Page 43 of The Marriage Articles

“Mother,” he said.

Elizabeth stilled. His eyes were shut. Against the pillow his head moved in a small restless motion, and his brow drew together as though the word had cost him something.

“Mother,” he said again, then a string of words she could not catch, low and urgent, a sentence with all its shape and none of its sense. She leaned closer. “The water,” he said, or something like it. A voice younger than any she had heard from him came again, quite clear. “Stay.”

“I am here,” she said, though he could not hear her, or could not know her if he did.

The murmuring went on. Some of it was lists, she thought, or accounts. Some of it was names. Once he said “Georgiana” with such careful patience that she understood he was apologizing for something.

She smoothed his hair back from his forehead. The damp at his temples caught the candlelight. She had not expected to sit with him like this, in the dark, holding his hand while he called for a mother long dead. The cloth went back across his forehead, and she watched his face ease a fraction, the lines of his brow softening when the coolness reached him.

She hesitated, wondering if he could hear her at all through the fever, or if any words of comfort would only sound like pity he would despise upon waking. So she held his hand for a long moment, watching the shadows flicker on the wall, before she spoke softly into the quiet room. “Well,” she murmured to no one awake, “you have chosen a strange hour to become intelligible, sir.”

At some point the candle gave out. She meant to ring for another and did not. The dark was easier, and his breathing had evened a little. The chair was uncomfortable in a way she believed would keep her awake. She was wrong about the chair. She slept.

She woke because his hand had found hers. For a moment she did not know where she was, only that something warm held her fingers and that she did not want it to stop. The room was dark still. He was asleep, properly asleep now. His breathing easier. She did not pull away. It would have woken him. She went back to sleep.

The night wore on. Once she woke to find him restless again, muttering something about the stables at Pemberley. She rose and wrung the cloth fresh from the basin and laid it across his forehead until he grew quiet.

When she woke again it was morning, and her back was aching. Pale light stood at the edges of the curtains. His hand tightened around hers, and that was what had woken her, she understood, not the light at all.

He was looking at her.

Clear-eyed. That was her first thought, before relief, before anything else. The fever’s glassy distance was gone. His eyes were his own, grey and awake, fixed on her face. The cloth lay on the sheets where it had fallen in the night. She put her palm to his forehead. Cool, or near enough, damp and ordinary. Relief came up through her so fast that she had to look away from him and study the basin until she could trust her face.

“You are awake,” she said.

“So it would appear.” His voice came out hoarse, scraped down to the grain. “How long have you been sitting there?”

“Since last night.”

“You should not have.” He said it quietly. It was not a reprimand. He was still holding her hand. He looked at her, and the silence lengthened past every point at which one of them should properly have ended it. Neither of them did.

“I would like to call you Elizabeth, if you will let me,” he said.

“I should like that.”

“Elizabeth.”

“Fitzwilliam.”

He smiled.

She sat back, feeling the sudden weight of the past two months of marriage dissolve into the quiet dark. It seemed a strange thing that ceremony and habit had kept them at a distance through weeks of shared rooms and public life, only for a midnight fever to break the barrier and strip away the remaining formality between them.

“You look tired,” he said.

Elizabeth laughed, short and surprised. “You have a singular gift, sir... Fitzwilliam. In all your years, has no one told you that a woman prefers to be called beautiful rather than told she looks barely tolerable?”

He winced. “I had hoped fever might purchase me some mercy on that subject.”

“None whatsoever.”

“You are beautiful, Elizabeth.”

Her pulse quickened. She took his hand in both of hers and held it firmly and simply looked at him. The silence stretched between them and was not uncomfortable.

“I have been dreaming of Pemberley,” he said. His voice was still hoarse. He did not let go of her hand. “I should like to show it to you.” His thumb pressed once against her knuckles. “We need not wait for summer. As soon as I am on my feet we might go.”