Page 14 of Yearning

“You did not wish me to know?” said Elizabeth.

“Only because I thought it might be painful for you.”

“No,” said Elizabeth. “No, no. Of course not. No. Absolutely not.” She had protested too much. “I am nothing but happy for you. This is happy news, Jane. This is a bright spot in the darkness. I am ever so pleased.”

And then, as soon as it was possible, she excused herself and went up to her room and threw herself face down on the bed.

She thought she was going to cry, but that didn’t happen. Instead, she squeezed both of her hands into fists and she beat them against the mattress, but otherwise, she made no sound. This went on for a time until she went still.

She had not realized, she supposed, quite how she felt about this.

It was only that it was very real, suddenly, and before it had been sort of an abstraction. Yes, someday, she could have been a mother, but that was someday.

Then, knowing that Jane was going to have a baby, it made it all very real. Elizabeth was forced to take stock in all the things she would not do.

She had not thought she was overly invested in having a child, but she began to think of all of the times that she had longed for one, starting perhaps when she was but thirteen years old, and she was holding one of Mrs. Gardiner’s babes, and the child began to fuss whenever it saw its mother, and Elizabeth had thought, Someday, I shall have my own babe and it will cry for me and then quiet when it is put in my arms.

A girlish sort of thought, really. So, she would not have a babe. And anyway, she was fairly certain babes did not quiet in their mother’s arms, not all the time, anyway, that they cried loudly in everyone’s arms sometimes. It was all ridiculous.

She thought of the time that she and Jane had gone to stay with the nurse in town, because she had need of extra hands, and how there had been ever so many babes—six! The poor nurse—her name was Mrs. Madison—had two at her breasts at all times, and they were seeing to the other four, she and Jane were. She thought of the smell of them, the sweet baby smell, so new. She thought of their skin, how young and translucent and perfect it was. And most of all, their small and tiny little toes and fingers and ears!

She rather loved babes, it turned out. She had not thought she did, but apparently, she did.

The next time she was back in the Darcy town house, and she looked at Colonel Fitzwilliam, she thought about marrying him, and she thought that they could have babes together, but she wondered about that. The colonel was not handsome, not in the way that Mr. Darcy was. This, of course, was not why she would not marry the colonel. She did not care about that sort of thing, and she certainly wasn’t so vain as to think that she must have beautiful children. However, she did wish her children to have every advantage in life, she supposed, and beauty was an advantage and perhaps it wasn’t vanity—

But she would not be having any children at all, so this entire thought process was not necessary.

She spent too much time staring at the colonel, though, thinking about being heavy with his child, wondering if he would look at her the way Mr. Bingley currently looked at Jane, wondering what it would be like between them.

And then she entered the sickroom of her husband-to-be, and he was asleep, as usual, always asleep.

Could she do this?

Was she fooling herself?

CHAPTER SIX

ELIZABETH WENT TO another ball at the behest of both Jane and the colonel. It was a public ball, so it was rather crowded, and there were not a lot of familiar faces, but Elizabeth liked it better that way, perhaps, since many of the familiar faces in her life only looked at her with pity these days.

At first, she had shrugged off their pitying gazes. She was not the one who needed pity, after all, it was Mr. Darcy who had actually been harmed. She was fine, and she was staying strong for him.

But as of late, all she could do was think about having babes.

She tried strenuously to put such thoughts out of her head, but it seemed that the more she attempted to push the thoughts from her mind, the more stubbornly they stayed, the more often they surfaced, as from dark water.

Also, for some reason, children were now seemingly everywhere.

She looked out the window, and there would be someone pushing a pram. She would see children playing together on the street or inside the house—seemingly every servant had a child and their children were playing in out-of-the-way spots inside the Darcy house. She knew that the world had not suddenly exploded into children. She knew they had been there all along and she had simply not noticed them.

She told herself that meant something. Her not noticing them before meant that she had not been that concerned with children before, so her current concern meant less.

Except…

Well, it hurt.

She was grieving, she supposed, grieving the loss of people she had never met and would never meet. She was grieving the loss of her children.

She was also grieving an identity for herself, one she would never have, the identity of being a mother, and she had not realized that she wanted it as much as she did.