“Mary needs a friend, and if I have understood you correctly, so does Miss Darcy.”
Darcy nodded, and a lock of his hair fell upon his forehead. Elizabeth brushed it away, delighted that she was allowed to do so. These small services that were her prerogative to perform pleased her far more than they should, but the intimacy was new and thrilling.
“What wishes do you have for our family?” Mr Darcy wondered.
Elizabeth’s breath hitched.What if I never beget a son?
Her husband must have sensed her unease and seized her hand.
“Tell me,” he urged.
“I want as many children as the Lord will grant me, though I cannot promise they will be sons,” she whispered.
Mr Darcy hauled her into his lap and tucked her head under his chin.
“There is no entail on Pemberley, so a daughter could inherit, and even if we are not blessed with a child of our own, Georgiana’s would.”
“What if Georgiana never marries?”
“Judge Darcy is next in line, then Augustus, and after him Clarissa. I dare say that between the five of us, at least one will produce an heir or heiress.”
Elizabeth sighed in contentment and nuzzled deeper into the embrace.
“Methinks we need more practice if we are to make a Darcy baby. Even the vicar emphasised the importance of avoiding fornication except for the creation of children…”
Mr Darcy laughed and complied with her expressed wish. They hardly left their bed for the coming week. The rented cottage had no live-in servants, only two maids and a cook, who came to serve breakfast at ten in the morning and went home after dinner.
A week into their honeymoon the Darcys were enjoying a lazy breakfast. With Easter Sunday only four days away, the tradition of Mr Darcy’s annual visit to his formidable aunt was about to be broken. They had no plans to leave the cottage for a month complete and would join the Season in mid-April.
“You are missing your yearly Easter sojourn to Kent.”
“Yes, but it is by no means a deprivation,” Mr Darcy assured her, though he did not meet her eyes.
Elizabeth’s encounter with Mr Darcy’s venerable aunt had not convinced her that Mr Collins’s lavish praise and devotion was deserved. However, she had met the lady but once, her behaviour had been confusing at best, and Mr Collins could hardly be deemed a reliable source. Her final judgment must await further intelligence.
“We could have indulged in clandestine assignations in the lanes of Rosings Park as Mrs Collins invited me to join her and her husband for Easter. Of course, that was months before we married. She might have rescinded the invitation in fear of having to entertain the illustrious Mr Darcy in her humble abode, and that would surely have sent her husband into a fit of nerves rivalling my mother’s.”
Elizabeth’s merry laugh died in her throat at her husband’s wrinkled nose and pursed lips.
“We would have resided at Rosings rather than Mr Collins’ small parsonage,” Mr Darcy corrected her.
“Will you not tell me something about your family? You have met nearly all of my relations, but I have yet to encounter any of yours except Lady Catherine and her daughter.”
Mr Darcy shifted in his seat. It was strange that none of his family had been present at their wedding, though she supposed the delay must take some of the blame. By the time they finally married, the House of Lords was already in session, and the colonel cousin he spoke so much about was busy with his army affairs on the continent. But Miss Darcy was a girl of seventeen summers and could not have so many pressing matters to occupy her time, though she supposed the lack of a male relative to convey her to Longbourn might have been the reason for her absence.
“I have a small family. On the maternal side I have Lady Catherine and her daughter, whom you know. She is the widow of the knight Sir Lewis de Bourgh. Her brother is the Earl of Matlock, who married Lady Audrey Montgomery. They have two sons, Viscount Crawford and Colonel Fitzwilliam. Viscount Crawford is married to Annabella née Cavendish, and they have a son and a daughter. On the paternal side, I have Judge Darcy, who was my father’s younger brother. The judge has a son and a daughter, Augustus and Clarissa.”
“Well, you have more than me. My father was my grandmother’s only child, and I must be content that my mother had a brother and a sister. They are my only close relatives. Mr Collins is my father’s third cousin thrice removed, and we have some distant cousins in Scotland but I have never visited.”
She could not help but smile at his slight grimace. Mr Collins’s obsequious civility he had borne with calm forbearance. He had listened to Sir William with decent composure and only shrugged his shoulders once their neighbour was out of sight. Mr and Mrs Phillips’s vulgarity was another matter that had sorely tested his patience during their long engagement period. Mrs Phillips was a lady of mean understanding with an insatiable thirst for gossip, and she was not so much in awe of Mr Darcy that it prohibited her from asking probing questions, whilst the stuffy Mr Phillips’s penchant for port wine exceeded his sense, and he showed a partiality for the society of the officers that rivalled Lydia’s. If not for Uncle Phillips, they would never have been introduced to a single soldier.
Mr Darcy deserved a sainthood for enduring incessant social obligations that had taken much of the pleasure from their curtailed season of courtship. She rose and rounded the table to wind her arms around his neck and kiss his cheek.
“Do not think me ungrateful for the plight you have suffered these past four months. I would rather thank you again and again.” She kissed his neck and reckoned that all talking was at an end.
“I rather hoped that you had not noticed my discomfort.”
“Of course I did. That is why I anxiously tried to keep you to myself or guide you in the direction of those in my family one might converse with without mortification.”
