Colonel Fitzwilliam fell into the seat next to him on the sofa in Brooks’s Great Subscription Room. They had a good view of the card tables from this seat near the fireplace, and now that his cousin was here, perhaps other gentlemen would stop approaching him to wish him well, to ask about Madeira, to offer their condolences, and then offer their congratulations on his marriage.
“I could spill ale on the table and the floor to make you feel more at home.”
“And areyoufeeling more at home now that you are back in London? I understand you are in a comfortless hotel rather than opening your own house, so you must not intend to stay long. I also hear that your marriage is being talked of amongst good society.”
“There was no reason to hide it.” Making his marriage publicly known was a first step in telling Elizabeth the truth about who he was.
“I heard from my father all his thoughts on your impulsive marriage. He wishes you happy but does not comprehend how you shall ever be so with a poor woman with bad connexions. He thinks you were grieving and married the first pretty face who you thought might comfort you. How did Lady Catherine take the news?”
Darcy shrugged. “How do you think she took it? I sat there and listened to all her rage and disbelief. When she had done, I told her that if she wished a relationship with me, she must call on Mrs Darcy in town—with due politeness—and I then left.” Of course, Elizabeth would not live long enough for that meeting to take place, but Lady Catherine needed to know that his wife deserved her respect all the same.
“Does that mean you intend to tell Mrs Darcy what is her new home? Who is your family? What is your income?” Fitzwilliam gave him a meaningful look.
“Yes, I will tell her everything and beg her to forgive me. She will not have much time to enjoy all I can offer, but I will throw myself upon her mercy and, if she will still have me, I will take her to the Lakes until ...”
Fitzwilliam gave him a solemn look and nodded. “What business did you have, other than to see and be seen? Mr Wickham was already brought before the magistrate.”
He would never forgive Wickham’s debts, not when he could never forgive him for abusing his sister. “I needed to know for certain that he was in gaol.”
“He is in the Fleet now, on the master’s side, although he cannot afford to remain for long and must then go into the squalor of the common side. My guess is that he will be in the lesser accommodationsbefore the end of the month. What business truly brings you to town when you ought to be grovelling at your wife’s feet?”
“I spoke with my solicitor to settle money on Elizabeth and revise my will. There was no settlement signed when we married, and in the event I am thrown from my horse and killed in the next month, or suffer from some other accident”—his stomach lurched as he thought of the incident at the toll gate—“she ought to be properly taken care of in her brief widowhood.”
“If that is done, why have you not left?”
“I have also been making enquiries of physicians who specialise in the heart.”
Fitzwilliam gave him a pitying look. “What good will that do! You know that no doctor can help her. Do you hope to redeem yourself by finding a cure for Mrs Darcy?” he added sadly.
“I am ashamed that I once may have considered my own selfish hopes in aiding Mrs Darcy, but that is not why I am here. It isonlyfor her sake.” He looked away to avoid his cousin’s gaze.
“The apothecary acknowledged she has a weak heart and it is in her family. I have seen one of those heart paroxysms that incapacitate Mrs Darcy. It seizes her quickly and looks dreadfully painful. How many have you observed?”
Darcy counted in his head: the evening at Lucas Lodge, on the street in Meryton, at the Longbourn ball, Georgiana’s funeral, and perhaps also the night he refused her, and possibly last week at the toll gate. “Fewer than half a dozen, though she hides them if she can. They had been worsening for over a year.”
“Then go back to Hertfordshire. You ought to be confessing the truth of who Fitzwilliam Darcy is and enjoying your final days with a lively and pretty woman who—I cannot comprehend why—seems to like your dull company. Why are you wasting your time with physicians? There is no cure to be had.”
“I must dosomethingbecause it is unbearable to do nothing. Because Elizabeth deserves everything I can offer, and I deserve to be damned if I did not at least consult with them. But two have said that since she has had so many paroxysms that her death is imminent. They talk on about symptoms and causes, but there is precious littleprogress in regard to remedies. One suggested to keep her on strict bedrest with no company, but that will only make her life not worth living.” He ran a hand over his eyes. “My poor Elizabeth.”
“Stop wasting time with useless physicians and go. You could leave now and be back before dinner.” He nodded absently. “When I was last in Hertfordshire, you told me to keep my nonsense of love out of your arrangement. You acted as though I was absolutely wrong when I said she set your heart afire ...”
“Are you truly going to make me say it aloud—toyou—when I have not told her?”
Fitzwilliam shook his head and took a long drink. “How many more fits of heart pain before she dies and you miss your chance? Have you not accepted that she is certain to die?”
“I know she is, I truly do.” The toll gate accident only made him face the grief he would certainly feel when Elizabeth did die. He felt tears behind his eyes and coughed. When he breathed steadily again, he said, “She is dying, and she is the most vividly alive person I have ever known.”
Her loss would leave an emptiness that nothing and no one else would ever fill.
Elizabeth wasin the parlour on the sofa when the maid brought the letters in. She kept her patience when she was told the kitchen boy had gone to retrieve the letters on her behalf. She did not ask if it was Darcy’s injunction that she be kept easy, or from the servants’ concern for her. Her wrist troubled her little since the toll gate accident, and her heart had not troubled her at all.
It pressed on her mind that, after both the emotional agitation and the exercise her heart underwent, she ought to have died by the toll gate. She would consult Mr Lynn or Mr Jones today. There was something wrong with her but, perhaps, since she had survived the incident, something might be done to extend her life enough to enjoy the Lakes with Darcy. He was expected to return tomorrow, and they would then travel north.
Her uneasy thoughts brightened when she saw she finally had a letter from the Canadas. She retrieved Mr Jones’s letter—folded and unfolded many times over—and took the letter from her aunt into the garden to read before walking to Meryton to the apothecary shop.
Montreal July 1
My dear niece,
