Page 5 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)

The first time Elizabeth awoke was from the sharp sting as the surgeon’s knife cut open the vein above her wrist so that he could let her blood.

She blearily looked towards her arm and tried to pull it away.

But the steady and experienced hand of the surgeon held her arm in place, as her blood burbled purply with each pulse into the wavering cup held against her arm.

“Shhhh. Shhhh. You will be all right. You will be well soon.” Darcy’s deep comforting voice sounded from her side.

She was lying on a soft bed. Her throat felt raw with flame. She tried to swallow, but she could not because it hurt so much.

The doctor finished his work and tied a strip of white gauze around her arm tightly. “Rich colored blood. I think the young miss will recover,” he said looking at the cup.

Elizabeth tried to swallow again, but a droplet of saliva caught in her throat and she started desperately coughing. Mr. Darcy and the doctor helped her sit up higher as she coughed, each cough causing a spasm of achy pain to go through her chest. Everything hurt.

“Keep her seated up. I have made the observation that when a patient is made to keep their chest upright when their tonsils are swollen, or they are otherwise ill, it reduces the frequency of pleurisy of the lungs. There is no authority or experiment to support this belief, but I suspect an upright posture permits the patient to cough more productively when oral secretions make inroads into the breathing passageway, instead of down the esophagus. Keep Mrs. Benoit—” Elizabeth blearily blinked at this name.

Everything swam before her eyes, and she could not think clearly, but she was fairly certain her name was not Mrs. Benoit.

“—with her head and chest elevated. Enough cushions so she can comfortably sleep. Sleep will do more for her than my ministrations can. I’ll visit again tomorrow at this time, and bleed her once more depending on the progression of the illness. ”

Darcy stood, and shook the doctor’s extended hand with his fine hand. Darcy had such a fine muscular hand. Elizabeth stared at the hand. The light from the candle was painfully bright in her eyes. Her throat hurt so much.

The servant in the room stuffed cushions behind her on the surgeon’s orders, pillows that cradled her head.

She wasn’t as comfortable this way at first, but when her head lolled to the side backwards, she began to drift off again, though the afterimage of the candle burned into her sleep, and ate into her delirious dreams.

Elizabeth did not remember later any moments of distinct consciousness for the next three days.

What she did remember, always, till the day she died, was the sense of Darcy’s presence next to her, warm, comforting and helping her to sleep and know all would be good.

Her hand would search out his, and he would let her hold his.

Quite improper, but she was happy for this.

Each evening the doctor would come, frown and tap his nose, take Elizabeth’s pulse and temperature, and leave with a cup of her blood to drink.

For she presumed, in this strange state of mind that her fever had given her, that that must be what doctors did with the blood, and that perhaps the bleeding did nothing beneficial — it had certainly done little to help Papa after his stroke — but the doctors had perpetrated bleeding as a scam upon all of society so that they could satisfy their endless desire to drink blood.

Elizabeth also had memories — she was not quite sure if they were memories or fragments of a dream — of vomiting, throwing up over Darcy’s fine wool clothes. Of throwing the covers to the side feverishly because she was too hot. And other memories that she was sure were dreams.

Jane and her sneaking into the same bed, whispering as little girls.

A seven-headed hydra, each head that of Lord Lachglass, that though she smashed with her skull every head, there was always another sneering head, leering forward to bite her.

A swinging gibbet, they led her up to be hung, but when the lever was pulled, instead of her hanging, she saw in impossibly vivid color Mr. Blight, his tongue sticking out and his face blue and black.

And then she was back in the bed.

Dark. No candle burning, but a dim red glow from the fireplace.

Elizabeth felt sick with shuddering aches, and she suspected she yet burned with a little fever, but she knew she was healthier than she had been for the past days, however many they had been.

And at last she could appreciate that she was lying in the softest, comfiest bed she had ever slept in, including the one she’d possessed when she was one of the more blessed Miss Bennets of Longbourn.

She looked to her side. Darcy sat up in the winged armchair, lightly snoring.

Elizabeth felt a powerful wave of affection for him that went up and down her achy limbs and filled her soul. Her true hero, Fitzwilliam Darcy.

She looked at him, her eyes still bleary from illness and fatigue. His features and clothes were barely visible in the dim firelight. But she felt a deep thankfulness to him.

After so many years, when he had every right to despise her, he immediately, and without question, gave her sanctuary, paid for her care, and then sat by her bed to keep her company as she was sick.

He must love you still.

The thought came to Elizabeth, and while a female modesty suggested such thoughts should always be discouraged, rationality interposed between modesty and her mind: A man did not sit by the bedside of a woman in such a way unless he cared very deeply for her.

Elizabeth was glad of it. She did not yet know what to make of her sentiments towards Darcy, and her life was so strange. That she had murdered her employer the earl should make it impossible for her to ever marry anyone, let alone Mr. Darcy.

They could never marry.

The impossibility did not change anything. She was happy, deeply and desperately happy to believe he still loved her.

There was breathing on the other side, and Elizabeth rolled her head over to look.

There was a woman wearing the clothes that marked her as a fine lady’s maid.

No doubt Darcy had always kept one of his servants present in the room with them when he was in her room to maintain a frail semblance of propriety.

Elizabeth grinned.

The woman stirred and stood. She placed her hand on Elizabeth’s forehead.

“Water,” Elizabeth whispered hoarsely. But though her throat was dry and rough, it did not feel painful and inflamed the way she remembered from the past days.

The woman smiled at her and poured water from a pitcher by the bedside into her cup, very quietly. Elizabeth took the cup in her shaking hands, but needed the maid’s aid to hold it steady so that she could drink slowly.

Elizabeth then closed her eyes.

She felt quite terrible still. Much worse than she could ever remember feeling. Achy and weak. But she also felt surprisingly clean. “How long?” Elizabeth whispered without opening her eyes again.

“Three days, ma’am, since the evening you came to us.” The maid spoke very quietly, clearly hoping like Elizabeth to not wake Mr. Darcy from his snores. “Do you feel better?”

“Horrendous. Like I’d been tied to the ground with stakes and left to bake for a long summer day.” Elizabeth opened her eyes and looked at the maid, whose profile was barely visible in the light. “But I no longer have any delirium that I can detect in my mind.”

“I am very glad. The physician said the critical point would be yesterday. There was a fear you would die once or twice, Mrs. Benoit.”

Elizabeth quirked a smile. She whispered, “So that is my name now?”

“I had a suspicion it may not be your true name. The maid who let you into the house swore until Mrs. North properly talked to her that you had introduced yourself as a Miss Bennet,” the maid replied with a quirk of her lips that made Elizabeth suspect she had a fine sense of humor.

“But it seems a simple mistake to make as the two sound similar. And as you and the master are old friends, he would certainly know about your marriage.”

“Oh yes… my marriage. Poor Mr. Benoit, he never cut a memorable figure.”

The maid snorted with humor.

At the sound Mr. Darcy started and woke up. His eyes gleamed at her in the dim reddish glow. “Elizabeth, I mean Miss Bennet. I mean Mrs. Benoit.” Darcy looked at the servant.

“ Mrs. Benoit ,” the maid replied with a smile in her voice, “says she is much improved.”

Elizabeth smiled at Darcy, though her lips felt cracked and painful. “I think the fever is gone.”

He quickly touched her forehead and then pulled back. “I worried.”

She smiled at him. “I know. You have saved my life.”

“Nothing, nothing.”

Elizabeth’s eyes were starting to blink closed. “I am yet very sleepy,” she yawned. “And rather sick. But I am not likely to die in the night. Mr. Darcy, you should go to your own bed and sleep properly.”

He did not move. Elizabeth opened her eyes again and saw a mulish look on his face. She smiled sleepily at him. “I am sure that…” Elizabeth glanced to the other side of the bed, “What is your name?”

“Becky, ma’am.”

“I am certain Becky can ensure I do not die in the night and am provided water and the like. You must sleep properly, though. I’ll be easier if I know you are caring for yourself now that I am well.

” Elizabeth felt her aches returning, and she then closed her eyes, waiting with her ears to see if Darcy would leave the room.

But she fell back to sleep before she could decide if he’d left.

*****

When Elizabeth woke again, light seeped around the edges of her curtains, and the fire still burned. She looked around and the same maid from the last night was still sitting in the chair, but Mr. Darcy was gone.

There was the repeated soft clicking of needles together as the maid worked on a matter of knitting, which she put down when Elizabeth stirred. “Awake again, Mrs. Benoit?”