Page 74 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
Mr. Darcy thought about it.
“Would you kill him?”
“I don’t kill people as a general rule, Lizzy,” said Mr. Darcy, giving her a look.
“Well, then, I can’t think you could do anything at all besides give him money,” said Elizabeth. “And you must not do that.”
So, Mr. Wickham was left to go free.
By June of that year, Jane was married to the colonel, and all three of the other Bennet sisters had secured engagements for quite good marriages. By September, all of the girls would be married, and Mrs. Bennet would be so overcome with emotion at each wedding that she would have to excuse herself. “To think, all of my girls so happily settled!” she would exclaim, again and again.
Elizabeth might have counseled that the younger girls wait a few years, but Lydia was hellbent on getting married straightaway and Kitty wished to do whatever it was that Lydia did.
In mid-July, when there was a break in Bennet sister weddings, Elizabeth left her husband for some weeks to go on a tour of the northern part of the country with her aunt and uncle Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. It was strange to be parted from him, but she could feel him through the bond, steady and sure, as if he were right next to her, and they ended the tour in Derbyshire, at Pemberley, which was sort of hers, she supposed.
Her husband was there, had been waiting for her there during the tour. He had some apartments in the estate converted to his use with no windows, but he did not like summer in general (too many hours of daylight) and he did not really like the country, and she knew he had no desire to tarry there for too long. After all, he would not keep this house when he passed it on to Miss Darcy. He was only a steward of the Darcy lands and name.
She liked Pemberley, though, and her aunt and uncle liked it as well.
She liked the country.
She liked London as well, she supposed, but she would be saddened to live in a city all the time. Sometimes, one needed trees and sky and birdsong, after all.
As she conducted the tour, she felt as if she were saying goodbye to all of it, to the sun, to her family ties, to her warm, human body.
She fully intended, once fall came, to tell her husband to turn her.
Her fears about his attachment to her were unwarranted, after all, and she wished to be with him forever, and there was no reason to delay.
But delay she did.
She and Mr. Darcy spent the fall in the country and then returned to London in late November, and she thought she would have asked him to turn her by then, but she hadn’t. Then, Miss Darcy met a man who was pursuing her and wished to marry her, and they were caught up in all of that, the courtship, Miss Darcy’s breathless excitement, the engagement, and then the wedding preparations.
“If Miss Darcy is married, does this mean that she is ready to inherit?” said Elizabeth one evening as they were speaking over it.
“Well, it’s nebulous, I suppose,” said Mr. Darcy. “When we made the agreement, she was very young, and we thought that it would be until she was at least twenty-five, but with her married, it would seem that her husband could take charge.”
“But what happens to you?” said Elizabeth.
“I suppose I had thought I would kill myself off, go off into the shadows for a bit and then reemerge as a Matlock, perhaps not a son of the current earl, but some more distant relative. I have done this before, and I always explain away the resemblance to whoever I was before because I am a relation to the last man I was. People will often comment that it’s uncanny,and I shall agree with them, and then they will simply accept it. I’m always surprised how little it takes to convince people. Anyway, I can’t do that now, because of you.”
“Well, I suppose it would be a good time for me to say I wished to be turned,” said Elizabeth. “We could go away and take the time it may take for me to get accustomed to being a vampire. It is all exactly the right timing.”
“Is it, though? You still wish to remain close to your sisters, all newly married, and to your parents. So, I must remain Mr. Darcy, I think, for the time being. It can be easily done, I’m sure. If Georgiana has needs of any resources, I shall make them available to her, but I shall remain this way, as the master of Pemberley, et cetera, for some years yet.”
“Years?” she said. “You think I could have years?”
“You can have as many years as you like,” said Mr. Darcy.
“But you do wish to turn me.”
“I hope that I do not have to lose you. I should like us to be together forever, yes. But, Lizzy, my Lizzy, you are so very young. You have just turned one and twenty.”
“How old were you when you were turned?”
“Eight and twenty,” he said.
“Seven years,” she said. “Yes, perhaps give me seven years.”
