“You do not make her cry often,” Elizabeth said. Their eyes met and Elizabeth felt a shivering promise of future happiness and joy in his serious expression.
She sighed longingly.
Darcy kept smiling at her, but then he said with more seriousness, “I often worry that I am failing at this age when impressions are received most deeply to instil the proper sense that there are often things she cannot have, but…” He shrugged. “I cannot choose to deny her for the sole cause that I wish her to experience disappointment on occasion.”
“And what wisdom is dispensed upon this topic by those tomes on the art of rearing the young that you consume voraciously?” Elizabeth asked, looking at him with a glowing smile.
Rather than replying immediately, Darcy pointed at a tray on the table, “Elizabeth, the plate there is for you, and there is another that is being kept warm by the oven to give to Jane when she wakes.”
“You both ought,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, flapping out his newspaper and picking it up again, “to behave in a less familiar manner if you hope to conceal from anyone, particularly our lovely aunt, that you have clearly come to an agreement.”
Darcy flushed.
Elizabeth grinned, feeling that glow of happiness from how Darcyhadused her name.
“Could you not guess from Darcy’s happiness over breakfast that such had happened?” Elizabeth asked.
“I do not think my cousin is the sort of person in whom happiness overflows to mirth. His excellent mood could have been explained by what we learned of your cousin last night.”
“He did not mean it, I hope, in that way!” Darcy replied laughing.
“Now you both must explain the matter to me,” Elizabeth replied. She was suffused with satisfaction.
“Oh no, not I,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “Those secrets which he revealed about the depths of his heart and affectionswhilst in his cups and awaiting his child shall not be shared byme!”
“He also said,” Darcy replied, “many times, that he very much worried for Jane, I mean Mrs. Collins. It made me think better of him.”
“He ought to be concerned for my sister!”
“I offered him a comforting thought to help him cope with his anxiety about the fate of Mrs. Collins,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, with that smirk.
“Darcy, what is the joke, I do insist you tell me,” Elizabeth grinned at herbetrothed.She was so happy she could burst.
“I, ah…” Darcy said, “I perhaps ought to follow Colonel Fitzwilliam’s example and consider what he revealed last night as under a seal of silence. Gentlemanly manners, you understand.”
Elizabeth raised her eyebrow.
“I can only say that he expressed the depths of his ah, consideration and gratitude—”
“He was talking about how much he loves Lady Catherine? What makes you both so surprised by that? It is the only explanation for why he does not simply go to Longbourn to live without any work.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam goggled, while Darcy laughed.
After breakfast Jane and Bennet were both awake, and Elizabeth sat with her sister while she ate. The midwife returned and asked how Jane felt, but all that was said during the examination was satisfactory — painful, a little bloody, and unpleasant, but satisfactory.
Elizabeth had ample opportunity to hold Bennet, cuddle him, enjoy the scent of the newborn and marvel at how tiny, tiny, tiny the miniature hands, feet and toes were.
The child himself, both while asleep and awake, flung his limbs out randomly, and seemed to have crying and sticking his tongue out as the only intentional behaviours.
Darcy took his offered opportunity to hold the baby.
Elizabeth had expected nothing else from how he behaved with Emily, but it warmed her heart to see how confidently and easily he took the baby, and the way that he cheerfully bounced him on his shoulder, and was not bothered at all when Bennet burped up in a way that some of the spit missed the cloth they had put there to catch it.
“I assure you John has not forgotten his tricks,” Darcy said laughing, as Elizabeth pointed at the white streak along the back of his fine wool coat. “He has become an expert upon removing such stains.”
Lady Catherine visited, and she also held Bennet, and proved to be as capable as Mr. Darcy at holding a baby, keeping the head supported, the child in constant motion, and everything safe and friendly.
“Mrs. Collins,” that fine lady ordered, after making faces and silly sounds at Bennet, “You must soon set him on a schedule. Place him on a pot for ten minutes every morning so he will learn to relieve himself. Only feed him every four hours. Not each time he cries or begs for you. And wake him from naps that go too long. You ought to by steps teach him to not sleep the whole day through, but to be a diligent and useful sort.”
