He could not suppress a laugh. “Forgive me. Is she all right?”
“Oh, yes. I believe her loss of consciousness to have been beneficial to all parties. By the time she awoke, all was over, and her effusions could communicate entirely felicitous content.”
“I am glad she proved of some use to you. I imagine a woman would generally want her mother present during her travail, when possible.”
“This may sound odd, but I also seemed to feel your mother’s presence. Perhaps it is all the reading of her letters and journal, and knowing I labored in the same room as she, that fixed her so strongly in my thoughts. But I sensed that somehow she, too, supported me during my trial. At times, I even believed I detected the scent of lilies.”
“Were my mother alive, she most certainly would have wanted to be here.”
They both gazed at their daughter. He thought he saw his mother in the line of her chin, his wife in the shape of her brow. He wished the small eyes would open so he could ascertain whose resemblance they bore, but their child already demonstrated a will of her own by remaining quite determinedly asleep.
“You were so certain I carried a boy — and I, that I carried a girl — that we never settled upon a name for either,” Elizabeth said. “What shall it be? Who shall
“I am still partial toward Elizabeth.”
“Nay. She should not have to share her name with another member of the household, even her mother.” His wife stroked their daughter’s brow. “At least, not a living one.” She looked up at him. “Perhaps Anne?”
Her desire to honor his mother pleased him. But having witnessed Elizabeth’s struggle to establish her own identity at Pemberley, he hesitated to place this tiny being so directly in her grandmother’s shadow, to invite a lifetime of comparison before the child even opened her eyes on the world. “Jane?”
Elizabeth contemplated a moment, then shook her head. “She does not look like a Jane.” She sighed. “How do parents ever choose?”
Mrs. Godwin returned to check on Elizabeth one final time before retiring. A chamber had been prepared for the midwife, and she instructed Elizabeth to send for her if she required anything during what remained of the night. Darcy doubted he himself would sleep a moment.
“Mrs. Godwin,” he said. “Were you present when Georgiana received her name?”
She smiled sadly and nodded. “Your parents were talking quietly, and I was trying to grant them privacy while making your mother as comfortable as I could. She knew she was dying; they both did. She was exhausted by her ordeal, he by anxiety and grief. He declared he would name their daughter Anne, that Pemberley
“She said no, let us join our two names, as we joined Fitzwilliam and Darcy to name our son. Let us call our daughter Georgiana, and may our children embody our union. May they grow, and thrive, and show the world what is possible when love conquers all.”
The glimpse of his parents’ final moments together prompted him to take Elizabeth’s hand and bring it to his lips. “Thank you for our daughter,” he whispered fiercely.
As Mrs. Godwin left, she reminded him that their daughter still had no name.
“Much as I appreciate my parents’ practice of combining their two, I am not quite enamored of Fitzabeth,” he said.
Elizabeth caressed their daughter’s cheek. “I have something else in mind.”
It was doomed to be a day of trial.
Lady Catherine entered Elizabeth’s bedchamber as if it were her own.
“You summoned me?”
Anticipating another volatile confrontation, Elizabeth had considered postponing this conversation until she had regained more strength. Her travail was but a day past, and she still experienced pain and fatigue from bringing her daughter into the world. But some pleasures should not be deferred, and the result of the communication she was about to make would be worth any unpleasantness arising from its delivery.
She glanced at the cradle, where her daughter was sleeping off the exhausting experience of having been born, and sat up as straight as possible in her bed. “I have the happiness of informing you that Mr. Darcy and Mr. Tilney apprehended the real thieves of the Northanger diamonds last night. While we appreciate your generous service these several months, we are no longer in need of a legal chaperone. You may return to Rosings.”
Darcy’s aunt appeared as satisfied by the news as Elizabeth. “I had myself decided that the custody arrangement had become insupportable, and was determined to devise a means by which Mr. Melbourne would release us from it. I only hope my own affairs have not suffered neglect while I sacrificed so much time and attention to yours.”
Elizabeth reflected that she and Darcy would have been perfectly content with a smaller sacrifice on her ladyship’s part, but graciously thanked Darcy’s aunt for her kindness.
Lady Catherine scoffed. “It was not kindness. It was duty.”
“Cannot duty be performed with kindness?”
Her ladyship did not immediately reply. Her gaze had fallen on the Madonna and Child statuette, which rested on the table beside Elizabeth’s bed. “Sometimes in the performance of duty, one is forced to be unkind.” She looked at Elizabeth. “My sister never realized that in withholding that ivory, I was saving her from herself. I could not allow those around her to know she believed in Popish nonsense.”
Elizabeth struggled to comprehend her. “Lady Anne was a Catholic?”
“Never! Do not even utter such a thing. But our mother came from a family that secretly held on to the Catholic faith long after the Reformation, and a few of those beliefs passed through the generations. I would not have society thinking our family maintained any connection to its Catholic past.”
“What difference would it have made? Catholics are no longer persecuted in England.”
“It made a difference to me.”
Elizabeth absorbed this revelation with disgust. Darcy’s mother had suffered so that his aunt could prevent a scandal that would have existed only in her own head. Lady Catherine was so obsessed with the concept of family honor that she had lost all understanding of what honor meant.
The baby stirred. Elizabeth slowly swung her legs to one side of the bed and slid her feet to the floor. She crossed to her daughter and lifted her into her arms. Lady Catherine, meanwhile, took no apparent interest in the child.
“I think perhaps it would be best if you departed tomorrow morning,” Elizabeth said.
“I shall depart this afternoon, as soon as my trunks are packed and my carriage readied.” She moved toward the table with the statuette.
Elizabeth stepped in her way “The ivory shall remain here.”
“You dare to keep it for yourself?”
“I do not keep it for myself. I keep it for Lady Anne.”
“
Elizabeth straightened her back, lifted her chin, and unflinchingly met Lady Catherine’s imperious gaze.
“I am mistress of Pemberley.”
Darcy shifted in his seat and did his best to ignore the stuffiness of the crowded courtroom. County assizes normally attracted large numbers of spectators, the trials offering merely one of many entertainments within the festival-like atmosphere that surrounded them. Twice a year, His Majesty’s subjects indulged in days of public balls, private parties, and — oh, yes, the administration of law.
