Page 36 of Elizabeth and Caroline
“A release?” She was puzzled.
“You see, I didn’t think you did,” he said. “You’re going to have to help me.”
“Help you?” She was entirely flummoxed.
“Haven’t you ever done this to yourself?”
She hid her face in his chest, letting out a giggle.
“So, yes?” he murmured. “So, show me how?”
So, she did show him.
And it just got better between them, better and better and better.
In London, they didn’t spend a night apart for a fortnight. Every night she spent in his arms, every night feeling herself grow closer and closer to him, every night that sweet, deep thread of connection strengthening.
And then, her bleeding came, and she realized that she had not been quite thinking about the fact that this thing they were doing was for the purpose of getting her with child, and this knowledge settled into her in a strange way.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to have a child, she thought, but she didn’t want one yet.
She did not see how it was she was going to navigate matchmaking for Caroline if she were increasing. On the other hand, she didn’t think her husband would take kindly to that idea, nor was she pleased at the thought of not being with him in that way.
Even so, when her bleeding had ended, and he inquired about that, and she knew it was because he wanted to resume their nights together, she put him off too long, saying she was still bleeding when she was not.
During this time, she was making feverish and covert inquiries to everyone she could think of. She had a whispered conversation with her maid, who directed her to the cook in the house, who was married to the driver, and the cook got a message to a woman who Elizabeth had to receive downstairs in the servants’ rooms. They had a furtive conversation hidden away in the larder, of all places.
The woman gave Elizabeth a packet of seeds, from a wild carrot plant, but when she explained the way they would work, Elizabeth knew it was not going to be the solution she had hoped for. She was supposed to take the seeds whenever she’d had a night with a man, but they weren’t to be taken every single day, and that was the way of it between herself and her husband.
Elizabeth tucked the packet of seeds into a drawer, feeling frustrated.
Mr. Darcy cornered her that night, in her bedchamber, and explained he’d gotten confirmation from her maid that she had not been bleeding for the past five days, and he was all concern and worry.
“I don’t mean to burden you with this,” he said. “My understanding is that, erm, perhaps I have been too demanding with you. I think it must be more of an invasive sort of thing for women, and I know women’s appetites for it are perhaps not the same as men’s. I only want you to know that you do not need to resort to subterfuge. You may deny me, and I shall not take that badly.”
She shook her head at him.
“I wish us to be honest with each other, Lizzy,” he breathed. “Do not keep things from me.”
“I’m not ready,” she whispered.
“All right,” he said. “That’s all right. When you are ready again for me… should I wait for you to tell me, or may I attempt—”
“I mean I’m not ready to be with child,” she said miserably.
“Oh,” he said with a very relieved smile. “Oh, that is all.”
She eyed him, shaking her head. “You are notdisappointed or angry?”
He chuckled. “This again, my love? I should have realized, of course, that you would be assigning blame to yourself for a rather natural inclination. You know, there are twelve years between myself and my younger sister?”
“Oh?” she said, unsure as to what bearing this had on the conversation, and thinking to herself, with a bit of alarm, that it might be odd that she had yet to meet any member of his family. Certainly, he should have introduced her to someone, shouldn’t he have? But they had not actually left the house at all. They had stayed in, reading books, staying up late at night pleasuring each other, sleeping late, breakfasting in his bedchamber half-dressed…
She had not found any of it unpleasant, but she could not help but think he might be hiding her, that he might be ashamed to be seen with her in public.
If that were the case, he might also not be keen to get her with child either.
“My mother was not at all enamored with the process, you see,” said Mr. Darcy. “It is not an uncommon feeling amongst women, as I understand. My mother only had two children. My aunt, Lady Catherine, only one. My aunt, the Countess of Matlock, only two. I think it may be a difference between the city and the country, truly.”
