Page 85 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
It was very much like Jane, in fact.
He had been fine, and then one morning, when he was to be roused, he was gone. Perhaps it was a quirk of the illness.
Of course, that doctor had said it was hereditary…
Elizabeth didn’t know. No one did.
Part of her felt foolish. Three years? If she had known, she would have stayed. What was three years? Then she’d be mistress of Rosings now, and Willie would still inherit it, and…
But it was done.
She sent a letter to Charlotte, signing it Mrs. Forthsign, the widowed mother of little Willie, and Charlotte wrote back, telling her that Colonel Fitzwilliam was ever so helpful in the wake of her husband’s death.
Elizabeth guffawed. That man! He was determined to get his hands on Rosings, wasn’t he?
She wasn’t entirely surprised when the announcement was made that Colonel Fitzwilliam and Charlotte were marrying. And she even felt a bit as if she had something to do with the match, which was obviously foolish. She’d done nothing! She’d imagined them together and rejected such a thing.
“You should come to the wedding,” said Mr. Darcy.
“I can’t,” she said. “People will recognize me.”
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Darcy. “But what is the danger now? There is no husband to take Willie from you. There is no one to care that you are still alive.”
She supposed he was right. She did go.
He introduced her to people. “This is my dear friend Mrs. Elizabeth Forthsign.”
Caroline Bingley was there, and her eyes widened as she looked Elizabeth over. “You… you were married, then?”
“To my dear husband Mr. Forthsign, yes, but he died tragically,” said Elizabeth.
Caroline furrowed her brow. “But I thought you were… I thought that…” She shook her head. “You look like another Elizabeth I used to know. I called her Eliza.”
“Oh, truly? How awful for her. I despise that shortening of my name.”
And that was the closest she came to being recognized. She had not really traveled in the same social circles as Mr. Darcy and the colonel, in the end, and if she had, people simply had paid her no mind.
Nothing came of it.
He came to her room in Rosings, in the midst of the night, and she was sleepy and told him to leave her alone, but he put his mouth between her thighs, and drove her to sleepy heights of pleasure. And after, he lay with his head resting on her thigh and said, “I think we should just get married now.”
“Do you think it will be all right?”
“I can’t see how anyone would stop it,” he said.
So, they did.
And Willie would not inherit Pemberley, but was a respectable son born in wedlock with his own inheritance, and he was Mr. Darcy’s stepson, and his stepfather supplemented all of that, and he had quite a future ahead of him.
They had three more children, and all of them were girls. And Mr. Darcy began to look into some way to make Willie into his heir, or to divide things amongst the girls. By this time, they were neither of them young anymore. She was in her thirties and Mr. Darcy in his forties. She was not even sure she wanted another child. Four pregnancies was quite a lot, after all.
But then there was a surprise, and her belly swelled once more, and that was their little son Dorian, and he was finally the heir they’d been waiting for. There were over ten years between him and his elder brother Willie, but they were thick as thieves.
She sent money to her family.
And when her father died, some years later, and Longbourn passed on to Mr. Collins’s nephew, she and her husband saw to her mother and younger sister Mary, who was the only one who hadn’t married. They were set up quite comfortably in their own house in Meryton, which was easily maintained by Mr. Darcy’s largesse.
They knew, then, that she wasn’t dead after all, but there was no real conversation about it. Elizabeth couldn’t imagine her mother wouldn’t have been scandalized. Mrs. Bennet took the help and assistance, however, and she said nothing.
