Page 6 of Yearning

Elizabeth did not know how to talk about it. “You are married,” was what she eventually said.

“Yes, as you well know,” said Jane.

“So, you know of the marriage bed, and you know about—”

“This is about Mr. Darcy,” interrupted her sister with a sigh. “I wondered when you would speak of it to me. I suppose I had thought perhaps you simply did not care, and I thought that was… well, he cannot even get out of bed, so what does it matter?”

Elizabeth stopped pacing. “Should I care?”

Jane’s eyes widened. She bit down on her lower lip.

Elizabeth waited.

Jane cast her gaze down on the coverlet. “Oh, Lizzy… no one would fault you if you ended the engagement.”

“So… yes? It is something that I shall be sad to have missed out on?”

Jane swallowed.

Elizabeth put a hand to her forehead. “It cannot matter so much. I know that it cannot. I know that there are ever so many jokes in plays about how men and women tire of each other later in marriage, so it cannot matter—”

“It matters,” said Jane, cutting in sharply.

The two sisters held each other’s gaze.

Jane blushed, color high on her cheeks. “But no, Lizzy, it is not the most important thing. If you love him—”

“I do,” said Elizabeth. “You know I do.”

Jane got up from the bed and took one of Elizabeth’s hands in both of hers. “You should come to a ball with us, perhaps.”

“To meet someone else, as Mama said I should?” Elizabeth’s voice was strained.

“I do not know,” said Jane. “Simply to be young and carefree for a few hours, to be that Lizzy that I remember, the one who dearly loves to laugh, who dances. He wouldn’t want it for you. You know he would not.”

Elizabeth did not say that he wanted her to kill him, that he wanted to die.

She did not say that at all.

CHAPTER THREE

ELIZABETH DID GO to a ball, but she did not last very long there. She was overcome, rather quickly, by a certain and cutting knowledge that Mr. Darcy would never dance again. Certainly, she’d known this already, but it seemed overtake her in such a way that it made it impossible for her to stay in the room.

She had to excuse herself, go off alone and let out great, heaving sobs, bent in half, clutching her own midsection.

Eventually, Mr. Bingley found her and he said he would escort her home and then come back to finish out the dance with his wife. She apologized for being so inconvenient, for being such a sight, for taking him from the ball.

He hushed her, smiling in that easy way of his, and he gently wrapped her hand round his arm as he guided her out of the house where the ball was taking place.

“You are good to him,” said Mr. Bingley. “You are everything a man would want from his wife.”

“I am not his wife, however,” she said, feeling miserable.

“I miss him, too,” said Mr. Bingley, and his mouth twisted in a way that Mr. Bingley’s mouth rarely twisted. He was not, as a general rule, a sad man.

“Well, how can I miss him when I am with him every day?”

“You miss what he was,” said Mr. Bingley. “I warrant he misses what he was.”