Page 28 of Yearning

She was horrified. How could he feel close to her when she had never felt further away?

It was a cruel trick to play upon them both.

She resolved to become more in tune with him.

She resolved never to think about Mr. Darcy when she was trying to find pleasure ever again.

MR. DARCY HAD come to see Elizabeth, and he knew it was wrong of him.

At first, after Elizabeth had walked out of his sick room, never to return, he had been awash in a kind of nearly religious sensation of purpose. Having sent her off, having made the sacrifice, having denied himself and his own desires for her own happiness, he felt clean in a bright and practically holy way.

He was off the rest of the laudanum in a week, and he barely had any trouble with leaving it behind.

He devoted himself fully to recovering, to doing the gentle sorts of exercises that were necessary to strengthen his muscles to do even the most easy of tasks. He had not been sitting up for nearly six months at that point, for instance. He had to slowly regain strength in his abdominal muscles.

But at that point, there were all manner of small objectives to achieve. He must sit up for half an hour, then for an hour. He must have his wheeled chair made. He must sit in it, and then learn to move himself in and out of it—not an easy feat with only one arm, but he set himself to the task, and he achieved it. He could steer himself about after a fashion as well, though the chair was large and unwieldy.

The man who had made it had made chairs of this nature mostly for older people, and it was slightly based on the very large Bath Chair that people used to go to the baths at, well, Bath. But that chair was nearly a carriage, quite large, and it was no good for the indoors.

His chair was essentially just a wicker chair with wheels attached.

He thought there could be improvements to the design, but he had yet to tackle that. He thought that the man who had built it might find the challenge somewhat stimulating, especially if Darcy would compensate him well for his trouble, which Darcy would certainly do.

At any rate, the chair notwithstanding, there was little else to achieve these days.

And once he was to the point where the world was bearable, where he could get himself here and there and he could use a chamberpot more or less on his own, he felt sort of empty.

All of that bright and nearly religious power of it fell away.

He started thinking about her too often.

When he finally asked Richard about her, Richard was kind enough not to crow over how he had told Darcy so, that Darcy would regret it, and Darcy… well, he did not know if he regretted it.

What he wanted, chiefly, was to know whether it had been worth it.

Was she happy? Was she living a good life? Was she better off?

For whatever reason, no matter what anyone said to him in answer to these questions, he did not believe them. He felt as if others were either trying to convince him that she was his lost love, and that she would always pine over him or something, but they were saying that because they thought that—deep down—this was what he wanted to hear.

He would explain that he wanted to hear that she was happy, and then people would report she was happy, but he didn’t trust that either.

He suspected people were simply telling him whatever they thought he wanted to hear, not the truth.

So, then, he decided he needed to see her himself.

This proved to be quite the undertaking. He was still in London. He had not attempted to travel anywhere else, because the nature of his daily existence made travel difficult. Packing up the chair was a nightmare. It did not fit in a carriage, and he had to have one modified, taking out one of the seats entirely so that it could be stored there. And his needs were such that he could not only employ one valet, nor could his valet really be properly termed a valet, considering the man did much more for Darcy than simply dress him. Darcy required all manner of assistance, not always, but often enough that someone needed to be there. Getting in and out of the chair was not always possible on his own, there were doorways that could not be easily navigated sometimes and his valets (their names were John Garth and Percival Mabens) would carry him through doors and seat him places, that sort of thing. He could sometimes balance on his one leg enough to be helpful, but he wasn’t mobile.

Anyway, heretofore, no one had even mentioned the idea of Mr. Darcy ever going anywhere besides London, though he did dearly miss Pemberley and the country. But if he were going to see Elizabeth for himself, he was going to have to leave London, for she did not reside there anymore. She and her baron husband almost never came to town, and he flattered himself to think this was because she could not bear the possibility of coming into contact with him.

But that also made his stomach sink.

The woman might hate him.

She might be right to hate him, really. He had hurt her for her own good, with the best of intentions, but she would not appreciate that.

He quickly decided that it would be best if he simply happened to turn up in the same place where Elizabeth was. He was not going to get himself invited to her house, he did not think. So, to that end, he set about gathering information about where she might be, and finally he hit upon this gathering in Berkshire.

He got himself invited by writing to Baron Givons and hinting broadly around it, and a letter came back at once saying that he must come, that they would be delighted to host him, and could he climb stairs?