Page 53 of The Winter of Our Discontent (Pride and Prejudice Variations #1)

FITZWILLIAM DARCY

She had missed me when I went to collect Georgiana!

She did not lower her guard sufficiently to say so, but of all her many willing attendants, only I could sit with her while she wrestled with her uneven temper, and only to me did she own how petulant she felt to be trapped in a bed at the mercy of her multitude of sympathetic visitors.

When I came in her room, her attendants politely excused themselves, and for this modicum of respect to my rank, I offered her what she craved—time in which she did not have to pretend to feel happier than she was.

Perhaps, too, she was conscious of how much more I knew than anyone, aside from Wilson, just how close she had been to giving up the will to live.

I had been through those dark nights with her, and I had not abandoned her.

It was still too soon for her to acknowledge she trusted me as much as she did, and she seemed to test me regularly for my constancy.

If some business detained me of a morning, she asked after me, and in this way, I knew my constant presence, which she should have resented for its gross impertinence, was not a nuisance.

In fact, as the days continued to pass, my wife and I were increasingly inseparable.

I wondered how we became so attached without the hundreds of difficult conversations I would have thought were required to heal the wounds of all our past dealings.

She had been through a harrowing illness, and anticipating her recovery, I steeled myself for the hard blow that must surely come when she was stronger and her acute powers of reasoning returned in full force.

When would she begin to express her rightful resentment as to how unfairly I had treated her?

She should have refused to see me, treated me with cold disdain, and asked me to spend the Season in London so she could recuperate in peace.

Instead, when she was ready to be carried downstairs, only I would do.

Georgiana’s offers to drive her around the park in the phaeton were politely refused, but I was given this privilege whenever the weather permitted.

No one could put a shawl around my wife without the offending object being pushed off five minutes later, yet that evening, when I wrapped her up, she dozed against my shoulder while my sister played Scarlatti.

Everyone around us seemed to examine us in frowning amazement.

But Elizabeth and I sat closer together and pretended we did not notice they were scrutinising our attachment and scratching their heads.

“Are you strong enough to sit with me in the library tomorrow afternoon?” I murmured.

“You will have to collect me, I am afraid. Will I ever be strong enough to walk again, do you think?”

“Not if you demand to be carried everywhere.”

She sniffed. “Then, no. I cannot meet you in the library. ”

“You have been bedbound for nearly a month, silly. Yardley says he despaired of you twice over twice. Of course you will walk again, and when you do, we will go and disturb the pheasants.”

Her deep chuckle warmed me to my soul.

This was how we would heal , I reflected.

Our shared hurts—no, her hurts, for I had no right to claim ill-usage—would come out and be carefully dusted off, and we would put ourselves aright with something we had in common.

We were, neither of us, as comfortable with sentimentality as we were with light irony, and we amused one another a great deal by making light of life’s multiple absurdities.

Though our words were not overtly affectionate and at times not even directed at one another, our eyes met with such melting softness when we spoke, our feelings were becoming unmistakable.

I looked at my sister, who was playing Bach so masterfully, and then at Jane Bennet, who was almost impossibly beautiful, and then at Mrs Annesley, who seemed far away as she bent over her embroidery.

This was the moment, strange though it was, I realised I had fallen head over ears in love with Elizabeth Bennet—with my wife. She needed me, and I found that I was utterly at her disposal.

Crops be damned, new steward be damned, venereal complaints, diversified interests, Irish travellers—they could all hang! I was finally useful.