Elizabeth looked between the two sisters, wiping at her tears. “Pray excuse me,” she said fiercely, and then she gathered up her skirts and left them both behind.
Safe in her room, she let herself cry into her pillow for a very long time.
When she was finished, she looked in the mirror to see her face was red and puffy and that she had a little purple bruise on her jaw from where Caroline had hit her.
It took days to fade.
THE OTHER TIMEshe saw Mr. Darcy was the time he saw her.
That was weeks later, a month later.
Things in the dower house had not improved. Elizabeth was no longer welcome in the sitting room in the afternoons, not that she had ever spent much time there, anyway. However, now she was expressly forbidden to go down.
This had come about in a bit of a confrontation between all three of the women, wherein Louisa had come to ask Elizabethwhy she would shove her sister in such a manner and Elizabeth had retorted, rather like a schoolgirl, that Caroline had hit her first, twice. She had shown Louisa the bruise.
But Caroline had said that Elizabeth had done that to herself, that she had witnessed her hitting herself right in front of her, twisting the entire situation and making it impossible for Elizabeth to say that Caroline had actually been the one hitting herself.
“You must not do damage to yourself,” Louisa had said to Elizabeth. “You are carrying a child, after all, and I am to raise it as my own.”
So, Elizabeth was entirely alone much of the time now, and the food she was getting seemed to be of less and less amounts, though she could not be sure if she weren’t simply getting hungrier and hungrier as she grew heavier with the child.
It was November. She was entering her fifth month and her belly was just starting to protrude. She could hide it with voluminous skirts if she wished, but she was getting to the point where she would not be allowed to be seen in public.
She spent most of her time reading. She would rather read than anything. She despised her various chores—building the fire, emptying the chamberpots, fetching her own food and water—but not really because she despised the work, more because she despised having the time to allow her mind to wander.
When she did, like as not, she felt sorry for herself.
Several times, she had thought of writing to Jane.
Of course, Jane had not written to her, it was true. And she could not write anything that was really truthful of what was happening, because she could not trust the secret of her being with child to the post. It might be discovered. So, any letter she sent would have to be full of half-truths.
She wished to pour out her troubles to someone, however, to tell someone how it was that she was treated here, and to have someone, anyone, agree that it was horrible. But she thought of telling Jane and of Jane sniffing and saying that perhaps it was all that Elizabeth deserved, and Elizabeth did not know what to do with all of that.
She knew it was wretched to feel sorry for oneself in this manner, and that she used to bear things up well. She dearly loved to laugh. She could not remember the last time she had laughed.
That night, it was late in the evening, far past dinner time. Everyone was back in the house, retired to their rooms but not yet abed. At any rate, Elizabeth had little trouble sneaking out of the dower house.
She did it because she was hungry. She was famished. She had eaten every crumb in the dower house, and she could not bear the idea of going to bed and curling around her swelling belly and being ever so hungry yet again. It was wrong, she thought, wrong to deny food to a woman who was growing a child.
Maybe that meant she was feeling too sorry for herself, but it seemed to her that absolutely no one was feeling sorry for her in this situation, and that it fell to her to look out for herself.
She had a vague idea of where the kitchens were at Pemberley. She knew that they would be near where the servants entrance was, which was usually in the back. She knew that they would be in the basement, so there would be some way down, either steps or a ramp or something of that nature. She thought the door might be locked, but she also thought perhaps it might not be, for the servants must come and go, must they not?
Of course, she hoped not to run into any servants. How would she explain her presence if she did?
She had no plan for that eventuality, resolving simply to hide herself if there were servants about.
And it all went well.
She got into the kitchens, and she found food from the dinner that night, all of it simply covered in cloths and left in the serving dishes, as if it would be seen to later, and perhaps it would be, Elizabeth did not know. She found herself a plate and dipped herself a bit of everything. She resolved that she would fill another plate of this up and take it back to her room for later. She resolved she would eat so much that she would feel full to bursting, that she would feast, for she had no notion when she might be able to eat like this again.
She was so involved in doing this that she did not hear him when he came into the kitchen.
So, what she heard was, “Itisyou.”
She turned, and there was Mr. Darcy.
CHAPTER NINE
