Page 28 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
It took two weeks. The doctors who saw her said that her wounds were not so grievous as to not have healed, but that she seemingly had lost all will for it. She wanted to die, wanted to be reunited with her daughter.
They never found out how the accident had happened. Lady Catherine was not cogent enough to give details. It seemed as if she’d fallen going down the stairs, but Elizabeth heard some dark speculation that the woman had done it on purpose to get to her daughter.
Elizabeth didn’t think so. She thought that it had been an accident, but that, somehow, Lady Catherine’d had some sort of vision in the wake of hitting her head, and that she had seen her daughter and that she became convinced it was better to go to her.
There was a peace to the woman in those last days. She was not her fault-finding usual self. She allowed Elizabeth to hold her hand and she smiled at Willie. She didn’t talk much, but when she did, she said things like, “Their happiness, Elizabeth, our children’s happiness.Thatis what is important. I pressured her too much. I tried to make her into something she wasn’t. Be good to Willie.”
Elizabeth dearly hoped that they were together now, mother and daughter, and that Lady Catherine was doing nothing but seeing to her daughter’s happiness. She was not sure what Heaven was like, but she hoped it was a place where all wrongs could be righted and there was nothing but perfect love.
She would miss the woman dearly, in truth.
She did not know when exactly she’d become so fond of the woman, who said only one kind thing to Elizabeth for every three pieces of scathing criticism. But it had happened, and Elizabeth was grieving.
She was also trying to get her husband settled into his new rooms—she’d given him the master’s, Sir Lewis de Bourgh’s old chambers—and she was preparing for the arrival of the Fitzwilliams and the Darcys.
She knew that since she was now the mistress of this place, she was within her rights not to host them in her own home. However, she was also quite aware that the families in question were well-connected, wealthy, and powerful. And that they could not pleased at the fact she was now in possession of Rosings. So, she thought she should do what she could to not anger them.
She was quite in a tizzy about seeing Mr. Darcy again. Some part of her wondered that he would even come. He had kept his word thus far and gone away and never come back—which disappointed her in some ways, even though it was exactly what she had asked for.
She wondered why he would come back now. He had not been particularly close with his aunt. Indeed, he hadn’t seen her in two years.
But he was coming. His sister was coming. And the house would be quite full.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ELIZABETH HAD ENOUGHon her plate, so it was nonsensical that she did the next thing. Truly, it wasn’t the time to be thinking about such things, and she could certainly address it later.
However, in the middle of preparing the house for her guests, she sat down and wrote two letters—one to her family and one to Charlotte Lucas. She proposed, in both letters, that Charlotte and Jane come and stay with her. Charlotte was still unmarried, now nearly thirty, and she was hopeless about ever finding a husband. Her letters often sounded despondent.
Jane was a burden on the household, still ill, still in and out of spells when she was well enough to take turns around the garden and then so ill she could not get out of bed for weeks.
Elizabeth was lonely. They were her two favorite people on earth besides Willie. She would not have Lady Catherine to look after anymore. She would like to look after someone.
But it was madness to have sent the letters when she did. She got back responses in the affirmative too quickly, and arrangements were being made. Sir William Lucas would bring both women in his carriage. They would arrive the day after the funeral.
Calamity! She could not do it all at once. But neither could she take it back. Luckily, she was on good terms with the servants at Rosings, having worked with all of them as she had looked after Lady Catherine. Indeed, they had the sort of relationship that one has with a fellow worker in some ways. They had all come to know each other as people who served Lady Catherine’s whims.
So, when Elizabeth went to them to explain what they must do, they approached the array of tasks ahead of them in the spirit of co-conspirators.Yes, we shall all work together and get this done,instead of,You horrible woman, what have you visited upon us?She was quite grateful for that.
And then everything was a flurry of activity, sunup to sundown. Maybe that was why she had done it. If she were busy, she couldn’t grieve, and the grief was rather large and unwieldy and she did not know what to do with it. If she were busy, she could not ruminate over the looming specter of Mr. Darcy coming back into her life. What was she going to do when she saw him?
She didn’t have any time to think about that, and then he was just there.
He stared at her in the doorway of Rosings, making a face as though something smelled bad. “Miss Bennet, I didn’t think you would greet us. Where is the staff?”
“Mrs. Collins,” she said softly. “And obviously, I would greet you. I would not allow guests into my house without receiving them.”
“Apologies, Mrs. Collins.” His grimace deepened. His sister, Miss Darcy, was standing behind him, hugging a cloak tightly around her body, head down, looking miserable. He kept glancing back at her. “And obviously, yes, you should receive me, but it is not customary for the lady of the house to answer the door.”
At this moment, the butler blustered through, loudly apologizing, and tutting at Mr. Darcy that he was heremuchearlier than they had expected—was that true? Elizabeth had no notion—and that they must accept the household’s sincere regrets for not receiving him properly. “Mrs. Collins is understandably out of sorts in her grief, and she has a number of duties to see to,” continued the butler.
“Ah, of course,” said Mr. Darcy. “I am out of sorts as well. And my sister does not travel well—”
“Yes, a bath is in the process of being drawn for Miss Darcy,” said the butler. “Just this way. I shall show you to your rooms as the footmen are all occupied currently. We’ll have your things brought up by and by. A very short delay, I assure you.”
Then, just as quickly, he was gone.
Elizabeth stared into his wake, as the butler led Mr. Darcy up the stairs, Miss Darcy trailing behind them, and her throat tightened in an impossibly painful way.
