It is my fault he is dead. If only I had never seen him in Charlotte’s drawing room that morning. It would be better him living in this world and thinking ill of me than dead.
I shall have to go to Georgiana. The poor girl has been orphaned too many times. Perhaps I can contribute to the recovery of her spirits. I need some purpose, some reason to go on breathing.
How does that Shakespeare sonnet begin? “Who will believe my verse in times to come…”
Fitzwilliam is dead!
The final lines…“But were some child of yours alive that time, you should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.” Good God, do not let that be true.
I take it back; I was utterly wrong. His child would be worth any public shame.
He wants his cousin to marry me and give his child a name. If I am not to be Mrs Darcy, then I shall not be wife to anyone.
That quiet, precious intimacy between us is lost.
Half an hour’s leisure for such heartbreaking reflections as these found her wet, cold, and ravaged by grief. She stopped wandering and fell slowly in a crumpled heap on the damp grass. In her mind’s eye, she could imagine him perfectly: professing an ardent love in the most arrogant of ways, waltzing around a sitting room, in a dusty cottage with his dark eyes hovering over her and calling her his dearest and loveliest.
“Elizabeth?”
Now she was hearing his voice. What wild, extravagant delusion was this? She choked back a sob. Her anguish played tricks on her mind. She tightly shut her eyes and felt tears streaming down her face.
* * *
He had almost walkedpast her when he glimpsed her within a grove of overgrown trees. At first glance, she appeared to be resting beneath a tree while gazing at the vista of rain clouds rolling away. When he approached, he realised that the fine eyelashes that swept across her cheekbones were wet. Curls of auburn hair hung limp around her shoulders. Her lips were pursed, almost as if she were in pain. She was not dressed to be out of doors, and her slippers and the hem of her gown were soaked.
“Elizabeth?” he asked with heartfelt concern.
Instead of seeing her eyes turn toward him, she winced and wrapped her arms around herself, whimpering as tears rolled down her face. He was instantly worried and called to her again, but Elizabeth did not respond. He moved closer and knelt in front of her. He reached out and tenderly wiped away the tears from her wet cheeks.
She gasped, as if she had been trapped underwater and was desperate for air. In shock, Elizabeth fell back on her hands and scrambled backward. There was a heartrending, almost broken aspect to her countenance that was painful for him to see. He could in no way comprehend the cause of her strange and frightened behaviour. He suppressed the urge to wrap her in an embrace, suspecting that would startle her further.
“Elizabeth, why are you crying?” he asked as gently as he could.
She sat up and eyed him with unrestrained wonder for so long he was unsure that she had heard him. Her lips moved silently, and when she was capable of speech, her words sounded hoarse and strangled. “Your letter.”
Darcy followed her gaze down to the crumpled sheets that lay on the wet grass. “I hoped that you would have destroyed it. There was one part, especially the opening of it, which I have dreaded your having the power of reading again. I presumed some expressions therein might justly make you hate me, but that does not explain why you are weeping.”
Elizabeth did not answer but watched him curiously and slowly shook her head. She swallowed heavily and, in a voice more like her own, replied, “No, notthatletter.”
Darcy leant nearer, and Elizabeth pulled out of his reach, as if she could not bear the contact. He opened his hands in passive surrender, and he picked up the damp sheets and realised that he held the crumpled letter he had written last Friday evening before he faced Wickham. His jaw was clenched so tightly that his teeth hurt as he realised what she must have suffered. “How did you come to receive this?”
“Came in the post,” she mumbled into her hands. A cloud of despair still loomed over her.
He sighed and turned to sit next to her. “Fitzwilliam looked all over the field for this letter. We presumed it fell out of his pocket when he pulled out his handkerchief, but when he went back it was nowhere to be found. One of the servants must have discovered it and placed it in the post.” He spoke more to himself than to her. “You were never meant to read that. My cousin was to bring it to you if—if Wickham killed me.”
After several moments of silence, Darcy considered all that had happened since he arrived at Longbourn. Had Elizabeth suffered the agony of grief all alone?
“Elizabeth, Fitzwilliam and I have been in the house above half an hour. Neither your parents nor sisters were shocked to see me. I could scarcely keep my composure through their empty civilities until Jane took pity on me and said you had walked out. Did you not share the letter with them?”
“How could I tell them? It was too painful to speak of yet. What could they have said to bring me comfort?” Elizabeth then shifted her weight to look toward him, the light coming back to her eyes; Darcy realised this animation would precede a torrent of anger. “I thought you were dead! Of what were you thinking? This letter confirmed my greatest fear since I spoke with Mr Bingley in Meryton. I have been in agony, fearing your death. Since Saturday, I have dreaded that Wickham might kill you, and then”—here her voice broke—“then I received your letter!”
“I am sorry, exceedingly sorry,” replied Darcy, “that you were worried on my behalf. I intended to tell you all that had occurred in Bath—in person—when I returned.”
“How could you have taken such a senseless risk?” she cried, still not looking at him.
Darcy repressed his desire to jump to his feet and pace in anger. “Wickham denied all responsibility toward Lydia and then publicly claimed that you were likely with child by another man. You did not see him in Bath. He was farther removed from the realm of decency than I had ever thought possible. Any stranger listening to him would have supposed that I was wealthy at his expense and that the future Mrs Darcy was a common harlot trying to pass off her natural child as mine.”
Elizabeth made no reply.
