, she crawled atop the bed next to him and delivered a firm shake of his shoulder.
“Darcy!” she said more firmly.
That did its duty. He half-rolled upon his back, muttering, “What is it?”
“What is it?” she said, far more loudly than she intended. “What is it?”
By then, he was fully awake, but clearly unwitting of her meaning. His hair was flat upon one side and the bed-clothes had left several red creases across his cheek.
“I fear I have fallen asleep,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Asleep? Asleep?” she was well aware that shrillness was overtaking her.
“Yes.”
“We must talk.”
“Must we?”
The specific tone of this question was not appreciated, but she chose to ignore it. He lay upon his back, alternately squinting and blinking, desperately trying to clear both his head and his vision. As if fearing he would flee, she drew up her skirt and straddled him, exacting from him what she sought—his full attention.
She repeated, “We must talk.”
He nodded once, but looked to be a bit confused.
“There is something of which I must inquire.”
He nodded once again.
She settled herself across his mid-section. His hands settled upon her thighs, thus instilling in her the possibility of the conversation going errant. Still, she persevered.
“Whilst you were abroad,” she began, “I, of course, had no word from you.”
“This is true,” he said sadly.
He answered with genuine regret, but the expression that then overspread his countenance suggested that he was curious as to why this topic was at that moment so urgent as to wake him from a dead sleep.
Regardless, he said, “As I have explained, I wrote as often as I could…the war…the quarantine.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “there was but one message that found its way to me. It alone was the single word that I received. Only through it did I learn that you were not dead.”
She almost began to sniffle at the recollection of those dark days of not knowing, but stopt herself. The letter that she received had not been in his hand at all, but another’s.
Instinctively, he patted her reassuringly and then allowed his hands to slide to the narrowing of her waist (a narrowing that she was wholly unaware had re-emerged). She did not, at that moment, want comfort from him. She wanted an answer to the question that had become her constant companion.
“Pray, do you know how I came to have that message?”
“The post?” he answered reasonably.
“I was asked to travel to London to obtain word of you.”
“In your condition? Lizzy! Whatever were you thinking? Was there no one to keep you from such madness?”
“I am disinclined to be chastised by a person who believes the proper channel for a missive to his wife would be through the benefices of a former lover.”
He blinked several times as if he did not hear her.
“You hear what you please. Do not propose to me you cannot hear me now.”
He heard her perfectly. They both knew that. His partial deafness had troubled him little in recent weeks. It was abating with each passing day and was only resurrected for his convenience. He heard everything that he wished to hear. He most certainly did not want to be a party to the conversation before him, but he had little choice. His face crimsoned and he closed his eyes at the vision he undoubtedly had of that particular meeting.
For a capricious reason that suited Elizabeth, obtaining some sort of reaction from his usual detachment proved satisfactory. Regrettably, the nature of his response suggested to her that the meeting with his old lover was less than benign. When she had met Juliette Clisson in the middle of a park in the middle of London, she had feared for Darcy so fervently, she cared little for what their connection might have been before his marriage to her. Now that he was very much alive and well and between her legs, she did not prefer benightedness, she demanded satisfaction.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Surely jealousy has not spurred this inquiry?” he queried, altering the subject quite artlessly.
“Nay! Never! That is beside the point. You have not answered me.”
“You will have to make a more specific inquiry.”
He had the infuriating beginnings of a smile and she wanted dearly to smack him across his smirk. Because for the second time in one day, she was nearly moved to violence, she bethought the matter. Perhaps she was just a bit jealous. But that was beside the point. She may well have had reason to be.
“Pray, would you care to offer the particulars of conspiring with Mademoiselle Clisson for delivery of a letter to me?”
Hearing her speak Juliette’s name was exceedingly discombobulating, thus any part of mirth that was tempting his countenance evaporated.
“I had no idea,” said he.
“You had no idea of what, pray may I ask?” clearly, her ill-temper was not abating.
As that was a disputatious inquiry, he chose not to address it immediately.
“It was but a coincidence. I happened upon the lady, Mademoiselle Clisson, at my cousin’s home,” he explained.
He did not make the mis
take of calling Juliette by her Christian name, but Elizabeth raised a cynical eyebrow at his employment of the term lady. He, however, persevered.
“She and her party were to sail for London the next day. I was desperate to get word to you. In my haste—in my desperation to reach you—I asked if she might post a letter for me when she arrived. I had no idea that a meeting between you would come to pass. The letter…I believe in the letter, I explained the circumstances…. Did I not?”
It fell to Elizabeth to explain to him that Juliette had been compelled to destroy the letter when their vessel was boarded by the French authorities. The insult to Elizabeth, however, was still just as keen.
“I was never able to read your words, but only to hear them through her. And, of course, from her, how eagerly she comforted you.”
At last it was out, what had been plaguing her of the entire episode. It was not the insult to decorum, it was not the discomfort of the trip to town, nor was it the sheer humiliation of sitting in a public park whilst great with child. Nor was it taking a meeting with an exquisitely lovely woman from his past who called him “Darcee.” It was not one thing—it was all too much. A weep of the unbecoming sort threatened her and she was angered at the thought of exposing the depth of her hurt. She attempted to rise from imprisoning him, but she could not do that either, for he would not release her. He grasped her elbows firmly.
“Lizzy,” said he, “please do not…”
She began to struggle to leave him and he kept his hold on her arms to keep her there. A small tussle ensued as she writhed to remove herself from atop him and he, just as determinedly, clung to her, endeavouring with his considerable might to continue their discourse.
Darcy & Elizabeth Page 14