Page 80 of Yearning

He sighed slowly. “Yes, perhaps you are right. Well, then, my darling Lizzy. Thank you for taking me on.”

“You are entirely welcome, my love.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“I HAD NOT thought you should allow me to see her, I suppose,” Richard Fitzwilliam was saying, standing in the midst of the study in Pemberley.

Mr. Darcy eyed his cousin from where he was seated in a leather chair in front of the fireplace. He had asked his cousin, thrice, to sit down next to him, and Richard continued to stand and to fidget with his cravat and to move about the room.

“I have not brought you here for her,” said Mr. Darcy, a bit agitated by it all. It was one thing, in principle, to know that his cousin had gotten this child on his wife, especially after everything that had passed between all of them over the years. It was quite another to see him standing here and to have to contemplate the physical reality of it all, especially now that he was intimately acquainted with Elizabeth. He had not thought it would feel this way, he had to admit. He had expected it to be easier. Perhaps his life was never going to be easy. “I have brought you here so that you may see your son, obviously.”

Richard tugged hard on his cravat and rounded on him. “I have told you, have I not, that I cannot be responsible for her condition. I tell you, it is not my child.” But even whilst facing him and speaking with such force, Richard would not meet his gaze.

Darcy sighed heavily.

The Darcy family had been at Pemberley for three months now. The babe had come more easily than his sister, quicker too, and Mr. Darcy liked the fact that he had been present for both of the births, that he had held both Lily and her brother, little Edmund, in his arms when they were new to this world.

Edmund was a wailer and a yawner, in possession of tiny perfect fingers and wide, blinking eyes. He squalled often when Darcy held him in his one good arm, but he seemed to like his father’s broad chest and would grudgingly stop squalling and curl into the warmth there and begin to yawn and yawn and then… off to sleep he would go. He was brand new, only two weeks old now. The little boy had a compartment in Darcy’s heart, his own chamber. There were three now, one for Elizabeth, one for Lily, and one for Edmund. His heart was so very full, it often felt it might burst.

“Well,” said Darcy carefully, “in every way that matters, he is my child, Richard, and I am his father. But you wish to see him, I should think.”

Richard tugged harder on his cravat. He turned away.

It was quiet for some time.

Richard looked out the window. His voice was gruff. “Marybeth is with child.”

“Oh, well, my congratulations,” said Mr. Darcy. Richard and Lady Marybeth Constance had been married some months ago. Darcy was aware of the particulars of the arrangement, and he knew that there had been some agreement to bear Richard a child, though the colonel’s wife was to keep carrying on with some paramour. Darcy would not abide such an arrangement, but he and Richard were very different people.

“It is only us now,” said Richard to the window. “The man she was entangled with found he despised the idea of her and me, apparently. She turned to me for comfort after he left her, I suppose. And I found I rather enjoyed her company. Somehow, in the wake of it all, we have grown very close. There is something about it, one’s wife with child. It…” He swallowed. He turned around again. “I am happy, you know, or something like it. I do not wish to have sown that child in Elizabeth’s womb.”

Mr. Darcy regarded him.

Richard tugged on his cravat.

“Come sit down,” said Mr. Darcy.

Richard sighed heavily.

“Please,” said Mr. Darcy.

Richard’s shoulders slumped and he came and sat down. “You are certain the babe is not somehow Elizabeth’s late husband’s?”

“She says he is yours,” said Mr. Darcy. “But if you truly do not wish that, we can never speak of it again. We can pretend it is not so. No, better. It does not need to be so.”

Richard rubbed the side of his neck. “Does she hate me?”

“No,” said Mr. Darcy. “You mean Elizabeth, I assume?”

“I feel wretched about it all,” said Richard. “I wish I had not touched her.”

“I do not,” said Mr. Darcy, shaking his head. “No, it’s better in some ways, largely because of Edmund, who would not exist otherwise, and she is entirely radiant when she is with child, and I was there for that, and I have nothing to complain about in that regard.” He was smiling now.

“Truly?” Richard’s eyes were wide.

“But also,” said Darcy, “it’s best to have it settled between the two of you. I think I opened that door, and if it had not been walked through, it might have plagued me. But there is nothing now lingering between the two of you now, so I suppose I’m glad it happened.”

The colonel blinked at him for several moments and then cleared his throat. “You are a very understanding man, you know?”