“If only Lydia would come, also. Newcastle is not so very far.” Mrs. Bennet addressed Lady Catherine. “My youngest daughter’s husband is in the regulars, and his regiment has been stationed there over a twelvemonth. I miss her excessively, though she keeps so busy with her husband and new friends that I am certain she scarcely has time to give her mother a thought. She is so popular among the other officers’ wives. Everybody adores her. What a wonderful thing it is to be young and carefree! I quite envy her sometimes.”
Lady Catherine made not the slightest effort to disguise her contempt. She turned to Elizabeth. “Mrs. Darcy, I trust Mrs. Wickham will make no reappearance at Pemberley in the near future?”
Dear heaven, she hoped not. Adding Lydia to this delightful family assembly might send Elizabeth seeking asylum in her bedchamber for the remainder of her pregnancy. Already, Dr. Severn’s order of bed rest held increased appeal.
“She has conveyed no such intention to me,” she replied.
“Lizzy, why do you not write and invite her? Only think how merry we would be! Lydia is such a cheerful creature. Her companionship would divert us all. Mr. Wickham could bring her — did he not grow up at Pemberley? I am sure he would love to visit.”
“Heaven and earth!” Lady Catherine exclaimed. “Have you no sense at all?”
Mrs. Bennet appeared confused and injured. “I — forgive me, your ladyship, if I somehow gave offense. I only meant that—”
“Mr. Wickham, invited to Pemberley? Could its woods be polluted any further?”
Though Mrs. Bennet’s gabble often provoked impatience in Elizabeth, she could not countenance Lady Catherine so abusing her mother. “I daresay a home as venerable as Pemberley can survive the unbecoming conduct of any relations of mine — or of my husband’s.”
Lady Catherine huffed in disgust. “You are as common as the rest of them.”
The baby, naturally, chose this moment to perform a somersault. Elizabeth gripped the arm of her chair in an unlikely attempt to maintain her composure. Could her situation become any more uncomfortable? Mercifully, Mrs. Reynolds interrupted.
“Another visitor, madam. Your sister has arrived.”
Jane had come already? Relief flooded her. If Darcy could not be here to ease her suffering, Jane offered the most ideal substitute. “Do show her in.” She eagerly fixed her gaze upon the door.
At the sight of her sister, something less than felicity seized her. Mrs. Bennet, however, sprang to her feet with glee.
“Lydia!”
She was in hell.
Truly. Elizabeth thought she had glimpsed hell once before in her life, but nothing she had encountered during the last London social season could match the tribulation of her present circumstances. The conjunction of her mother, Lydia, and Lady Catherine was an event that ought to be described in the dire inflections normally reserved for doomsday prophecies. Even Pemberley was not large enough to contain three such forces of nature simultaneously.
Dinner had been an ordeal; the drawing room afterward, a crucible. Her father — lucky man — had withdrawn to the library for a time, leaving the ladies to divert themselves in the formal reception room until he joined them later. Both Lady Catherine and Mrs. Bennet had remarked on Darcy’s absence from dinner, inspiring Georgiana to seat herself at the small pianoforte to offer a distraction. Her efforts, however, only resulted in allowing the married ladies to engage in discourse on topics that would have gone unmentioned in Georgiana’s hearing and Elizabeth’s preference. Mrs. Bennet had nearly nine months’ worth of sage maternal advice to impart, and Lady Catherine, torn between impulses to demonstrate her superiority through haughty silence and to issue a contrary opinion on every matter raised, at last yielded to the latter. The pair of them commenced an inharmonious duet, each verse of which underscored Elizabeth’s incorrect resolution on some issue related to her impending motherhood. Lydia chimed in with a descant voicing her disinclination for the entire theme. Elizabeth, though the chief subject of the opus, was all but drowned out by the more impassioned vocalists and contented herself with marking time. The performance reached a crescendo in a spirited arioso by Lady Catherine on the subject of wet nurses which almost drove Lydia to cover her ears before the entrance of Mr. Bennet ended the discordant concerto.
Now, just when Elizabeth thought she had escaped to the sanctuary of her bedchamber for the night, an incessant pounding rattled her door. Was it Lydia, come to hint that a spare twenty or fifty pounds would finance her extravagant habits for another few months? Beyond citing an implausible desire to be useful to Elizabeth during her confinement, her youngest sister still had not offered an explanation for her appearance at Pemberley, and Elizabeth had been too much occupied in maintaining civility between her and Lady Catherine to extract the truth. Perhaps it was her mother, come to rhapsodize further over how fat Elizabeth had grown. The subject had served as a refrain for every conversational lull at dinner. Pregnant pauses, indeed.
She donned her dressing gown and opened the door to reveal candidate number three: Lady Catherine. Of course. Who else would consider herself justified in disturbing her hostess after she had retired for the evening? Elizabeth had just been about to climb into bed and begin a futile attempt to find a comfortable sleeping position.
“Lady Catherine, what do you require at this time of night that a servant cannot procure for you?”
“My nephew. Hide-and-seek is a children’s game, Mrs. Darcy, and I have done with it. If your husband is in fact here at Pemberley, he ought to be in his bedchamber at this hour. I demand that you produce him now.”
“I would do so, your ladyship, but I am afraid he is—” She desperately sought an excuse she had not yet employed. “Exhausted.”
“Exhausted?” Lady Catherine repeated scornfully. “In what has he engaged that left him exhausted?”
Elizabeth did not reply, only pulled her dressing gown more tightly closed and raised her brows innocently.
Lady Catherine’s eyes widened. “In your condition!” For the first time in Elizabeth’s recollection, the slightest tinge of embarrassment stained her ladyship’s cheek. “You should be ashamed.”
“Ashamed of what?” Lydia strolled down the hall. “Lizzy never does anything of which she should be ashamed.” She giggled. “Though perhaps you ought to, Lizzy. It might be good for you.”
“Brazen hussies, both of you!” her ladyship choked out.
Lydia giggled again, then disregarded her ladyship altogether. “Lizzy, the fire in my chamber has died.”
“Lydia, it is late. I tire easily these days. Why do you bring this to me instead of simply ringing for a housemaid?”
“I
To be first ignored by someone she considered inferior and then solicited for corroboration on the subject of servants as if she and Lydia were on equal footing nearly sent Lady Catherine into spasms. She cut Lydia from her view entirely. “Mrs. Darcy, I demand to see my nephew. Now.”
“Oh, Lizzy! Thank heaven you are still awake!” Mrs. Bennet bustled down the hall toward them. “I have been thinking about your finding a husband for Mary.”
“Lizzy, it is cold in my chamber—”
“—Are there any eligible gentlemen in the neighborhood?”
“Mrs. Darcy — my nephew!”
If she sank to the floor and began rocking with her head between her hands, would any of them notice? Their voices swirled around her like a maelstrom. And then, miraculously, the voice she most longed to hear broke through the cacophony.
“Perhaps this conversation can continue on the morrow.”
She turned round to be certain she had not imagined it, so fervently had she wished for the sound. A set of dark eyes met hers, and order was restored to her world.
Darcy was home.
