Page 5 of Yearning

“Oh, that,” she said, shrugging. “He has asked me to smother him with a pillow five or six times now.” She was bland about this. She had not really discussed it with anyone. He always did it when she was alone with him, and he often referenced the fact that he loved her and she loved him, and she craved hearing that from him, so perhaps she did not wish it to stop. Otherwise, he said nothing to anyone, simply slept and screamed and begged for laudanum, saying odd things sometimes.

There are insects inside the back of my eyelids, crawling. You must give me more laudanum or they will eat my brain.

Odd things like that.

The colonel bowed his head. “I see. But you come back anyway.”

She looked away. “I know that when you and I knew each other, I did not seem to have a good opinion of him. But then, you were not instrumental in changing my mind in that way, either.”

“Was I not?”

“‘He likes to have his own way very well,’” she said quietly. “‘He arranges the business as he pleases.’”

The colonel’s smile was insubstantial. “I did not mean—”

“I know that,” she said. “I had an impression of him. It was wrong. Now that I know him, now that I truly know him, how could I ever be without him? How could I leave his side? How could I—”

“Miss Bennet, you’re aware of the extent of his injuries.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“You know he…” The colonel looked away, and he never finished the sentence.

“Yes,” she said.

“No children,” the colonel finally said.

“It is a blow, but if I had already married him, I would have vowed in sickness and in health, that I would cleave to him. I grieve the idea of children, but I am primarily happy that he is alive. Everyone says this bit about children, but children are not the most important thing in the world to me. He is.”

The colonel met her gaze. “Perhaps you should stay when they put a clean clout on him, madam.”

Her eyes widened. “Well, that would hardly be proper.” And all the strength had gone out of her voice.

“I think,” said the colonel, “were it me, I would ask someone to kill me as well.” He was white-lipped again.

So, she actually tried the next time. She was curious in some sort of morbid way, she supposed, some awful way, the way that causes people to crowd close at a hanging or to tilt their head this way and that at dead animals on the road. It was an awful feeling that rose in her, but she did actually wish to know.

They would not let her stay, however, saying that it was not for a young woman’s eyes.

Days later, the colonel happened to be there, and he said, “She is to marry him, and I think she should see.”

The servants listened to the colonel, obviously.

Elizabeth had never seen a man there, but she had seen her share of statues and she had seen baby boys getting changed—she had changed her little cousin herself on occasion if a nanny was too busy—and she knew what should be there.

And she saw what wasn’t there.

There was a sort of… truncated bit of something, that was all. It was like the stump of his arm, and the stump of his leg. It was sort of folded over and smoothed and… There was a hole for him to urinate out of, but it was… He had no bollocks at all. Those were just gone, and there was a lot of scar tissue, there and all up and down his thigh, all of it red and angry and mottled.

She looked and she looked and she made no noise at all, and the colonel put a hand on her shoulder, and she was glad that Mr. Darcy was not awake, because if he had seen her reaction to it all… well, she fought not to react, but the lack of a reaction was a reaction.

The colonel squeezed her shoulder, squeezed it and squeezed it.

Eventually, it was just her and the colonel there. Mr. Darcy was asleep and covered now. She settled herself next to her fiancé, and she read to him from the book she had been reading from, The Scottish Chiefs, and her voice was steady and clear.

The colonel sat down on a couch at the foot of the bed with his head in his hands.

That evening she got Jane on her own, in Jane’s bedchamber, and she began to pace at the foot of the bed while Jane perched nervously on the bed, eventually saying, “Lizzy, spit it out, you are worrying me badly.”