Page 41 of The Marriage Articles

“It is not a warm morning, and you know it is not, because you went walking in a cold one three days ago without a coat and informed me you never take chills.”

“I do not take chills,” he said, with immense firmness. “This is not a chill.”

“Of course not. Gentlemen of your consequence do not catch cold. They merely happen to burn with fever in bed of a morning, entirely by coincidence.”

A servant had followed her in with fresh linen and withdrew. Darcy closed his eyes briefly, which she chose to interpret as surrender in the only currency he was presently able to pay. “I had intended,” he said, “to be downstairs within the hour.”

“Then your intentions and your legs are about to quarrel, and I know which I shall side with. Indulge me, sir, and stay in bed.”

He yielded with an ill grace, as men do when reason is against them, but he yielded nonetheless.

Dr Baillie came within the hour, a precise man with a calm manner and the confidence of one who had been called to Grosvenor Square often enough to be unimpressed by it. He examined his patient, asked his questions, and received answers so clipped and grudging that Elizabeth took over the answering herself, which the physician accepted without comment.

“A fever, certainly,” Dr Baillie said, straightening. “I will not bleed him. It is not my practice in a simple fever, whatever some of my brethren may think of my reluctance.” He smoothed his cuffs, looking back down at his patient. “What he requires above all is quiet, and as much sleep as you can manage to procure for him. I shall leave a cooling draught to be given every four hours, alongside barley water as he is willing to take it, and bark should the fever persist past tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. “I will tend to him myself.”

Dr Baillie considered her for a moment and then gathered his things. “I shall call again tomorrow, and daily while the fever lasts. I would advise keeping him strictly to his bed, Mrs Darcy, though I perceive that task may require some persuasion on your part.”

He had no sooner spoken than the patient demonstrated the accuracy of the prediction. Mr Darcy had evidently decided that the conference was at an end and that he was no longer required to be the subject of it, for he put back the covers and rose, or attempted to. He achieved standing. He stood, in his nightshirt, bare-footed on his own carpet, the linen hanging loose above his ankles, swaying slightly. For a moment it struck her that she had never before seen the bare feet of a man, and the absurdity of the thought, coming upon her at such a moment, nearly undid her composure entirely.

She crossed the room and put both hands on his shoulders and pressed him back down into the bed, firmly, so that he sat because his legs elected to, whatever his will had to say on the matter.

“I am perfectly capable of standing on my own two feet,” he said, even as he allowed himself to be guided back against the pillows.

“Do indulge me in this, if you please,” she replied, stepping closer with a resolute look. “I have no wish to argue the point with a man who is presently half delirious.”

“I do not require to be put to bed like a child.”

“Then do not behave like one. It is a simple arrangement.”

There was a small sound from the doorway. Georgiana stood there, one hand on the frame, and on her face was an expression so nearly a smile and so nearly terror that Elizabeth could not have said which was winning.

Dr Baillie left his instructions and his draught and departed. She settled into the day’s new shape.

By midday Elizabeth had learned that her husband was the worst patient in England. He regarded illness as a personal affront.

She brought him the barley water herself, as the physician had directed, and sat with him while he drank it.

“It tastes of nothing,” he said.

“That is considered a virtue in barley water.”

“It is considered a virtue by people who are not obliged to drink it.” He handed back the glass, half finished. “You need not sit there watching me. It is not a spectacle.”

“It is a very instructive spectacle. I am learning a great deal about your character.”

“You have been married to me long enough to have learned all of it.”

“On the contrary. I had no idea you could be peevish. It is quite a new accomplishment, and you support it very creditably for a novice.”

He gave her a look that at any other time would have silenced a room, and which from a horizontal man in a nightshirt silenced nothing at all. “You are enjoying this.”

“Immensely,” Elizabeth said. “You need not be gracious about it.”

In the afternoon she read to him, because he declared the light hurt his eyes, and then objected to being read to, and then, when she closed the book, objected to the silence. She had chosen a volume of Horace from the night table, the marker still at its precise halfway, and she was not two pages in before he interrupted.

“You are stressing the wrong syllable,” he said. “It is a long vowel.”