But he also liked, and this he did not quite know what to do with, that it was nothis. This was sort of strange, he thought, and he did not tell her. He thought she might find it odd—he found it odd. But partly, perhaps, it confirmed that she was desirable, did it not, if another man had wanted her enough to breed her? That was foolish, he supposed, but it was perhaps simply a compliment to his own taste, and that was why he liked it.
He had to admit other aspects of it, though, theyalsowent straight to the root of him. Thinking of Wickham having her first and his taking her from Wickham—even though Wickham had never really had her—that was gratifying. Whatever the strange power struggle of it was, something ancient, something like stags tangling their antlers over a woman, it stirred him.
He had won her. She was his now. And he’d won the babe too, and now her little swollen belly was part of the prize of her, and it made him wretchedly and embarrassingly hard for her.
There was another element to it, one right at the bottom, one he would never admit aloud to her, or even really to himself, perhaps, but…
Here it was:
He had so much on his shoulders, so much that was expected of him, and she… she had always been this thing he could nothave because she was not proper, not the right sort of woman, and he had wanted her anyway, and now, she was just, well, that babe in her, that other man’s babe, it made herentirelythe wrong sort of woman.
There was something transgressive in that, something pleasant, something undeniably arousing.
So, he didn’t know. Perhaps it was all shameful, but perhaps this sort of behavior, it was tied so tightly with shame and the release of shame and the safety one could find with someone, a person who accepted the other person’s shameful desires, that it could never truly be avoided.
He sometimes wished he was the sort of man who did not think these things through at all but simply accepted them. For all of the conclusions to his internal queries seemed to be things he could not rightly ever share aloud with another soul.
He was a man of propriety, he supposed. He’d always wanted her because she allowed himnotto be a man of propriety in certain ways.
But the reasons he desired her and the reasons he was steadfastly devoted to her were not the same. Arousal only lit the match, the flame had to burn from the fuel of love and mutual respect, and he thought they had that in spades, more than many other couples did. If the path to it had to be wrought in vaguely shameful things he was embarrassed to think of, well, it had all been worth it.
He was the happiest of men.
They married in the depths of December, a week before Christmas, and when he brought her home, it was not to the dower house, but to her own bedchamber in Pemberley. By this time, everyone in the household had grown used to her, and if they had anything to say against her, they knew better than to do it where he could hear them, for he had made his positions on such things clear.
But it helped that Elizabeth was so entirely lovable, he thought. One could not but see her and wish to be near her, wish to hear her laugh and make her smile. There was no enmity between her and the servants, or if there was, they were hiding it. Either way, he was satisfied.
Elizabeth had written to tell her family of the marriage, and the responses that came back were stilted and formal in such a way that led them both to believe that Caroline Bingley had been doing her worst.
He knew she was hurt by it.
Sometimes, he had dreams. He dreamed that he rode all the way south and stalked Caroline like she was some kind of prey, like he was hunting her, and he shot her, and she lay there, bleeding out, looking at the sky—
He would wake up sweaty, out of breath, out of sorts.
It did not help, of course, that Mr. Wickham was not dead. He’d had a fever, and the fever seemed to have killed off whatever infection there was in his wound, and now he was making progress, up and about, apparently.
Darcy had seen him twice, and both times, Wickham had been stuttering and frightened, white-faced, saying only a litany of apologies, saying that he would never have touched Elizabeth if he had known she was connected to him, all manner of apologies.
Darcy thought the apologies were cheap. But he warned Wickham more than once that if he ever heard a whisper of his having harmed another woman in that way, that he would end him without another thought, and Wickham nodded and swore and begged and…
It still seemed wrong to him, that Wickham was alive, that Caroline was off poisoning everyone against their small and sweet babe.
Elizabeth’s belly grew, and the world grew colder, and time passed.
He found her larger belly even more enticing than when she had been barely increasing, but she was uncomfortable much of the time, begging him not to crowd her in bed, and so he would bring her pillows, as many pillows as she needed, create little nests of pillows for her in the bed and he would come in sometimes and simply watch her sleep.
He would feel such an intensity of his love for her, then, something that had seemed to have grown out of whatever desire he’d had for her, but was not that anymore. He admired her. He worshiped her. He lived to please her. He felt it sometimes, overwhelming and nearly frightening except for its sweetness, its perfection. It made him feel too warm. It made his mouth dry. It made him want to weep.
He spent much of the rest of his time trying to make things up to Georgiana, but this was not entirely easy, considering they had no notion how badly the Darcy name had been tarnished. If he was being whispered about all the time, the man who had married a woman not good enough for him, a woman carrying some other man’s child, well, this might not bode well for Georgiana’s own prospects. If she wished to marry and move on and find a good life for herself, she might find that difficult.
So, he was often trying to appease her, do things that she might like, allow her to choose the dinner menus, allow her to decide if they wished to go walking or to stay in, buy her ribbons and fripperies, send off for the sheet music of anything she wished to learn to play, bring home stacks of novels from the bookshop for her to look over.
Georgiana told him that she had forgiven him, that he did not have to continue in this fashion, but he ignored her and continued anyway.
And then it was late February, and Elizabeth’s labors started and continued for two entire days and nights. At one point, he was allowed into the room to speak to her, but as it continued on, he was kept out, and he paced and drank and worried, asking everyone he could stop if they did not think this was far too long, if something might have gone wrong, and everyone telling him that first babes often took their time and that he must not worry over it.
And at the end of the two days, when they put the tiny baby girl in his arms, he had to admit he felt a twinge of relief at that and he hated himself for it, for it would not matter, and he would break the entail, and he did not care about it, and this was his child, shewas.
