and Mrs. Harville, and entered the main room to find a rather wet Darcy with an even more soaked gentleman. He introduced his companion as Mr. Elliot.
“Mr. Elliot! Thank goodness my husband found you. The surgeon is with your wife now.”
An odd expression passed over his countenance. “My wife passed away little more than a year ago.” Despite his rumpled appearance, he stood stiffly.
Elizabeth flushed with embarrassment. “I beg your pardon. I assumed—”
“I believe, however, that I am acquainted with the woman Mr. Darcy described to me. Might I see her?”
“Of course.”
She led him into the bedroom, where Mr. Sawyer was applying leeches to the woman’s temple. Mr. Elliot looked at her face, then averted his gaze from the business under way.
“I do know her. This woman is Mrs. Clay.”
Elizabeth was relieved to at last have a name with which to address their patient. “Where might we locate Mr. Clay?”
“Penelope is widowed.”
“Oh.” Elizabeth was not certain who engaged her pity more—the mother left to raise her child alone, or the child who would never know its father. “She is fortunate to have friends at such a time. She asked for you.”
Mr. Elliot started. “She is awake?”
“Not at present, but she woke briefly.”
“What did she say?”
“Only your name: Elliot.”
His features relaxed. “Yes, well … she has been under my protection for the past several months.”
A moan from Mrs. Clay drew the attention of all in the room.
“Does she waken again?” Mr. Elliot asked.
Mrs. Harville called Mrs. Clay by name several times, but received no response. “Poor dear. I wonder whether she feels the leeches.” She adjusted the blanket, which had become rumpled during Mr. Sawyer’s examination. As she smoothed it over Mrs. Clay’s abdomen, the patient released another soft moan.
Mrs. Harville stopped mid-motion and frowned. Pushing aside the blanket, she placed her hand firmly on Mrs. Clay’s belly. Her expression of concentration alarmed Elizabeth, who crossed and placed her own hand beside Mrs. Harville’s.
Time seemed to creep as she waited for the baby to signal her again, but in fact little more than a minute passed. This time, however, she did not feel a kick, but a hard tightening. She met Mrs. Harville’s gaze, and saw that she had recognized it, also.
“Is she—”
Mrs. Harville nodded. “Mr. Sawyer, I believe Mrs. Clay has begun to labor.”
Five
Mrs. Hall of Sherbourn was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, oweing [sic] to a fright.
As birthing chambers are no place for gentlemen, Darcy and Mr. Elliot quit the bedroom directly. Their adjournment to the main sitting room, however, afforded Mrs. Clay and her attendants little privacy, and the gentlemen little relief from noises and other signals of the trial so near. Moreover, as Mrs. Harville had pressed all able female hands—namely, her maid and Elizabeth—into service to assist Mr. Sawyer with the lying-in, the gentlemen found themselves left with Caleb and two smaller sprites whom Darcy guessed to be five and two.
“Who are you?” the five-year-old asked.
“Two gentlemen come to call,” Mr. Elliot replied. “Pray, do not stare so.” He shifted under their continued scrutiny. “I cannot believe their mother countenances such impertinence,” he muttered.
Though the children’s curiosity was poorly concealed, Darcy considered it natural. He and Mr. Elliot—not to mention the laboring woman in the next room—were, after all, strangers in the boys’ home, and their arrival had been dramatic. He supposed, however, that anxiety for Mrs. Clay and the physical discomfort of damp clothes left Mr. Elliot little patience for conversation with young children. Darcy himself could have done without their surveillance at present.
“As we can be of no use,” Mr. Elliot said, “I shall retreat to my lodgings.”
Darcy regarded him with surprise. “You are going?”
“The rain has diminished, and I want to change into dry clothing. I will return later to enquire after Mrs. Clay.”
Mr. Elliot seemed curiously detached from Mrs. Clay’s plight. From his demeanor, his connexion to her would seem a slight acquaintance, yet the dockworker had suggested a much more intimate relationship between the pair. Darcy could not help but wonder whose baby Mrs. Clay was about to deliver. Mr. Elliot had implied to Elizabeth that the child belonged to the late Mr. Clay. Had the dockworker presumed too much, on too little intelligence? Darcy was not inclined to invest a great deal of credibility in the speculations of a man with more tattoos than teeth, and so withheld judgment. “If you are wanted before then, where might I find you?”
“In Broad Street, at the inn.”
With that, Mr. Elliot was gone.
Elizabeth pushed hair away from her damp forehead with the back of her hand. It was warm in the room, almost intolerably so, and the maid had just banked the fire with more wood. The heat mixed with the scents of perspiration and blood and other effusions to create a heavy musk that gave rise to memories of her own lying-in and other births she had attended, including that of Darcy’s cousin Anne Fitzwilliam little over a month ago. Anne’s lying-in, however, seemed a world away from this one. Though not of especially robust constitution, Anne had at least been a conscious, active participant in the proceedings, awake to not only the travail but also the joy of presenting a healthy son to her husband once the ordeal ended. She had rapidly recovered her strength, and the Darcys had left the new family a happy threesome.
Mrs. Clay, however, hovered on the edge of awareness. Due to her accident, the baby was coming quickly. Her distressed countenance and the soft moans that heralded each contraction revealed that she felt pain, but she remained insensible to every attempt to speak to her.
Once, Mrs. Clay had roused enough that, at Mr. Sawyer’s direction, Elizabeth and Mrs. Harville had raised her to a sitting position, supporting her through a contraction and urging her to push. Mrs. Clay had opened eyes that appeared filled with confusion. As the pain receded, Mrs. Clay met Elizabeth’s gaze. “Pushed.”
“You did a fine job, dear,” Mrs. Harville replied. “Stay awake with us now, and help with the next one.”
“No—I … before…” She closed her eyes and brought a hand to her head. “Pushed…” She lost consciousness again.
Mr. Sawyer, his expression grim, withdrew a set of forceps and other medical instruments from his bag. “Her pains are coming so rapidly now, it will not be long.”
“Another pain is starting already,” said Mrs. Harville, whose hand was on Mrs. Clay’s abdomen. “The child is coming now.”
Caleb, Adam, and Ben. Those were the names of the Harvilles’ children, though Darcy was begun to think the elder two would have been better named Cain and Abel. Though of good dispositions, they competed fiercely: whose turn it was to sit on the tallest stool; who had played with the bilbocatch longer; and most especially, who could command the greater portion of Darcy’s attention. The youngest, meanwhile, had stationed himself immediately outside the bedroom door, where he called alternately for his mother or the maid.
When the bedroom door opened, Darcy hoped to see Elizabeth emerge. Instead, it was the maid, so full of purpose that she did not pause to share any news, only retrieved additional linens and hurried back into the
