Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife

by Linda Berdoll

  “I could not do it. I let your baby die…” she sobbed again and again.

  He soothed and shushed. In time, she listened.

  In the hour they lay, a measure of healing took place. Eventually, her tears were exhausted, emotion spent. With her heaviest cloak about her, he carried her down the stairs and out of the house. The servants observing this sight stopped their chores and went to the windows in silence as the master carried the mistress up the path to the baby’s grave. Unbeknownst to him, the stone had just been set. Thus, they saw it first together.

  He knelt, allowing her to place a small bouquet of winter roses at the base of the marble. Neither cried nor spoke. There seemed nothing to be said.

  45

  That first spring after Hannah came into Mrs. Darcy’s employ was a heady proposition, indeed. She had never once ventured beyond Derbyshire in her brief life. London had always seemed an impossibility. Nevertheless, when the time came she boarded the second coach with Anne, Mrs. Annesley, and Goodwin without hesitation. Albeit she did not quite release a full breath until after they had reached the outskirts of the fabled town.

  She had heard tales of London from her third brother, who had once travelled there. He claimed it so harsh a place that fine people stepped over dead ones upon the sidewalk without even looking down. The streets of London upon which they travelled to reach the Darcy house were quite wide and inviting. They bore no dead bodies that Hannah could see. There were, however, a few darker concourses leading away from this main avenue that might possibly contain these reputed corpses.

  She narrowed her eyes as they passed each shaded street, telling herself she did not want to spot one. She peered quite conscientiously in want of not, regardless.

  Interrupting her inspection, Goodwin asked her just what she was trying to spy. That startled her from her contemplation, and she shook her head stupidly. She could not recollect Goodwin ever initiating a conversation with her.

  Those were to be the first and last words she heard from him for a time; the disembarkation in London sent them all into a tailspin of activity. Within this household maelstrom, a comeuppance occurred, the recipient none other than the houseman, Mr. Smeads.

  As Hannah held Mrs. Reynolds in less than close affection, it was of no great surprise to her that she was even less enamoured of the son. For a reason unbeknownst to Hannah, London staff literally smirked upon invoking his name.

  It appeared Mr. Darcy was unhappy with him for some misdeed. Hannah asked Goodwin if he knew what had come to pass. Goodwin answered in the negative (a grunt, meaning either “no” or “I refuse to answer,” which one Hannah could but surmise). If Goodwin’s curiosity did not coincide with her own, she found more willing mouths amongst the chambermaids to tell the history of the bedcloth.

  Admittedly, it was Hannah who, much in want of repaying such salacious information, told them about the coachman Reed and that Mr. Darcy had thrashed him and cast him out. She was a little guilt-ridden for enlarging this tale from a single strike to a thrashing, but her audience was so in want of Reed being thrashed, she feared she simply could not disappoint them. (And she would have repaid the rather rude look Goodwin gifted her for gossiping by her sticking out her tongue at him, had not her conscience already been grieving her.)

  Having situated herself in the good graces of the London staff with her tale of Reed, Hannah basked in the fineness of the city house. In time, the newness of her -adventure wore off and she begot a bit of homesickness. But if she busied herself inside and did not look out upon the bustling streets, she could convince her mind she was not far from home. If she did look up from her chores and out the window, however, it was a tremendous task to retrieve her attention from the fine carriages and distinguished-looking people.

  At first, her sleep suffered from the excitement, but her appetite was unaffected. As at Pemberley, the town help partook their meals just a little less grandly than did family. But at Pemberley, Hannah remembered longingly, no one stood about checking to see how much food one had taken upon one’s plate. In Derbyshire, people partook until they were full, period. One might think Mr. Smeads fancied their dinner had been pilfered from his own plate, as parsimonious as the man was with a potato. She huffed about it diligently, but in silence.

  If Mr. Smeads was an impediment to Hannah’s culinary consumption, he had no weight in other matters. For she was lady-maid to Mrs. Darcy and it was Mrs. Darcy and no other who gave Hannah instruction. Hannah had not taken up any airs even in so high a position as she held whilst in the country, but town affected her pride. Was it born of the very impressive coach in which they rode, or the looks that coach affected from passers-by, she did not question. She knew only she felt quite the fine lady in London, the distinction lessened just by her country frocks. And that small consternation was put to rest upon the trip to the dressmakers with the Darcy ladies.

  Whilst they were fitted, Hannah sat in a straight-backed chair observing for a time. But the expected hour turned into two and she rose to stretch her legs by wandering about the shop.

  There was a drapery in Lambton. Or more accurately, a shop that sold fabric. But Hannah had never seen, nor even imagined, a place such as the one they now visited. Great bolts of fine fabric lined one wall; another appeared to bear nothing but lace. She fingered one of the prettier pillow-laces, saw one of the clerks frown at her, and put it down, suddenly certain she had been found out a fraud. Clearly, that was what she must be. For her life seemed far too chimerical not to be a fairy tale. In such a store as she was, in the employ of Mrs. Darcy, and in London.

  The clerk continued to frown at her so decidedly, Hannah lifted her arms and looked about herself wondering just what manner of disorder she had caused to invite such a look. Finally, the clerk said, “Ahem,” and motioned toward the activity. Mrs. Darcy was calling Hannah’s name and in her idleness, she had not heard her. Penitent, she hurried to her mistress.

  Mrs. Darcy and Georgiana had dressed and stood waiting for her to move betwixt them. The dressmaker told her to stand upon the stool and two assistants started to unbutton her dress, at which Hannah grabbed her bodice to wrest it from their unexpected assault.

  “Aye don’t ’low no diddlin’ with me corset buttons!” she exclaimed.

  Realising Hannah had never been helped from her clothes before, Mrs. Darcy assured her it was all quite proper. Hence, Hannah dropped her hands and reclaimed her regard for her position.

  Mrs. Darcy had the frowning clerk retrieve the lace that Hannah had fingered, announcing it would adorn Hannah’s new dress. As a matter of convenience, Mrs. Darcy suggested Hannah select a half dozen muslin fabrics to be transformed into day dresses (and one black worsted, for Hannah did not own a mourning dress and death occasionally struck when one was unavailed of a seamstress).

  Hannah no longer had any doubt of her gentility. It was one conceit to be lady-maid to the wife of the most illustrious person in Derbyshire, quite another to be the same in London.

  When they returned home burdened with hatboxes (Hannah had two new bonnets herself ), her exalted state of mind led her to order Smeads a little too disdainfully to have the boxes carried upstairs. His response made her reconsider whether she would want him to tell his mother how she had spoken to him. She hastily picked up two boxes, as if she intended to carry them up all along.

  Tossing her head gaily, she trilled, “If you please.”

  Smeads frowned at her much as had the clerk in the store, but he did have a man carry the boxes for her. Hannah thought, with practise, she might just be able to carry off this hoax of position. Perhaps she would never, ever be uncovered as the country charlatan that she knew she was. It would have seemed there was no word or deed that could have disturbed her happiness once she had thwarted Smeads even in so small a deception as the bandboxes. London invited a smugness in her demeanour she began to believe was unchristian. Hence, summer’s end saw Hannah’s pretension of grandeur fall away as well.

  She wo
uld have returned to Pemberley just as she had left it, a happy country girl of great luck, had not such violence and outrage transgressed their party.

  *

  The closest Hannah had been to evil was witnessing a thief swipe a shoat. Or so she would once have said was anyone interested in hearing what passed for evil to Hannah. At the moment he levelled his gun at her, she had seen evil personified in the face of Tom Reed.

  It was not a great leap to believe that man of the devil even before he stole Mrs. Darcy. When Hannah looked down the sight of his gun, her eyes first focused on his. It was possible they glowed yellow. It seemed an eternity before the black hole of the business end of the gun barrel became clear. But when it did, a mad scream, shrill enough to shimmy the leaves, reverberated through the trees. And, then, in that heartbeat, ceased. Hannah could not recollect from whence it had come.

  If her scream had been frightened from her mind, she most surely wished the rest had been with it. She, Anne, and Miss Darcy stood in the road and wept. They had no choice but to cry. They could not will themselves otherwise.

  Hannah did not stop crying until they had reached Pemberley, only stifling her tears in occupation of tending Mrs. Darcy. She had thought that such tribulations had been conquered until Mr. Darcy banished her once the bath had been drawn. That was the absolute nadir, she had believed then. But times yet to be endured showed her she only thought she understood grief.

  *

  When her lady’s baby was dead-born, Hannah stayed in the room as long as she must. But the strain of the hours spent, the pain endured, and the recognition of pain to come was more than she could bear. Mrs. Bingley repaired to Mr. Bingley’s embrace. Hannah, however, felt frightfully alone.

  When she came onto the landing, she saw Goodwin standing opposite. His weight was resting upon his hands and those gripped the railing with white knuckled ferocity. Even so, she started to walk toward him. But he turned away.

  In time, she would wonder why he had turned. Was it to deny her, or to deny his own sentiments? At that time, she did not think of it. She blindly and loudly ran down the stairs heading for the door. Possibly, she sought her mother, but it was just a feeling, not a conscious thought.

  Had Mrs. Reynolds not caught her and hugged her to her bosom, and had Hannah not felt the tears upon the old woman’s face, she was uncertain how far she might have fled, for her mother had been dead six years.

  46

  When Jane’s second child was born, Elizabeth, as she had before, went to Kirkland Hall for her sister’s laying-in. Yet in self-proclaimed ward and watch of his emotionally fragile wife, Mr. Darcy joined the small party of relatives awaiting the birth.

  It was a fecund environment, for Bingley’s second sister, Mrs. Hurst, had finally wrested enough of her husband’s attention from drink, food, and the hunt to have a lap-full herself. Ever vigilant for future worry, she flittered nervously about Jane, collecting her every murmur of discomfort as a knell for her own anticipated suffering.

  Jane, even when in the midst of full labour, patted her sister-in-law’s hand in reassurance, “There, there, Louisa, all will be well.”

  If the happy circumstances of wedlock and motherhood for Jane and Louisa chagrined Bingley’s elder sister, Caroline, she did not overtly betray it. For during the parturient watch at Kirkland, Caroline Bingley paid Jane every attention and lamented her every twinge of pain. However, the very vehemence of her professed devotion persuaded Elizabeth that Caroline’s fondness for Jane was less than genuine.

  For unmarried yet, Miss Bingley sluiced about her company—consisting of three married men, two expectant women, and Elizabeth—in full husband-hunting regalia. Bedecked she was with a cherry-coloured, tabby dress, all furbelow and brocatelle (announcing more de trop than au courant). With every passing year, it appeared she added another adornment to her already festooned-to-the-gills costume (at some point Elizabeth fully expected her accoutrements to keep her from heaving about at all). Ever in the want of social opportunity to promote herself, she appeared for all the world ready to pounce upon the first titled, or at least landed, nabob who accidented through the door.

  All her folderol went for naught. With Jane in confinement, the balls that Bingley loved to accommodate had ceased. What few gentlemen were about were out for a little sport in the field and none ever seemed to be bachelors (or even had sickly wives). Indeed, the entire length of Jane’s pregnancy must have been interminable for a bedizened poseur like Caroline Bingley. Pretending affectionate concern whilst enduring a seeming disinterest over an ever-lengthening spinsterhood must have been a dogged test for her, indeed.

  As the time drew nearer for Jane’s delivery, Caroline took up an impatient pace to and fro the room even before Bingley instituted his own measured, if nervous, stride. Caroline’s abrupt little steps sounded to Elizabeth less of familial solicitude than social frustration. Ever benign, Bingley, however, saw it differently.

  “Caroline is so very fond of Jane,” he announced. “Perhaps not as much as yourself, Elizabeth. But as dearly as a sister.”

  At this little treacling colloquy, Darcy looked over at Elizabeth. She had been slicing dessert, but stopped and stood poised with a cake knife in her hand. They both looked at the devoted Caroline, who hummed as she inspected her nails. Then Darcy’s gaze leapt back to his wife, possibly expecting to see Caroline’s trepanned cranium creating a crimson stain upon the carpet at their feet.

  Surprisingly, Elizabeth was not considering mortal retribution for Caroline Bingley. Nor did she intend to gainsay Bingley’s misapprehension of his sister’s heart. Although Elizabeth believed Caroline was cold as charity, she had begun to feel some sympathy for her. If she had found no one to love her, it was because she had no love to offer. It was likely she might eventually find a titled husband in need of her funds and a match would be made. It was a shame, really. Caroline’s mission was a needless one, for she did not own the usual argument in favour of affectionless matrimony, that of being poor.

  Jane’s labour was brief and fruitful, and mid-morning Sunday, she did, indeed, produce an heir. Fittingly, the boy-child would be called after his father. Little Charles was blonde as was Eliza, and, in proof of Bingley’s pronouncement that he was the heartiest child that had ever been born, screamed loud and long.

  “Well, I will agree he has the finest set of lungs of any child I have ever heard,” said Darcy, slapping Bingley upon the back.

  Mr. Hurst inquired if there was to be any sport at all that day and Louisa took to her bed in exhaustion of Jane’s ordeal. Caroline clucked at the baby several times then sat in a side chair, finding ample entertainment in playing with her multitude of bracelets.

  Jane was weak from the birth, and Elizabeth was anxious to have her rest. However, she could not, for Bingley insisted upon carrying his new son about. Although not as roundly soused as when Eliza was born, he had sustained far too much fortification for there to be no worry of him dropping little Charles. Working in concert, the Darcys finally corralled Bingley in a sitting room long enough for Elizabeth to rescue the baby.

  “I say Darcy, have you ever seen such a handsome manikin in your life?” Bingley slurred.

  Wresting his attention, Darcy assured him that he had not, whilst Elizabeth fled with the youngling. Elizabeth repaired the baby to his mother’s arms, jesting about Bingley’s inebriated celebration of fatherhood. Notwithstanding her seemingly good spirits, Jane fretted yet that memories of her dead-born child might be reawakened. Inevitably, Jane’s countenance betokened her heedfulness of such a possibility. Hence, Elizabeth felt compelled to reassure her such was not the case. In the course of the many repetitions of this declaration, Elizabeth began to believe it herself.

  Looking upon the red, squirming newborn, it was not of loss and death she pondered, but of all the possibilities of life. So engrossed was she in revelation, she peered into the newborn’s face with a keenness that was neither immoderate nor cursory. This was scrutinised by tho
se about her with well-nigh the same intensity as she looked upon the babe.

  All of which engendered several misconceptions.

  Firstly, that she was unsettled by the birth; secondly, that she was unawares that everyone was eyeing her so closely; and lastly, that when she said she wanted to take leave for Pemberley, it was because of her disquiet, not theirs. All these misty, inchoate suspicions that all was not well in the household of Elizabeth’s emotions were most unfortunate.

  The ride home was oddly silent. This muzziness about why she wanted to take leave led her husband to believe it was because she was despondent. Elizabeth, however, worried why everyone looked upon her so peculiarly. Darcy spent the entire trip in quiet despair over his wife’s seeming melancholia, Elizabeth in bewattled contemplation of why all and sundry seemed to believe she was dicked-in-the-nob.

  By the time they arrived at Pemberley, the incessant wambling of the coach and his irredeemable wretchedness had rendered Darcy both morose and ill. All the jouncing about had simply made Elizabeth, well—randy.

  *

  Instead of following his wife upstairs, Darcy went to the wine cabinet, filled a glass and sat glumly at the end of the fully set great table. He partook first one sip, and then another. He tossed off his jacket, tore loose his collar. Gradually, his stomach was becalmed, but not his unease.

  He had been considering returning to sleep in the bedroom of his bachelorhood. This not because he did not want to lie with Elizabeth, but because he did.

  However, lying beside her each night yet not in her embrace was becoming not only more difficult, but physically excruciating.

  It was not that she denied him. She had not. He had not asked.

  Connubial pleasures seemed an unconscionable request by one nagged as relentlessly as he by the reasonable fear that another baby might kill her. Given the choice of her life or her passion, there was little indecision. He would rather remain celibate and childless than lose her.