B006O3T9DG EBOK

by Berdoll, Linda

  Although she would have rather died than admit it, Darcy’s long-past visits to her had always been perfunctory. He had come irregularly and no exclusivity had been implied. Yet, her ever-faithful spies told her that he did not spend time with any other. She would have agreed to a more formal arrangement in a trice, but she dared not suggest it. To him, theirs was a business arrangement—incurring no more sentiment than had she laundered his shirts. Truth be told, she would have seen him without pecuniary inducement whatsoever. He recompensed her to befit his sensibilities, not hers. Hence, his loins had been consoled at no expense to his heart.

  Although it had been some time since they had lain together, the recollection of the générosité of his manhood and the vigour wherewith he employed it was not easily forgotten. A night with young Mr. Darcy did not pass without numerous achievements. Her mettle could not afford to think of it often, but when she did, the memory gave her pause. His fierce ardour always left her breathless; his inexplicable nature kept her perpetually perplexed.

  Seeing him again at Pemberley, she had to remind herself that she was in want of Mr. Darcy’s seed, not an amour. (But then there was absolutely nothing to forbid enjoying the delivery of either.)

  In the brief moment that Darcy’s hands had rested upon the balustrade, Juliette was able to sketch more than merely the shades of his mind. She saw implicitly what was at stake. He was still the man of imperious bearing and exceptional leg. If she was any judge of a man (and she believed she was), he had not lost his admirable potency. She had not scrupled against taking a furtive glance at the crotch of his trousers. She made a mental note to send her compliments to his tailor.

  Before he could bow and take his leave, she quickly made the observation, “You do not come to London as you once did.”

  By invoking London and it vaunted milieu, she begged the memory of their once-intimate association.

  “No, I do not,” he explained.

  It was urgent that she hasten their discourse, but he was maddeningly uncooperative. His wife could intrude at any moment. Moreover, Darcy’s wavering gaze implied he was readying his escape and she had yet to draw him out. Juliette, however, was nothing if not light on her feet when forces united against her.

  She said, “When Sir Howgrave and I are more settled into Kirkland Hall, we shall send round invitations. It shall not, of course, rival your gala, but then the house is much in need of repair. To be frank, the place is in ruin.” She checked herself, or pretended to, “Oh, do forgive me. I meant no offence to the Bingleys, they are a charming couple. Their children are quite enlivened.”

  At the mention of the abominable condition of the Bingleys’ house, Darcy seemed amused.

  Juliette was encouraged. Her mental machinations were much in use, so she did not listen closely to what he said. Later, she chastised herself for not taking greater note of that.

  As a rule, Juliette had cordial feelings for children so long as they remained in their place. The Bingleys’ brood was cherubic, but hardly angelic. She had seen that when Jane attempted to stand them in line to make introductions the day she visited them. They stayed still for nigh a quarter of a minute and then ran off on some sort of loud, running game. With more good intentions than success, Jane shushed them and led Juliette into a quiet afternoon parlour. Juliette was offered a seat, but when she took it, she was stabbed by a toy sword. She hoped it was not a bad omen.

  “Yes,” Darcy was saying, “Bingley’s children are quite ungovernable. Happy lot though.”

  Juliette made a show of agreeing, “Mrs. Bingley is quite handsome. That she has remained so after the birth of so many children is a great wonder.”

  To this observation, he remained silent.

  “Children are both a blessing and bother in equal measure, are they not?” she continued.

  His eyes barely fluttered. His nostrils flared imperceptively. She mistook his agitation. He bestowed her a cursory bow. It was most certainly not one of submission.

  He said curtly. “I can no longer trespass upon your time.”

  “Are we doomed to meet amongst the tedium of country manners?”

  Juliette thought she took the sting out of such impudence with a spectacular smile. Her smile had rarely failed her. With just the right tilt of her head and an expression that promised everything, she had obtained her two houses, dozens of lovers, and an adorable white bichon named Tout.

  “Shall we meet in London next season?”

  “No,” he said firmly.

  As dispassionately as she could manage, she said, “A pity.”

  Juliette was not heavily powdered—only a light dusting across her bosom. Hence, the colour that crept from thenceforth to her neck was unnoticeable. She had realised that her lack of subtlety had offended him—possibly a fatal blunder.

  With his usual grace, he clasped his hands behind his back and moved to a group of party-goers who had gathered a few feet away. They might have seen the beautiful Lady Howgrave—few did not. But they had little time to conjecture what, if any, conversation passed between her and Mr. Darcy. By no means would they have detected it from her ladyship. Her countenance was hidden behind her fan.

  As Darcy stepped away from her, his scent remained—if only for the smallest moment. Yet, it was so familiar to her that a tear troubled the corner of her eye. Or at least it did until her delicate nose whiffed out a second scent intermingled with his. It was not perfume, but a musky combination of aromas. A lifetime dedicated to men and amour meant that she had recognized the scent. It was the odour of requited passion.

  With the lightness of the wind, Lady Howgrave descended the staircase. As she did, her countenance did not reflect her acute vexation.

  Why, Darcy had come to the ball fresh from his wife’s embrace!

  How many times did that seductress have him take her? Two? Three? He had to be compleatly fordone by the exertion. Certainly he had been left in no condition to take another woman that night. What devious wiles that wife of his had.

  Bloody hell.

  ———

  b

  For all her recollections, Juliette forgot the specific circumstances of how her acquaintanceship with Darcy had come to an end. In the lonely shadow of lost opportunity, she thought of it only at her leisure.

  At the time she believed that Darcy had quit her bed in honour of his wedding vows. But he had forsworn her acquaintance before his marriage. Indeed, once he had fancied himself in love with Miss Bennet, he refused her.

  There was another, more difficult truth she had to address.

  Mentally stamping her foot, Juliette recalled that Elizabeth Darcy’s figure had been exceedingly voluptuous. No doubt she was again with child. The night of the Pemberley ball, something else was quite evident besides his wife’s blossoming waistline. The bulge in Darcy’s breeches (that she so surreptitiously admired) had not shrivelled from disuse.

  Was she to gain Darcy’s cooperation, in her quest for his seed, she would have to appeal to his chivalry, not his cock.

  It was much engaged with his damnable wife.

  Chapter 25

  Soldier On

  Before Sally had gone on her way that day, Mr. Darcy found her.

  It was unusual for a man of his eminence to seek someone sitting in the kitchen. Hence, when they saw Mr. Darcy he did not ask the servants to take their leave. Indeed, the cook and her scullery maids scattered. When Sally spied him, she knew instinctively that he meant to ask her of the event of mutual interest. She hoped that he would not ask if she plugged that bastard, Wickham, for she did not want to have to lie. In fortune, he did not. He held the piece of vellum she had brought with her. Perhaps he wanted her to retain it herself. No accounting for rich men’s motives.

  But, he did not want her to take it. He had a question—indeed, several questions.

  “I recognise Wickham’s hand. Tell me why did he sign this name?”

  One long, aristocratic finger pointed to the signature.

 
“If he was to vow Wickham was dead, we figured that he needed another name. ‘Thomas Reed’ was one Daisy thought up.”

  A quizzical expression passed over his countenance, “Beg pardon?”

  “Daisy Mulroney,” she said, then explained further, “My partner—the wee brothel-keeper.”

  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.

  ———

  b

  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 sequestrati
on 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.