The Plight of the Darcy Brothers Page 28

He fumbled to touch the spot with his own hand. “It feels— better.” He couldn't find any pain at all. He looked up hopefully at Maddox. “Can we stop now?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Maddox said, his own voice bordering on joyous delirium, from Darcy's limited sense of perception. “Yes, we can.”

  Darcy nodded and turned his head on the pillow, instantly asleep.

  EPILOGUE

  DARCY'S RECOVERY TOOK OVER a month. The Maddoxes would return to Town officially after Christmas because of the doctor's various requirements there, although Dr. Maddox did return briefly to see Brian off on his adventure in the Carpathian Mountains and to check on his royal patient. Darcy was no longer in the prime of youth and had been injured twice in the duel, so he was pained for a long time, so much so that Maddox began restricting the dosage of medicine.

  “I will not turn your husband into an opium fiend,” Maddox said to Elizabeth.

  He was frustrated with the results of only one aspect of the proceedings, which was that Darcy's hand had lost some of its capabilities. Though it was hardly frozen or limp, its flexibility was limited, to the point that his normally perfect script was illegible.

  “It does match Geoffrey's almost perfectly,” Elizabeth said, smoothing out the hair of her flustered and grumpy husband.

  Aside from his own recovery and his wife's increasing girth, Darcy had few things to worry about. In fact, the only thing he could think of at the moment was Grégoire, the monastic secluded from his monasticism. As much as he enjoyed being with his newfound family, and as much as his humility prevented what would have made Darcy outright furious at the stares he got for his appearance, he was not settled in England. He probably never would be, Darcy eventually came to realize (after much prompting from Elizabeth). And in Ireland, where they still clutched onto their Catholicism, the monasteries had been dissolved. Despite his youth, Grégoire was a relic.

  Doubling his pain was a letter from the Monastery of Mont Claire. The Abbot wrote in long and lengthy Latin, and whatever it said, Grégoire paled at it and disappeared. When he did not return for lunch or dinner, they sent a party out and found him lying on his father's grave, staring up at the sky.

  Darcy called the men off, set the lantern down, and sat down beside him. He barely noticed that Wickham's tombstone had been finished and installed. “I would build you a monastery if I could.”

  “You cannot.”

  “What did the Abbot's letter say?”

  “I don't care to repeat it and slander my Abbot.” He sighed, clutching the cross from Rome. “Well, I suppose he isn't my father abbot anymore.”

  “So you were cast out?”

  “Yes.”

  “On what charges?”

  “He made various assumptions about my activities and behavior on the road.”

  “Was he correct?”

  “Partially… I did ride in a carriage when I could have walked.” He laughed. “I suppose that is a bit ridiculous.”

  “A bit?”

  “He also wrote that he knew when I walked out the door that I would give in to the temptations of wealth and flesh.”

  “But, you have not.”

  Grégoire turned his head without sitting up. “Am I a changed man since I walked out of the cloister?”

  “I don't see you in a gambling den with a whore on each side, no. In fact, my barber has complained to me about your insistence on trimming your hair in such a fashion that he finds backwards and ridiculous.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “That if he every complained again, I would dismiss him.”

  There was silence in the cold winter night.

  “When I am well enough,” Darcy said. “I will take you back to France or even go as far as Spain to find you a proper abbey.”

  “I cannot ask you to travel for me.”

  Darcy replied, “You have no idea how many people have told me not to do things for them. I've never listened to them, because I am a ridiculously stubborn man, and somehow I always get thanked in the end. Or shot. Sometimes both.”

  The brothers shared a laugh, and Darcy escorted the little monk back to the house.

  He had convinced Grégoire to winter in Pemberley, if only to see his new nephew or niece in the spring. On this, at least, Grégoire was convinced, and they arranged for a more abbey like arrangement for him in the private chapel, which was still medieval in character. Mrs. Reynolds even located the old altar furnishings behind a dusty wooden screen, unused since the Reformation, and Darcy dubbed the room beside the chapel “Pemberley Abbey.”

  The families all gathered at Pemberley for Christmas, since Darcy was still slowly recovering and it conveniently was also the birthdays of the Bingley twins. When they realized someone was missing, the Maddoxes made their apologies for Brian's absence.

  “He's gone where?” Darcy said, not having been informed in all the commotion of his situation.

  “The Carpathian Mountains. In eastern Austria, I believe.” The doctor did not look excessively happy about it.

  “To be married to a woman he's met twice.”

  “And is royalty,” said Mr. Bennet, still highly amused. “The foreign princess.”

  “I would say that I've heard crazier things from Brian, but this may actually be the thing that would qualify him for Bedlam,” Dr. Maddox said, unconsciously looking with concern at his wife, who cradled their daughter. “I can't say I was happy about it, but I have no authority to stop him.”

  “Her name again?”

  “God, it's impossible to pronounce. He's only said it a few times. Actually, he's been rather quiet and shy about the woman herself.”

  “Hmmm,” Caroline Maddox said, “When do men get quiet and shy about women?”

  “I don't get quiet and shy about women,” Bingley said.

  “That's because you're a social twit,” Darcy said. “The correct answer is apparently when they're in love.”

  “Twit?”

  “Yes, that was what I was looking for, Darcy,” Mrs. Maddox said. “Don't you agree, Mrs. Darcy?”

  “Did he really call me a twit?”

  “Absolutely,” Elizabeth said, “especially when they're deeply, passionately in love but cannot bear to show it.”

  “I know it's his house, but still! Darcy!”

  “What?” Darcy said, pretending to be broken from a reverie. “Bingley, I can only be assaulted on one front at a time, and here I have two women, so will you please just take my side?”

  “Against my sister and your wife? Do you think me mad?”

  “Well, everyone needs to have a mad brother,” Jane said.

  “I've already got one. Sorry, Mrs. Bingley,” Darcy said, ignoring the fact that Grégoire had tossed an olive in his direction, “and so does Dr. Maddox. So really, the Bingley family is lacking in brothers who won't listen to reason unless you look around the other way and count Bingley himself.”

  “Look, I don't have to take this—”

  “Does anyone know the hour?” Darcy looked at his pocket watch.

  “Why do we assume our Lord was born precisely at midnight?” Maddox said. “Seeing as how the sun sets faster in the east, isn't it already midnight in his birthplace?”

  “Don't mix logic and religion, Doctor,” Mr. Bennet said, “or you'll get something quite combustible.”

  “Cheers to that,” said Grégoire, and raised his glass as he crossed himself.

  Darcy made further inquiry into his future health, beyond his new dietary restrictions and his struggles to learn to write with his left hand.

  Despite Maddox's insistence that they did not have to pay him for his services, he did receive a new set of the latest medical compendium from the University of Paris in the post several weeks after his return home.

  But that was not the only gift the Maddoxes received. For a while he wondered if the prince would ever bring up the subject of Frederick Maddox, because his royal intelligence surely knew of it, but the prince did not ask and Maddox di
d not offer up the information. He thought he had escaped the matter entirely until Frederick's first birthday, when a new boy's cradle arrived at the house with no return address. The fact that it was of expensive Continental construction with Dutch wood engravings and gilded edges made him suspicious, as he had already received his son's gifts from those who both knew the real birthday and were fantastically wealthy—and that list was very short.

  On the other side of the family, the Bennet household was full of joy—and a lot of wailing. The Widow Wickham had two rowdy children, and until she remarried—which, knowing Lydia, would be as soon as she could take off her black mourning for Mr. Wickham—they would remain at Longbourn, which had undergone some minor renovations. And then there was baby Joseph, with whom everyone was much happier when he was sleeping through the night and not waking the whole household, especially because Mary refused a wet nurse and took all responsibilities on herself. So Longbourn was filled with children again.

  If anyone had any questions as to how Mary had appeared with a child, Mr. Bennet insisted that not only had she sworn off marriage for the moment, but that she had taken in an orphan child while in France. She was simply too attached to the child for him to separate them. Any amount of social digging could discern this was an outright lie. It was also known that Mr. Bennet had come into a massive fortune, and however questionable its origins, one did not speak too unkindly to a man with such a fortune and three unmarried daughters, even if one was wearing jet and one had a child—at least, not within listening distance.

  Kitty was sent to Town to be more forwardly on the market. Mr. Bennet did not have to buy her an apartment, even though he was thoroughly capable of doing so, because Georgiana quickly invited her to come live in the massive Darcy townhouse that was barely in use beyond herself and her own staff. As Georgiana Darcy was the most proper of ladies, she would be an excellent influence, and she would put Mr. Bennet's mind at ease. He imagined that if a gentleman so much as tried to walk up the front steps without good cause, Mr. Darcy would magically appear in Town on a cloud of smoke and escort him back down the street with a pistol.

  The winter was cold but short, and it was an anxious time for the Darcys, but in a happy way. By her confinement, Elizabeth's chances of miscarriage were slim. In fact, she was perfectly healthy aside from the normal trials of being with child, so there was no reason to expect a bad turn.

  On a chilly spring day, when the roads of Derbyshire were wet with melted snow, Elizabeth Darcy delivered a child after a day of cursing Darcy, everyone of relation, everyone who tried to aid her in the trials of labor, and mankind as a whole. Her vocabulary, Jane had to admit to her husband later, had improved in a very fascinating way due to her many travels since her last labor, and Jane had learned a good deal.

  “Well, I'll clearly be spending any future labor of yours drunk again,” Bingley said, patting her on the back.

  The child was a healthy, beautiful baby girl with brown hair and what Darcy immediately noticed were “Elizabeth's fine eyes.” He had the misfortune of being allowed not more than half a glass of wine a day, and so he had spent the long hours in his study pacing endlessly and occasionally cursing at the dogs as they followed him around. His usual calm demeanor only returned when presented with his child in front of an exhausted Elizabeth, who had the further suffering of her first child leaping on the bed to get a good first view of his new sister.

  “What's her name?”

  “They don't come with labels, darling,” she said. “But I have decided that she should be named Anne, so that your father can have something to do with that lovely bracelet without giving it to Mrs. Fitzwilliam, which at this point would be downright odd.”

  It took Darcy a moment to recall it. “Yes, of course.” He handed the baby back to Elizabeth's eager arms, weak as they were, and ran out of the room quickly, returning with a small gold bracelet—the one they had recovered from the drawer of Darcy secrets in the Normandy estate. “My darling Anne,” he said. The child, barely awake, did not have the wrists yet for it, but he let her grasp its hoop with her tiny fingers.

  Anne Jane Darcy was christened in the little chapel in Pemberley, and despite his insistence on a lack of ordination, they insisted that Grégoire have the honor of doing it as soon as Elizabeth was well enough to attend. After a rushed portrait could be made so he could have one of each of them, Grégoire Bellamont left for the Continent to trade in his grey robes for black ones and become a Benedictine novice.

  Brian Maddox had seen the abbey in Austria himself on the way through and sent his approval to all of Darcy's exact specifications. They would even let Grégoire travel to visit his family in England, as they were not French and not so isolationist. He was allowed to leave Derbyshire only with a promise to write and to return to see his niece and nephew, and with a wooden staff he had carved from a tree branch, he quite literally walked out of Pemberley.

  “Stubborn to the end,” Elizabeth said as they watched him disappear down to the road.

  “He'll hit the ocean eventually, I'm sure, and then he will have to ride,” Darcy said. “But he'll probably walk across Europe, too… obstinate monk.”

  “Truly a Darcy.”

  “I think we have living proof, right here and now, that I am no monk,” Darcy said, and kissed her as Anne gurgled in her arms. “You know, you were not required to name her after my mother,” Darcy said, with no dispute in his voice.

  “Oh, but I did. She did me the great favor of having you and putting up with you during your worst years.”

  “If you think I was intolerable as a child, then you know nothing about University,” he said. “But that is another story.”

  “Darcy! Are you hiding something from me?”

  “It is not so much hiding as leaving out various things which do not bear repeating.”

  “When do I get to go to University?” Geoffrey asked, looking up at his father.

  Darcy replied. “Never. Also, Anne's never going out. It's the Abbey for both of you.”

  “Father!”

  “I hope you like chores and prayer. Long, boring hours of prayer, and wearing a dress.”

  “No! You're not serious!”

  “I'm being perfectly serious. And not just the top of your head, some orders shave their whole head. You'll be bald before you're fifteen if I convince them to take you that early.”

  “Darcy,” Elizabeth whispered. “Stop torturing our son.”

  “Well, if he can do it to me at three in the morning, I should occasionally be able to do it to him,” her husband replied.

  “Then I should have my rights to torture you as well.”

  “Lizzy, you have been doing it since the night we met,” he said. “Now I'd best catch our son before he sets up a trap for us.”

  “Us? I was hardly involved beyond defending him. You are the mocking father here, Darcy. Now run along and catch him before he gets himself all muddy, and I have to see to his cleaning myself. You know Nurse can't get him clean.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Darcy,” he said with a stiff bow, and just as he was about to break off in pursuit of Geoffrey, he turned back again and kissed Elizabeth. His son had a good head start before he could begin the proper chase down the path, but Darcy decided it was worth it.

  THE END

  HISTORICAL INACCURACIES

  SCREW YOU, WIKIPEDIA!

  When I wrote the first draft of this story in 2006, I was no stranger to history but a big believer in the power of the Internet as a research tool. This book was also the first story that ventured out of England, requiring more research than the previous book. The result was me writing myself into some pretty disastrous corners of historical inaccuracy. Some mulligans were required to resurrect the story.

  All of the monasteries in France were dissolved in 1789 and turned into public houses and storage facilities. Many monks decided to remain in France on a subsidy, but they eventually either moved abroad, left the clergy, or became priests. The tonsure
and clerical dress were practically outlawed. In 1804 to 1805, Napoleon allowed a few Catholic ministers to form monastic houses, but he later changed his mind and had the houses dissolved by the end of the decade. Mont Claire doesn't really exist, nor does the monastic house there, though it could have briefly existed in 1807.

  Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti was never officially involved with a woman, though there were unconfirmed rumors of a relationship in the 1810s. He did have epilepsy and picked up French at some point early in his life, but he never fathered a child with a fictional Jane Austen character. Honestly I think it would have been pretty impressive if he did.

  The Kama Sutra had yet to be officially translated into English, which is why the book is never named in the text. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, British soldiers living abroad translated many Indian texts into English, so a manual of that sort could have been one of them.

  George IV probably fathered several children out of wedlock, but he was never caught visiting a brothel.

  Finally, all of my own characters (and Jane Austen's) are fictional, so none of the events in the book ever happened.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FIRST OFF, THIS BOOK would not exist without Jane Austen's genius, as it is a sequel to a sequel to her immortal Pride and Prejudice. To be very thorough, these events could have happened, but only in some kind of alternate universe where night is day and we're ruled by crab people. I wouldn't want to live in that universe, without Jane Austen, though I have heard some good reviews about the crab-based administration.

  Brandy Scott goes next, and she's going to be in every book, so why don't you all just get used to it. I don't know why this woman does so much editing for me of her own free will, but who am I to question the majesty that is Brandy Scott?

  Deb Werksman at Sourcebooks keeps buying books from me, so she deserves a round of applause for her boundless enthusiasm for new authors, which is pretty hard to find in the book industry. Susie Benton and Danielle Jackson also put a lot of hard work into this book, as did the terrific production team and everybody else at the company. Sarah Ryan did some excellent copyediting.