Lydia left, and while this usually made a room more serene, the infant’s fit of rage made that impossible. Elizabeth picked him up to bounce him on her knee, but all this served to do was change the pitch of his cries.
“I never realised how impossible it is to have an intelligent conversation over an unruly child.” She tried to speak lightly, but loudly enough to be heard.
“Or an intelligent thought,” Mr Darcy added drily, before taking his leave as fast as he could.
As Darcy wentthrough the motions of dressing, he realised that a man was supposed to feel happiness, or anxiety, or enthusiasm on his wedding day.All I am feeling is how I ought to feel something.He could not even feel incredulous or disappointed that he was in such a peculiar situation. Instead, he was rather blank until he saw his pale, breathless sister in the hall tying the ribbon of her bonnet.
“You look lovely, my dear.” It was truly the best Georgiana had looked in weeks. “Fitzwilliam has hired a carriage, but are you certain you wish to go to the church? I hate to see you in pain. We shall be there and back in an hour.”
“I know that it will tire me for the day, I know the rattling carriage will pain me, but it is a price I am willing to pay. I have not coughed much this morning. Iwillsee you married to my friend.”
“I am not certain it is wise.” He had the sickening thought that it would be the last time his sister would leave Netherfield Lodge.
“Certainly it is, Darcy,” his cousin said as he descended the stairs. “Every man about to be wed needs someone in the church to hold salts and be agitated and cry on his behalf.” Fitzwilliam gave Georgiana a wink.
“You might serve that role and allow my sister to rest in her bed.”
“No, in order to deserve supernumerary drinks to the health and happiness of Mr and Mrs Darcy, I cannot be so agitated by your happiness that I cry in church.”
Darcy acquiesced, and after bundling his sister into the carriage, at ten they were at the church. Miss Lucas attended the bride, Mr Collins gave her away, and Mrs Bennet cried. Darcy was the only one who knew that the unshed tears in Miss Bennet’s eyes as she approached the altar were at the sight of Georgiana’s presence and not for him.
Darcy felt the first inklings of guilt before the minister finished outlining the causes ordained for matrimony. None of them were for the good of an ailing lonely sister nor for a dying woman to have independence. He ignored as best he could the injunctions that he love his wife, that he cherish her, that he worship her with his body, that they be fruitful in procreation of children, that he love her as he loved hisown body. He was not even endowing her with all of his worldly goods.
What part of these vows can I uphold?
It was soon over, and he signed the register and left with a wife on his arm. Miss Bennet—Mrs Darcy—introduced his sister and cousin to her family, parted from her mother and Lydia with warm embraces, and then his new family climbed into a hired carriage to return to the lodge he had hated as soon as he first entered it.
To add to my wrathful heart and evil wishes, I can now add lying before God to my sins.
These dark thoughts might have lingered had he not noticed Mrs Darcy across the carriage, where she allowed a weary Georgiana to rest her head on her shoulder and doze. Her eyes were extraordinary, fine and dark. It was not their colour or shape that caught his breath, but their arresting laughter and intelligence. In this moment, while he was worried about the honesty of the vows he had just taken, Mrs Darcy was tending to his sister and looked cheerful.
When she saw him looking at her, she whispered, “You need not feel that you have done wrong. We made our own vows when we came to our agreement, and those are the ones you and I need to uphold.”
He looked out the window, unnerved that this woman understood him.
His sister was coughing and in pain while they had breakfast and drank to their health and happiness. Darcy carried Georgiana up the stairs, and Mrs Darcy followed. He walked through the guest room that preceded his sister’s chamber and placed his sister on her bed. He was at the door when his sister cried out in surprise.
“I did not think about the rooms until now. Fitzwilliam, you ought to have reminded me.”
“I do not understand.” He exchanged a look with Mrs Darcy, who shrugged in confusion.
“Your chamber and the other guest room are at the back of the house, and my room and the chamber connected to it are larger and in the front. I ought to move into your room, and you and Lizzy occupy these apartments together.”
His wife’s cry of alarm quickly changed into a nervous laugh. “Oh no, my dear. That—that is not necessary. I would prefer to have this room right next to yours. It will make checking on you in the night easier, and late-night conversations, too!”
Darcy pitied his sister in that moment; she was so abjectly confused that she was struck silent. “Georgiana, no one wishes to distress you and move you. Miss B—Mrs Darcy and I agreed that for the present she would prefer a chamber near yours, and I am only across the hall should she need me.”
The expression on his new wife’s face told him that she would rather her heart stop beating this instant than knock on his door during the night. The silence, red faces, and awkwardness stayed until Darcy backed out of his sister’s and then his new wife’s chambers.
His sister was abed, his new wife was reading to her and intended to remain above stairs, and he and his cousin played cards late into the night. It had to be the strangest wedding day ever imagined.
There weremany things wanting so as to make the prospect of Longbourn’s ball satisfactory to Elizabeth. She would have to dance, but she dared not to strain her heart. Georgiana was too weak to attend, and Elizabeth hated to leave her alone, but her new sister insisted that everyone should go and enjoy the evening. She would have to pretend to be a happy bride, which was difficult but not impossible, and pretend to be enamoured of her husband, whichwasimpossible.
And Mr Darcy does not wish to go.
He was so vocal in his distaste that, given the confines of the house, she could hear all of his complaints to his cousin the entire time she readied herself for the ball one floor above him.
However privately Mr Darcy might have disliked leaving his sister and engaging in an evening out, he did what politeness required and escorted her to her childhood home with grave propriety. This would be the first time that some of the principal families had been in company with Mr Darcy since he first came to the neighbourhood. Theprospect of a ball was extremely agreeable to Colonel Fitzwilliam, and he asked her to introduce him to the partners whom she thought most likely to withstand his flirtatious banter. Mr Darcy looked indignant, but she answered her new cousin in the same style.
