Page 77 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
“She is, in point of fact, not.”
Darcy’s throat tightened and he thought he might start to sob. But no, couldn’t do that. He sniffed, hard, and straightened up, picking at a bit of invisible lint on his waistcoat. “You’ll stay on, then, and if I leave a letter with you for her?”
“Yes,” said the colonel.
“Thank you, Richard.” Mr. Darcy quit the room and went to wake up his sister. He did not know what it would do to her, taking her back to Pemberley, where Wickham had terrorized her. But they couldn’t stay here, not any longer.
ELIZABETH READ THEletter from Mr. Darcy over and over. It was full of suggestions, all of them horrid, ideas for some escape from this life for her, but she knew that all of them ended in calamity for Willie.
She didn’t need to be happy, in the end. She couldn’t be happy, not truly, if she knew that her actions had harmed her son. Willie was all that mattered.
She destroyed Mr. Darcy’s letter, though it pained her. She wanted something of him to remember him by, something to take out and turn over and touch and fold again and again, something to read and cry onto, tears making the ink run. She wanted to keep the letter, but she didn’t.
She wrote him back that they must think of their son, that there was nothing else in the world that mattered.
He was already gone.
The colonel took the letter from her, saying he’d send it after Mr. Darcy on the road, using only the trustworthiest of servants.
While she was sobbing in the wake of that, clutching Willie to her chest, thinking that at least she had him, Mr. Darcy’s son, one true piece of the man to hold with her always, Charlotte entered the sitting room where Elizabeth was crying.
“Oh,” said Charlotte, backing away. “I shall leave you, Lizzy.”
“No, it’s all right.” Elizabeth sat up and wiped at her tears. It was not done to cry like that in front of other people. “I’m all right.”
“Where is Mr. Darcy?” said Charlotte. “Why did he leave? Are you sobbing over Jane, or—”
“Oh, Charlotte, I am a… I have done very bad things, I’m afraid.”
“No,” said Charlotte, coming over her, taking Willie from her. “No, Elizabeth, you have been under far too much and you deserved a bit of happiness. Mr. Darcy loves you. Anyone can see that. I can’t help but… I wanted it to work out for you.”
“So did I,” said Elizabeth in a very small voice. “But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
“True enough,” said Charlotte. “I well know this, of course. Things I have wished…”
“We are not the sort to have an easy way of it, I’m afraid, Charlotte,” said Elizabeth. “But we still have each other.”
“Aye,” said Charlotte. “That is very true.” She bent to kiss Willie’s forehead. “And we have little Willie to see to.”
“Yes, and this, Charlotte, we have all this.” Elizabeth gestured to their surroundings. “It will be enough. It’s so much more than I ever thought I could have, in the end.”
“Itwillbe enough,” Charlotte agreed, giving her a small, sad smile.
WEEKS WENT BY, and Elizabeth’s bleeding came, just as she knew it would. Even so, when she saw it, it hurt somewhere. Another of Mr. Darcy’s babes would have done her no good, of course, and she didn’t think it possible they had made one. But some part of her…
At any rate, Mr. Collins was relieved.
He had been as good as his word, cutting himself off from any laudanum at all. All of the bottles had been cast out of windows to burst on the grounds below, and the glass gathered up and taken away. He had given all servants strict orders to never listen to him if he broke and asked them to go and fetch him more from the apothecary.
But he never did ask.
At first, it was likely because they were not home. They traveled immediately to Longbourn along with Jane’s body, and they stayed with her family for the funeral. During this time, he was away from his daily routine, and he said this made it easier for him to abstain from the substance because everything was different.
The time there was odd and strange. She was not comforted by seeing her family, she found. Everything there seemed dimmed and horrible. Her mother was more shrill than ever. Kitty screeched about how out of sorts she was with Jane’s passing, as if the death of her sister and her own grief were a bothersome nuisance. Mary was quiet and dour, but she did play the piano one evening for the family, and she had improved at that pursuit markedly. Lydia was not there. She had gone off with members of the regiment, Colonel and Mrs. Forster, to Brighton, and there had eloped with an officer in the regiment. Now, she was off with the rest of the company, now Mrs. Denny, living what she undoubtedly thought of as a lark. Her father seemed incapable of taking any of it seriously, making awful, inappropriate jokes at various intervals.
She was glad enough when Mr. Collins insisted they must go home, even though she was loath to leave Jane’s grave.
Back at Rosings, Mr. Collins still did not imbibe any laudanum. He was motivated to get free of it in a cold and determined way. He was pained by his desire for the drug, physically pained, and he was in a wretched mood, screaming at everyone, calling Elizabeth names, taking up tobacco pipe smoking as a way to calm the urges, and generally not being a man pleasant to be near.
