There was a clash of piano keys, and carrying Emily, Georgiana came close to them again. “Do you really mean that? Richard, do you really think that he will not die?”
The military officer waved his hand dismissively. “Until the wound has been closed and healed for a three month there is always a chance of a bad outcome.”
“Oh.” Georgiana gave Emily to Elizabeth and embraced her cousin. “Oh! I thought Mrs. Wickham and the doctor merely meant to deceive me. But he has a fever.”
“Every wound of this sort leads to a fever. But some infections are healing—my regimental surgeon believes that the white pus crowds out the ability for gangrene or St. Martin’s fire to set in. Nineteen times out of twenty, when a wound looks like Darcy’s at this stage, it heals without much difficulty.”
“The ribs were also broken around the sternum by the shot,” Elizabeth said, perceiving from Georgiana’s manner that she would be comforted more by a suggestion of all the horrible things that might happen than by an insistence which pretended that they could not. “An inflammation might settle in the breaks.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam looked at her. She thought there was approval in his expression. “Yes, that could happen. Not often, though.”
“Oh, but I had been so sure!” Georgiana exclaimed. “I cannot help but feel relieved, even if there is still great danger.”
Emily pointed at Elizabeth’s breasts. With a smile Elizabeth stood from her chair and bounced her a little. “I must retreat for a little privacy with the little one.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam nodded, but Georgiana said, “Why? You do this frequently with her when she is upset.”
That made Elizabeth look at the young woman with a little surprise. She would have assumed thatanyoneof Georgiana’s age would guess at the purpose. Elizabeth blushed and muttered, “To calm the baby.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam stared at his cousin. “She’s too innocent. I have seen things in Spain. And now I see the way we treat gentlewomen. No wonder you were such an easy mark for that damned—I apologize, that deserving of hell torments—Mr. Wickham. Mrs. Wickham, I apologize if this embarrasses you horribly, but in the absence of a mother or any trusted female companion to teach her, I must say something to my cousin—she is my charge, though both Darcy and I have failed her. May I assume, Mrs. Wickham, that you still feed the girl from the breast, even though she is a large bouncing creature?”
“On occasion,” Elizabeth replied smiling. “And I shall bear up under the awkwardness of the conversation for the sake of the edification of the young. I have been in no hurry to wean her. It might be of value to explainwhy—assuming,youcan guess.”
“What?” Georgiana looked down at her own chest. “Whatever does that mean? You hold the food up to your bosom?”
Colonel Fitzwilliam stared at the girl with a sort of horror. “Are you, in actual, honest fact ignorant upon this point, or do you mean to convince me that you are so profoundly ignorant, so that I shall think kindly of your mistakes? In either case I must blame myself and your brother in the matter of your education.”
Georgiana flushed. “I really do not know what you mean.”
“Like a cow. Youhaveseen a female cow produce milk? Mothers do that when they have children.”
“Like a cow!—ohis that what Lady Macbeth meant when she said, ‘I have given suck?’ Mrs. Younge refused to explain.”
“But she let you read a play about a woman murdering her king?” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied with exasperation.
“It was Macbeth who killed the king, not his wife,” Georgiana replied.
Colonel Fitzwilliam steadily stared at his cousin.
Georgiana looked down. Then she exclaimed. “Oh, you do that every time you go out with Emily?”
“Usually,” Elizabeth replied.
“Is it painful?”
“Not when everything goes well, though on occasions there are problems, such as when the teeth first come in, and they have not yet learned to not bite.”
Georgiana shuddered atthatpiece of information.
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed, while Mr. Darcy continued to snore.
Emily started crying again and pulling at Elizabeth. With the quarter curtsey that she could manage comfortably while holding a child that weighed the better part of two stone, she retreated to the hallway.
Emily eagerly drank from the breast, and Elizabeth had opportunity for contemplation and thought.
She was too desperate and anxious at present. She needed a scheme and a plan for where to go when she in fact had to leave this house.
But not that life she had led in London again.
