Darcy nodded. “You are very beautiful,” he said, looking down the length of her, all the way down to her delicate feet. “There is not a part of you I do not adore.”
“I have never previously seen more of you than your face and hands, Fitzwilliam. It has been a pleasant shock to see you so.”
“I was wrong, Elizabeth. This is a very good room and a very good bed. I have to hold you very close in order for us both to lie within it, and that is no bad thing,” he said, thinking of how he had always immediately gotten up before, with other women, when he had been sated and was done; gotten up and washed himself or found a fire to stoke, thought of something he had to attend to, dressed, made his apologies, left. How different this was, he cleaved to her side, wanted to be nowhere else.
* * *
“First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, secondly, as a remedy against sin.”
* * *
I have been a married man for two whole days. Darcy watched his wife sweep her hair into a simple knot and attempt to control its curls with carefully placed pins. The storm had abated, the ice was melting, and the roads were clearing. They would be in London in two or three hours. As much as he was tempted to stay—to say it was not possible to set forth as yet—they could delay no longer. Concern would grow and they would be missed.
How fond had he become of this middling inn, and this small room with its ridiculously small bed. The facilities were bad, the service slow, the food quite terrible, but then, he had no appetite for anything but lying abed with her and watching the snow fall outside the little window. He sighed and Elizabeth’s bright eyes met his in the mirror.
“Dissatisfied with married life already, sir?”
“Would it not be very agreeable to forget the world outside existed, for just a while longer?”
“You would grow tired of staring at me. Though you are quite the proficient. Having an audience for my every move is somewhat disconcerting.”
“I am sorry. I find it as pleasurable to watch you dress as I do to undress you.”
She laughed. “Are you not keen to get to London to spoil me with every luxury? Was not that your original intention? Are you not keen to see your sister?”
“I suppose, and there are matters to be attended to, responsibilities which must be faced before they grow into worries.”
Her countenance changed suddenly. She looked down, her forehead creased into a frown. She worried at the ring on her finger. Darcy went to her and put his arms about her waist, pulling her lovely form back against his chest and kissing the hollow behind her ear. “You will be fine. You have such spirit and such a fine, beautiful mind. All will be well, and if you ever do falter, you may always lean on me, like so, and I will hold you up.”
There came a knock on the door. It was John, to tell him the carriage was readied. Darcy told him that they would be down shortly.
Elizabeth left his embrace to gather up her coat and bonnet. When she turned back, her smile was bright again. “I believe I am ready. I hope I am ready.”
He stood up straighter, tugged his cuffs into place. “As am I. And when we arrive, I may place an announcement in the papers.”
“Has that not already been done? Our marriage announcement?”
“Yes, this one would be of a different kind—a death notice. I must happily announce the death of a bachelor—Fitzwilliam Darcy,” he said, smiling wryly. How ridiculous his concerns and doubts in the days prior to their marriage seemed now. He would happily dance on the grave of the empty life he had previously led before her. Loneliness was buried. Despair was gone. There was nothing to mourn.
Elizabeth gave him a quizzical look but he simply held out his arm for her to place her hand upon. “Shall we go then?” he said.
* * *
“Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.”
* * *
They descended the narrow steps of the inn and were stood just outside when the coach was brought round. It rumbled slowly to a stop and Elizabeth seemed lost in contemplation for a while. Darcy watched as her eyes examined every detail of it. She bit her lip. “I am afraid my old trunks quite disgrace your livery.”
“Nonsense, and it is our livery now, Elizabeth.”
As John pulled down the step for them, she was looking back up the road, from where they had come two days previously, to her home, towards Meryton, and her countenance was full of melancholy.
“We will come back soon.” Darcy lightly touched her elbow, a small caress.
She looked to the trunks again, the old and the new. “But I will not be the same. Elizabeth Bennet is gone, replaced by this mysterious creature, Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy. I am no longer Mr. Bennet’s daughter but Mr. Darcy’s wife.”
“On the contrary, with your ability to charm, I suspect that rather than your being known as Mr. Darcy’s wife, I will henceforth be referred to as Mrs. Darcy’s husband, and I love you, Elizabeth, no matter what your name.”
This made her smile. She muttered something into the wind he did not catch, and then they were in the carriage. The horses were encouraged on and away they sped, out of Hertfordshire, towards a new beginning.
* * *
Caitlin Williams is an award-winning author of two novels, Ardently and the best-selling The Coming of Age of Elizabeth Bennet, both of which spin the plot of Pride and Prejudice around but keep the characters just the same. Originally from South London, Caitlin spent thirteen years as a detective in the Metropolitan Police but is currently on a break from Scotland Yard so she can spend more time at home with her two children and write. She now lives in Kent, where she spends a lot of time daydreaming about Mr. Darcy, playing with dinosaurs, and trying not to look at the laundry pile.
From the Ashes
J. Marie Croft
“When I wrote that letter,” replied Darcy, “I believed myself perfectly calm and cool; but I am since convinced that it was written in a dreadful bitterness of spirit.”
Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet, Chapter LVIII.
Hateful, hurtful words rang in my ears as I strode from the parsonage, away from her and her unwarranted vitriol.
Across the lane, Rosings loomed before me in all its stately splendour. Faltering, I stopped mid-stride, in no mood for either a banal exchange of niceties or an altercation with my most meddlesome relation.
I made for the stable and therein snapped at a hapless groom. “You there, saddle Boreas. Now!”
Even after spurring the animal at a breakneck gallop through Kent’s bucolic verdure, the tumult of my mind remained painfully great. Words like resentment, anger, and humiliation barely scratched the surface of such deeply felt anguish. Yet, despite the havoc she had visited upon me, there remained in my breast a mad, powerful feeling towards that courageous, passionate young woman who had dared to refuse me and taken me to task.
With the moon high in the sky, I turned back, fearing recklessness might cause Boreas an injury. After seeing to the care of my lathered horse, I entered the manor. Managing to dodge Lady Catherine, I hoped to find both refuge and intoxicants in the library but was stopped short at its threshold. “Ruddy hell.” Therein sat my second-most meddlesome relation.
“Darcy! Where the devil have you been? To Hell and back? You certainly look like the dickens.” Hefting a decanter in one hand and a glass in the other, Richard silently asked another question.
Nodding, I accepted my first brandy of the night.
“You missed dinner.” Sprawled on the sofa in a manner inappropriate for either the son of an aristocrat or an officer in His Majesty’s service, my cousin eyed me over the rim of his glass.
“If you must know,” I replied to his cocked eyebrow, “I had no appetite and opted for a ride.”
“And you did not see fit to send a message? Bad form, Cousin, bad form! Our aunt was—and probably still is—exceedingly displeased. According to Lady Chatterin’,
dear Anne was devastated over your desertion. I, however, could detect no such expression on the poor girl’s face as she tucked into her calf’s foot jelly. ’Twas unlike you, though, to be so inconsiderate. Deuce take it, man, I became rather concerned myself.”
Thus began the army officer’s intense interrogation concerning my earlier whereabouts.
When I had had enough of Richard’s cajoling and of fending off his probing inquiries, I announced my intention to retire early. The drinks downed on an empty stomach only enhanced my indignant temper. Exhausted, preoccupied, and a wee bit inebriated, I forgot to duck on the way out, whacking my forehead on the library’s ludicrously low lintel, thereby improving my humour not one whit. Behind me, however, Richard laughed uproariously.
Cupping the lump on my forehead with my left hand and gripping the bannister with my right, I climbed the stairs to the baroque bedchamber assigned to me in the family wing. Contributing to my vexation, the pompous architecture at Rosings spoke of what an impertinent person might deem arrogance and conceit. If nothing else, it shrieked selfish disdain of my throbbing head.
Having never been given the go-by before, I hardly knew how to comport myself once reaching the sanctuary of my room—the room I had hoped to share with her during future Eastertide visits. Dash it all!
Baddeley arrived, offering assistance, but was dismissed with a snarl.
I sat, then stood. Choking up at the window overlooking Hunsford, violent efforts were undertaken to free myself from an intricately-tied cravat, and I regretted sending away my valet. Finally flinging off the constricting neckcloth, I peered through the glazing into darkness that perfectly matched my own desolateness. Then I paced, and ruminated, and paced some more.
Within moments of one another, and with differing degrees of force, both Anne and Richard banged on those walls separating their bedchambers from mine. “What,” I grumbled, “do they mean by that confounded thumping?”
Providing an answer, the longcase clock in the passage quietly chimed once. Apparently, I had been pounding the parquet with my Hessians for several hours. Dumbfounded by the unnoticed passing of time, I rang for my valet.
“You rang, sir?” Obviously miffed over my earlier surliness, Baddeley stiffly stood to attention, eyes averted.
“Of course I rang! ’Tis high time you came and helped me remove these blasted boots.” Flumping onto a chair and bracing myself, I raised my leg and waited for my gentleman’s gentleman to lower himself and relieve me of my footwear. “Pack my belongings, Baddeley. We depart tomorrow . . . erm, later this morning.” Gesturing in the general direction of the four-poster’s canopy, I sheepishly added, “Also, my good man, please see about retrieving my accursed cravat from up there before we go, would you?”
“A bit hot under the collar tonight were we, sir?” Whilst enduring my glower, Baddeley helped prepare me for sleep that would not come.
My astonishment, as I thrashed about reflecting on what had passed at Hunsford, was increased by every review of it. That I had lowered myself to make an offer of marriage to her! That she would not have me was almost—but not quite—laughable. The humiliation suffered at her hand was a carking blow to my pride and certainly no laughing matter. Fists clenched, I pounded the mattress. Fool! Why, why, why did I expose myself to such contempt and ridicule?
For nearly three weeks the woman had willingly accepted my courtship. Then, without any warning, the confounding creature brutally rejected my generously proffered, ardent affections. Is she mad?
Eventually I dozed off, landing in a nightmarish landscape in which appeared a bizarre bluish-green dragon of puny proportion. We circled one another in various venues until, suddenly, we became entrapped in a nondescript, smallish parlour. In a show of true colours, the creature turned a reddish hue and increased in size, flapping its wings, until it towered above me. The Elizard’s fine eyes shot sparks while its mouth spewed flaming criticism, all directed at my head. I raised my shield in defence against the hail of fiery particles and—I awoke. Upon sitting up, the dream proved ephemeral. The reality of her rejection, I feared, would be long lived.
Pondering such stupidity—hers for refusing a lucrative offer and mine for making an ill-advised one—I eased back onto the pillows. I had, until her refusal, admired the woman’s intellect and wit, amongst other things. However, it had just become evident that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was not so clever after all.
Witlessness, I thought, probably runs in her family. Collins is certainly as barmy as they come—as thick and unpalatable as the ghastly gruel, calf’s foot jelly, and other restoratives served to Cousin Anne at her mother’s insistence.
My stomach rumbled. I had eaten little since breakfast.
And I had slept fitfully the previous night—too busy dithering about either making an offer of marriage to her or making a hasty retreat to London. Decision made, I had then fretted over the wording of my proposal. Along with the honour I was to bestow upon her, I thought she should be made aware of my struggles regarding such a mésalliance. All those sleepless hours and all that deep consideration . . . totally wasted on an ingrate!
She was to blame, once more, as wakefulness resumed. Somewhat spiteful, I hoped the spitfire was similarly suffering insomnia, regretting her rebuff, thrashing about in bed at the same time as me, and—Oh, God! A vision of a breathlessly satiated Elizabeth in my bed—her tussled tresses, flushed skin—invaded my brain.
Sitting up again, I pounded the pillow into submission. Flumping back down, I stared at the canopy—upon which her impassioned visage had appeared. “You!” I grumbled at the image. “You have done all this, involving me in misery of the acutest kind. And you, madam, deserve to have that malapert mouth of yours silenced by a blistering kiss . . . with tongue!” Groaning, I rolled onto my side, resisting the urge to curl up into a ball. All I had ever received from her was a tongue-lashing. Quit thinking of tongues, wretch!
Continuing in agitated reflection, I tossed and turned—ruminating on all I wanted to say to her, if given the chance. Having been rendered nearly dumbstruck by her rebuff and attack, I had not spoken articulately at the parsonage. Of course, being tongue-tied in her presence was nothing new to me. Tongues again.
The bed linens had become an impossible jumble, so I disentangled myself and arose with purpose. Having long dismissed poor Baddeley for the night, I rooted around by the fire’s dim light for my banyan as well as a fresh candle, writing supplies . . . and more brandy. My stomach, after all, demanded sustenance.
My rummaging about—plus the utterance of “Bejabbers!” upon the stubbing of my toe on the trunk I had demanded be packed—must have awakened Richard.
Barefoot, wild-eyed, and dishevelled, the cretin barged, unbidden, into my bedchamber and marched up to where I stood in shock and confusion. After giving my head a good and totally unexpected clout, my cousin stormed off without a word . . . although he might have muttered “Nocturnal numbskull!” on his way out.
Shaking my head at Richard’s peculiarities, I settled at an ornate desk to sharpen my pen and make my point. Harsh accusations levelled at me could not go uncontested. Mistaken presumptions could not go uncorrected. And I could not go to sleep until giving a certain someone a piece of my mind. My stance would be explained with adherence to every detail—to the letter, as they say.
It was either that or drink until I cast up my accounts into the ghastly, gold-rimmed chamber pot depicting a clash between cherubs and gorgons who, in my opinion, all bore a striking resemblance to one Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
The comparison was unmerited. Even in anger, Elizabeth was utterly lovely.
Like some sort of avenging angel, she had passed judgment upon me for perceived wrongs. Misguided though she was, I admired the girl’s staunch defence of her family and of the supposed downtrodden. Of course, I had hoped to win such fierce allegiance for myself. But alas! Her trust had been placed with a lecherous lickpenny instead of an honourable man. “By George,” I muttered, “the
harridan will soon learn to regret casting Fitzwilliam Darcy aside like fireplace ashes spread upon Pemberley’s peony patch.”
As I had discussed with her at Netherfield, wrongs against me were not soon forgotten. Once my good opinion was lost, it was lost forever. Be that as it may, although resentful, I was never a vengeful man. Had I been the vindictive sort, her charges would go unchallenged, but I cared too much about her welfare to be callous. She needed to beware of Wickham. See, Miss Elizabeth Bennet? No selfish disdain to be found here!
Believing myself perfectly calm and cool, I dipped pen to ink and struggled with an opening. Having written countless letters of business, “To Whom It May Concern” flowed with precision from my pen. That, however, appeared a tad impersonal for a recipient not entirely unknown. As it turned out, the Elizabeth Bennet last visited at the parsonage was almost a complete stranger to me. Nevertheless, that aloof salutation was summarily scratched. Expressions which might make her hate me, I decided, must be avoided. I snorted. Hah! ’Tis a little too late for that.
I bristled at beginning the letter with “dear” because, at that moment, she was anything but.
A little voice—a niggling, treacherous one—whispered that Elizabeth was still tremendously dear to me. However, I squelched that inner scream whilst gripping the quill so tightly that it snapped in two and nicked my middle finger. “Rot!”
Moving about quietly so as to not reawaken the beast next door, I searched for another pen as well as a sticking plaster for my wound. Adding insult to injury, ink from the broken goose quill had seeped onto my hand and was transferred to whatever I touched. Splendid! Now I can look forward to Lady Catherine’s gartering her hose with my guts . . . which is just what I need after being flayed alive by another harpy, attacked by a lintel, cuffed by my cretin of a cousin, and cut to the quick.
The Darcy Monologues: A romance anthology of Pride and Prejudice short stories in Mr. Darcy's own words Page 4