Becoming Lady Darcy by Sara Smallman

Author:Sara Smallman [Smallman, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

1816

Dressing herself in a simple gown, jacket and her sturdiest boots, Elizabeth Darcy had risen before the crow and ventured outside. She was surprised to see that the world around her was still the same when she was so different; all her emotions somehow deadened by the loss she had experienced and the grief that still overcame her when she was least expecting it. She had pretended to be asleep when her husband, he himself still grieving, had come to her rooms the night before and sat gently on her bed, pouring out his heart and soul to her, not aware that she was listening to every word he said.

He felt the pain too, he said. He did not ever think that they would lose a child, but that they had been given a great gift and had another baby to look after and cherish, and this baby and their sons needed their mother, and he needed his wife. She had wanted to speak up and tell him that he could not experience the loss in the same way she had, had not carried the babe in his belly for nine months and felt him move and grow, and now there was nothing. No life and no future for the dead child, the lost son, the missing Darcy.

Elizabeth planned to walk to the Cage, which she managed in reasonable time, looking back towards her home which was still as beautiful today as the first time she ever saw it.

Onward and onwards, she walked further, through the deer park and into the moorland beyond. The early summer months had hardened the ground and she found it strong and easy to stride across.

Onwards and onwards, she pushed on until she could no longer see the outline of the three-hundred-year-old hunting lodge dominating the skyline.

Onwards and onwards, keeping the momentum of one foot in front of the other, over stiles and past cottages on the furthest expanses of the estate, whose tenants she visited in the winter, bringing them gifts from the house.

Onwards and onwards, until it was mid-afternoon, and she decided to stop; her feet aching and her mouth dry. She was unsure of how many miles she had walked, and she was aware of the impropriety of it all. But Elizabeth knew where she was going, and she trudged ahead, onwards and onwards.

Gallagher didn’t expect to see Mrs Darcy of Pemberley, sunburned and dehydrated, walking down the driveway towards Dunmarleigh, he had thought the bedraggled and scruffy looking woman was perhaps a wandering gypsy looking for work. It was only when he spotted the expensive looking necklace under her spencer, the heavy fine embroidery to her mud-soaked hem that he realised he was mistaken. He jumped from his horse and pulled her under his arm, lifting her onto the chestnut mare and striding purposefully up to the house.

“Madame, are you alright there?”

She was pale, her bonnet falling down her back, the ribbon around her neck.

“I feel sick.”

“Have you walked all the way from Pemberley, miss?”

He kept his eyes forward, not wanting to look at her.

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