Elizabeth had always rather wondered if that was the best design for an uniform, as it looked like an excellent target for the enemy to fire upon.However when she mentioned this while in Calais, General Fitzwilliam’s brother Fitz William laughed and said that musketry was so inaccurate in the general, that a man would besaferif aimed directly at.
Colonel Pike shook hands firmly with Darcy.“My old friend Fitzwilliam’s cousin, eh?A fine man.Fine man.His regiment was in the square in front of ours at Waterloo.They took the beating of Marshal Ney’s horsed horde far worse than we did, and they stood firm and would not break.It was inspiring to watch, in betwixt that cannon fire that sought to blow our heads off.”
“Did you gain your wound at Waterloo?”Elizabeth asked after she had been introduced to him.
Colonel Pike blinked at her twice, and then laughed.“My leg?No, not at all — not even a battle wound.Fell off a horse wrong, some ten years ago, and the leg never healed right.Doesn’t bother me much, except when the weather is bad — come, come — too nice a day to sit inside.Sit down here, Mrs.Darcy, Mr.Darcy, Mrs.Dilman, sit down.”
All of Elizabeth’s anxiety suddenly returned.What would happen tomorrow?
They sent a messenger to ride to Lord Lachglass’s estate, some fifteen miles to the northeast, to tell that miserable excuse for a peer of the realm that Elizabeth would meet him tomorrow to talk about the return of her mother and sister, but not in his own house.
The conversation between Mr.Darcy and Colonel Pike ran round and round, and Elizabeth could focus on none of it.Her stomach ached and twisted.Tomorrow it would all be decided.
Darcy took her hand and squeezed it, and Lydia took her other hand.
Elizabeth could see from a tightness in Lydia’s eyes that she worried too.
After fifteen minutes, Lydia stood up and pulled Elizabeth to her feet.“No sense waiting here, you must meet your niece!Come on, Lizzy, come on.”
So they went over to a collection of houses where the married officers of the regiment had taken their rooms, and Lydia called out to a woman who watched her daughter, Lydia’s and several other children toddle around the fields.They came over, with the woman holding the young girl, who looked to be two or three, in her arms.
She handed the darling little girl to Lydia, and the toddler babbled happily to her mother in that incomprehensible speech of very young children.Lydia smiled, laughed and listened.She knelt and put her child on the ground, holding her by the hands so she could stay upright.“Fanny, say hello to your Auntie Lizzie.”
Lydia waved the girl’s hand for her.
Elizabeth’s face softened as she introduced herself.“Hello, how do you do?”
Little Miss Dilman hid her face in the skirts of her mother.
Elizabeth laughed.“What a sweet girl, is she shy?”
“Nothing like me.”Lydia insisted, “I’d introduce myself to any stranger, no matter how frightening they look — I’d introduce myself to you, Mr.Darcy, just for a lark, if I was challenged to.”
“I believe you,” Darcy smiled down at the girl who was now also his niece.“Such a pretty looking girl.”
Fanny toddled towards Darcy at this, apparently less frightened of him, for some reason, than of Elizabeth.So Darcy picked the little girl into his arms, holding her far more lightly and easily, and he poked her nose and cheeks and made faces at her until she smiled and laughed.
It filled Elizabeth with something tender in her heart.
She desperately hoped she would, and soon, be able to present Mr.Darcy with his own child, with their child.
They walked back, with Darcy still carrying Lydia’s child, to the house of Colonel Pike.Lydia explained that her and Captain Dilman lived quite modestly — they only had one room, in a house they shared with several other officers.The couple was putting aside the money so that once he had been in grade long enough, Captain Dilman would be able, with borrowing from some friends also, to purchase a major’s commission.
Elizabeth felt odd to hear this, now that she was rich once more, and now very rich, instead of merely rich.
Elizabeth had wondered often after Papa died, and they had become poor, just how they had managed to happily spend somuchwhile he lived.But now that she was rich once more, the past months in Paris had given her a sense of how that could happen.
It was easy to stop caring about the prices of matters, and so long as Mr.Darcy assured her that they were setting aside ample money for the dowries of any daughters she might have, and to purchase the commissions, law partnerships or livings of any sons after the first she might have, she could without any anxiety or second thought simply buy any book, or hat, or painting that caught her eye while making her morning visit to the Palais Royal to look at the crowd and take coffee.
When they returned to the colonel’s house, Elizabeth noted how the stooped beggar with huge nose and scar across his neck sat in one of the alleyways between barracks buildings, extending his hand out desultorily, as if bored now by the action, any time one of the soldiers passed him by.
While they waited Elizabeth played with little Fanny, who eventually overcame her shyness of Auntie Lizzy.Darcy played with her too, and Elizabeth’s heart swelled every time he made the child smile.
He would be such a good father.
“So what do you think of my husband?”Lydia said after they had been waiting nearly two hours for a return of the message sent to Lord Lachglass.Her voice was slightly angry.“A fine man is he not?”
“He seems so to me,” Darcy said.
