Page 51 of Yearning

“You followed her here. You are but half a mile away from my house. You were present while she was giving birth. She has been visiting you daily, I understand. You saw my daughter before I did.”

Darcy hung his head.

“Perhaps it ought not matter,” said the baron. “If you are incapable of… but I am afraid that I cannot share her. I do not wish to, at any rate. She is my wife, and I want to have her to myself.”

“No, of course,” said Mr. Darcy. “You do have her to yourself, in fact. I swear, she and I have never once… done anything untoward.”

“You were engaged to be married to her before, and there is all manner of attachment there,” said the baron. “I know it, and you know it. But think of her, if you will, sir. She is a new mother, and she would do better to focus on her child, on her husband, on her duties to the household. Having you around, you will only confuse her loyalties.”

“I have no intention of being around,” said Mr. Darcy. “I came here because…” He squared his shoulders. “I do not know why I came. But I shall leave. If I can but say goodbye to her—”

“I wish you would not.”

“I can send a note then, I suppose.”

“I wish you would not do that either,” said the baron. “I know it is a lot to ask, but I would ask you simply to leave, without a word. I… when I met her, you had broken her heart. She was sad for a time, but I feel I healed her. Since we saw you at Berkshire, she has been different, however.”

“She’s been with child,” said Mr. Darcy.

“You broke her heart once—”

“I did not set out to break her heart,” said Mr. Darcy. “I set out to give her a real life, to set her free so that she could love a man who could give her everything she needed, all the things I could not give her.”

“Well, do that,” said the baron. “Please. Not for my sake, but for hers.”

Darcy knew the other man was right. His presence was nothing but pain for Elizabeth. At best, a painful reminder of what she could not have. At worst, a temptation to betray her husband and family. The babe was the baron’s. Elizabeth could not leave her husband now, not without forfeiting her child.

She was well and truly beyond his reach.

It was ironic that he had just now realized he might not be as broken as he had thought.

What if I could walk?

But if he could, she would not see it. And that was likely for the best.

IV

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ELIZABETH’S HUSBAND, THE Baron Hellig, died when his daughter Lily was but four years old. It was sudden. It was probably his heart. He complained of pains in his chest that night, but he thought it was likely only indigestion, and he went to lie down.

When his valet came to help him undress for bed a few hours later, he was already gone.

It seemed senseless and sudden to Elizabeth, and she spent the days after in a haze.

They had lost the dogs but six months before, some kind of sickness that had taken them both within hours of each other. Even still, they were not sure what had done the poor beasts in. Perhaps the dogs had eaten something that did not agree with them or perhaps they had contracted it from something they had hunted out in the woods, some creature they had pounced upon and killed together. Whatever it had been, it had been quick. They had barely suffered, dying soon after the symptoms of the illness had gripped them.

She only thought of it now, because she looked back on the fact that her husband had not insisted they replace the dogs with puppies as nearly prophetic, somehow. Had he known? Had he realized that he would not be around to raise more dogs?

At the time, she had been relieved, something she felt guilty about now. She loved the dogs, of course, but they were always underfoot, and Lily had been frightened of them, for they were ever so large, and keeping the dogs from the baby had been its own trouble.

Now, of course, without her dogs and without her husband, she felt bereft and truly stripped of everything. It did not help that she would have to vacate the baron’s homes and move to the dower house, of course. So much gone, as if everything was being taken from her.

She was supposed to have weeks before she was forced to vacate the house, she knew, but the baron’s heir—the new baron—was eager to get his hands on the place, and he had never much liked his father’s new wife, anyway.

The new baron was older than Elizabeth, after all, and it was… well, Elizabeth supposed she would not have been pleased with her father if he had married some chit of a girl barely one and twenty. If Elizabeth’s mother were gone, that was, and Elizabeth’s mother seemed in no danger of dying any time in the next century. She was hardy and full of loud exclamations, which was why Elizabeth did not invite her parents to her husband’s funeral.

The death happened in London, which made everything that much more fraught. She had to host the viewing of the body in the front room, and everyone came by to pay their respects, and then, the body was going to be transported all the way to Hellig for the funeral and burial, where Elizabeth would then have to vacate the house and move into the dower house post haste, if the new baron had anything to do with it.