Page 147 of Homeless

She opened her eyes to find her aunt and Georgiana both staring at her, and something passing between the two of them — a glance, wary and astonished. Oh, how she must look and sound, a woman speaking Spanish in a Cheapside parlour, weeping thanks over a fever, married in secret and hiding her relationship to the sort of man no young woman would ever conceal from her family.

“Lizzy.” Her aunt had gone quite pale. “Lizzy, what — in God's name, child, what happened to you in Spain?”

“I married him in Tudela, the night of the raid when Uncle Gardiner — oh, it is a long story, Aunt, and I will tell you all of it, I swear I will, only not now — I married Mr Darcy, and I meant to — I found I could not keep him — I meant to release him, I sent back the — this morning I even went to —”

She broke off and fisted her hands over her eyes. “Oh, I cannot say it all now! Only believe me, Aunt… please, Georgiana, I meant to give him up for his own good, because I love him past sense, Aunt, past all sense, and I could not be the means of his ruin and Uncle Gardiner’s abandonment besides.” She cupped a hand over her mouth to stop its rambling and turned to Georgiana. “Miss Darcy, is he shivering? Is he cold, does he shake and call for blankets and still moan for the want of them?”

“Yes,” Georgiana confirmed, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Heaps of them, and he keeps wanting the fire built up so we can hardly stand to be in the room. How did you know?”

“Because I lived it! Listen to me, give him all of them, every blanket in the house, and do not let anyone take them off while the cold is on him. But you must watch — you must watch for the turn, when he throws them off and goes to burning, because then you cool him, then it is cloths and open windows. He will not know you, he will thrash and talk out of his head, he will say all manner of things that are not true. You must be gentle with him, it is only the fever talking, and you must not be frightened of it, you must only —”

“He is not saying all manner of things.” Georgiana interrupted. “That is why I came, Elizabeth. In and out of his senses, burning, raving — he is only saying your name. Over and over. Whether he knows he is doing it or not, he only ever asks for one thing, and it is you.” Her chin trembled. “I did not want to come. I thought you had broken his heart and half killed him and I did not see why I should fetch you to him. But he begged me, when he was clear enough to beg, and I could not listen to him call for you all night and not go. So. Against my better judgment. Here I am. Will you come, or will you not?”

Elizabeth was already turning for the door.

“Aunt!” She caught her aunt's hands, pressed them, her eyes streaming now. “Forgive me. I will explain everything, all of it, I promise you, only I have to — I have to go to him, do you understand? I have to go now —”

“Go,” said her aunt, who did not understand the half of it. “Go, Lizzy, and God be with him.”

LIX

Here

He was in the bed, heaped over with blankets, and even from the door she could see him shaking — the whole bulk of the coverlets trembling with it, the deep helpless shudder of the cold stage. He was in the thick of a fit, teeth clenched against the chattering, his face — his face turned her over completely, because it was grey and sunken and clammy and wrong, the marks of Spain come back on him twofold, the man she had watched nearly die once wearing that same terrible mask again.

A tall, lean gentleman stood at the bedside with a watch in his hand and a manservant beside him, and both of them turned as she came in.

“Madam —” the physician began, startled.

She went straight past him to the bed.

“How long has this fit been on him?” She had Darcy's wrist already, her fingers at his pulse, fast and thin and galloping under her hand exactly as she had feared. “When did the cold come on? Has he been shaking a quarter hour, half an hour, how long? And the last fit, when did it break — yesterday's, when did he sweat it out? I must know the hours, I cannot judge the dosing without the hours.”

“Madam, I do not know who you —”

“Have you given him the bark in the intermission or in the fit?” She had turned back one of the blankets to feel his brow — burning, the fever climbing under the cold, exactly the treacherous duplicity of it — and was tucking it back at once, because he needed the heat kept in while the cold was on him, whatever a fool might think of piling wool on a man whose skin scorched. “If you have been dosing him at the height you have wasted it, he cannot hold it down at the height, no one can, it must go in during the hours between. Has he kept any down in the last hours?”

“Elizabeth?”

He had got his eyes open. They were glassy and did not quite find her, roved and came back and roved again, but he had heard her voice, and he was reaching for it. “Elizabeth. You are here?”

She bent over him, brushing the hair from his brow with her fingertips. “I am here, Fitzwilliam. I am here.”

His hand caught at hers and pulled it back to his chest, where he clutched it like a crucifix to his heart. His eyes clenched again, and the breath was hissing between his teeth during the shudders.

The physician came round the other side of the bed now, as he could not press in between Elizabeth and his patient. “Madam! I do not know by what right you have come in here, but this is most irregular — a lady, a stranger, in a gentleman's sickchamber? I must ask you to withdraw at once and let me tend my patient. If you are some connexion of the family, you may wait below with the —”

Elizabeth looked up at him, her hand still trapped in the cave of Darcy’s chest. “I am his wife, sir. I will thank you to let me comfort him, and then you may tend your patient and I will tend my husband and we need not quarrel again.”

The physician looked across to Miss Darcy, who had come to crouch beside Elizabeth and to touch her brother’s face. “She is his wife, Mr Samuels,” Georgiana seconded. “This is the Elizabeth he has been asking for.”

“I… I’d no idea that Mr Darcy had married,” Mr Samuels said slowly.

“Nor had most, and the fault for that is mine,” Elizabeth replied. “Sir, I was there when he took the marsh fever before. I had it at the same time, but I had medicine and he did not. It was only by a miracle that he survived then, and you must… you will do all that can be done for him now!”

The physician looked uncomfortable, and glanced at the manservant nearby. “Madam, I appreciate your concern. Indeed, we are doing all that can be done for Mr Darcy, and I am confident of his eventual recovery, but you must not… well! You see, it is hardly a dignified suffering. Not four hours ago, he was most wretched, indeed, and his valet was obliged to bathe him and change the linens. After that came the nausea, which was an unpleasant business. I cannot countenance a lady —”

“I do not think you understand, sir. There was no valet or store of bark or copper bathtub the last time this was on him. There was no army of maids with fresh linens at every turning of the hour, and no line of footmen carrying up firewood to build a blaze fit to burn down the house. He had but one good priest and me, and I was still sick with it myself while I lay beside him to nurse him. Blush all you want, but the embarrassment will be yours, not mine. I ought to have been here before, but I am here now, and here I stay.”