12. In which Mrs. Fitzwilliam's political career is...(1)

By September, everyone had grown thoroughly tired of each others’ company and began to talk of going home. Elizabeth could not repine the loss of her mother, who continued to try and cheer her with thoughts of jointures and the pension and prize money owed to war widows, but it distressed Elizabeth to think of being without Jane. She felt as if she had not really talked with Jane, and had squandered all their chances of doing so.

But every time they were alone, and Elizabeth wished to in some way unburden herself, she found she could not. Happy Jane, with a healthy child at her breast and doting husband at her side, was so far removed from the horrors Elizabeth had seen and experienced, it seemed impossible that the two should exist in the same universe. Elizabeth grew horribly frustrated with herself. Was it merely jealousy that stilled her tongue? Was there actual concern for Jane, or merely bitterness that Jane had everything Elizabeth still wanted? Was it possible for Jane to understand even the shape of Elizabeth’s losses? In one of her bitterer moods, Elizabeth had almost said this, but cut herself off after “Jane, you cannot possibly understand—” and contented herself with, “I am glad you cannot. I may be able to repeat what I saw at Hougoumont with some degree of composure, but that is because I leave so much out of the retelling.”

Very near the end of the Bingley’s stay at Matlock, Jane proposed to make her own rose water in the stillroom. Marjorie found this odd, as she had always considered the stillroom something the housekeeper went into, not something the ladies of the house would ever deign to meddle with, but granted their request nonetheless.

Elizabeth almost felt at ease as she cut roses with Jane. They had spent so many late summer evenings doing the exact same thing at Longbourn, there was a thick patina of nostalgia over the whole, encasing the whole action in an uncomplicated happiness.

“Was it only last summer we were picking roses at your house in Paris?” Jane asked.

“Not my house, Jane; the house where we were billeted.” The air was thick with the scent of roses; Elizabeth let it close over her, as if retreating under a blanket from the cold. So protected, it did not pain Elizabeth to recall last summer, at looking up from her task to see Colonel Fitzwilliam leaning against the doorway to the house, smiling softly at her, and teasing her with allusions to French fairy tales.

“Even in little things,” said Jane softly, from the other side of the rose bush, “your life is so different from my own—but Lizzy, if you correct me, I will remember. I may not have experienced all you have, but I can imagine, and I can sympathize.”

Elizabeth wanted to give Jane the confidences she sought, but did not know where to begin. She attacked the rose bush with renewed energy instead.

Jane was too gentle to show her disappointment, but not adept enough a liar to conceal it. She bowed her head to hide her expression and moved onto the subject that had interested them both since the end of August: “What do you suppose Georgiana and Kitty are plotting? For my part, I really do think they are writing a novel. It is the only thing that might unify the odd, disconnected questions they have been asking.”

“What sorts of questions?”

“Yesterday they were all agog to know how Charles and I knew we were a match, and if we had any doubts, and how we resolved the notion that we were a match when there were so many Janes and Charleses in the world. Today they wanted to know if a person could have more than one soulmate.”

“Those are disconnected questions?” Elizabeth asked. “They seem to me to be rather connected. And it is natural they should wonder; I am afraid Honoria and I were rather frank in our philosophic discussion of soulmates before Georgiana, and she has now shared it with Kitty. They are neither of them very... keen on philosophic inquiry, so such serious questioning of received wisdom has disturbed and startled them. Thank heaven I did not tell them of the Spanish tradition of thinking your soulmark the name of the saint you must pray to for assistance. They would by this time have struck up a correspondence with an archbishop as to the doctrinal import of this, and been excommunicated.”

“But before that,” Jane persisted, “they were asking how common it is for people to remarry. They know none, and that could not have to do with me or with Charles.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That it was common enough, if a person thought they had been mismatched the first time around.”

“It is commoner than that,” said Elizabeth, thinking of her neighbor in Brussels, Mrs. Patricks. “I think our own circles are overly nice in their requirements for matrimony. I know one lady who has made a habit of marrying ‘Henry’s. I cannot blame her; it seems a more interesting hobby than needlepoint or watercolors. I do hope they are writing a novel; it might persuade them onto a course of deeper reflection than either of them have hitherto known.”

Jane agreed to this and, after wrestling with herself a minute, said, “Lizzy— I know I have never been as clever as you or Papa, and I daresay I haven’t a tenth of the intelligence of Lady Stornoway, but... but I do not think I am deficient in understanding.”

Elizabeth upset her basket in rushing over to Jane, who was pale, and had fixed her watering eyes on a point on the horizon. She took her sister into her arms at once and cried, “Jane, dearest Jane, you must not think that! I am not silent because I think anything wanting in you . It is only because I have no emotion worthy of being shared with you. You would not understand because all I have seen is so alien to the goodness in which you surround yourself, that is all.”

Jane held Elizabeth tightly. “Nothing that is yours is unworthy, however you may think. Tell me, Lizzy. I have gone through childbirth; you cannot cause a worse pain that that.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes against a rush of tears. “Jane, you must have heard my account of Hougoumont. I have given it some two or three hundred times.”

“Yes, but I do not know how you feel about it.”

“Furious.”

Jane looked startled at this.

“I am so angry, Jane,” Elizabeth burst out. “I have seen the worst of the world and yet I am supposed to go on pretending as if it hadn’t affected me, as if I haven’t been changed by all I’ve seen. I am supposed to push down every natural feeling for the sake of a family that never properly valued my husband while he was alive, and a society that required the death of the person I loved most in the world in order for it to continue on as comfortably as before. I am so angry and so unhappy and yet I— if I could go back in time, knowing what I do now, I would still marry Colonel Fitzwilliam. I loved and was truly loved and that is worth any pain— and yet, feeling as wretched as I do, sometimes I doubt it. How can I doubt it? And how can my own wishes, for a partner who respects and esteems me, for children, for a respectable life, be unchanged? And how can I bear to have these wishes still, when only one of the three is now possible?”

“Oh my dear Lizzy,” cried Jane, and burst into tears.

They wept together for some time, but when Elizabeth was at least calm enough to speak, said, “And I must confess to you that even the respectable life Richard left for me, and that Papa ensured for me in my marriage articles— a life spent with the Fitzwilliams, seems so insupportable. I am a wretched creature, to complain about a very safe and comfortable life, where I have ice in summer, flowers in winter, and French wine at every meal, but I would cast it aside without a second thought if I could starve and slog through the mud with Richard once again. And I know that it is impossible. The life I have enjoyed is gone and gone forever. The life I have is so good and yet...!”

Jane cradled Elizabeth to her breast, and said, “Oh my dear Lizzy, I can do something there, at least. I will insist upon your staying with me this summer. If you like it better in Derbyshire than in Hampshire, then you must come and live with me.”

“Oh Jane, I could not impose.”

“Impose?” Jane cried. “How could it be an imposition to always have with me one of the people I love best in the world?” She kissed Elizabeth's hair and said, firmly, “I am your elder sister. It is my duty to look after you. You would not have me be derelict in my duties because they bring me pleasure? That is too Puritan a thought.”

Elizabeth laughed through her tears. “Oh Jane, you are too good a creature!”

“I am selfish,” said Jane, in perhaps the first real lie Elizabeth had heard her utter. “I want my favorite sister. Is that so wrong?” When Elizabeth did not immediately answer her, Jane added, “If you think all the very natural feelings you have shared with me are wrong, so too is the one I just shared with you. And so is this one: I cannot love Charles’s sisters as I love you. I have tried, but there are times, Lizzy, when I would give just about anything to have you at the breakfast table instead of Miss Bingley!”

Kitty, seeing her sisters having hysterics in the rose garden, came out armed with everything she thought might be of use. Her pockets overflowed with handkerchiefs and smelling salts. They welcomed her into their rather tearful, messy embrace, a gesture that Kitty met with more alarm than gratitude.

“What on earth is the matter?” Kitty demanded, quite bewildered.

“I am sad my husband is dead,” said Elizabeth, “though that reduces something of bewildering complexity to such simplicity it feels almost like a lie.”

“Lizzy,” said Kitty, after a moment, “I know you are sad, but I do not think you will always be so. You would not be sad if there was someone else who loved you. And you know, there is. ”

Elizabeth smiled through her tears, and held tight both her sisters. “Oh Kitty, I do not know what I did to deserve such sisters! How glad I am for you both! Your loves go a long way to consoling me for the loss of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s.”

Kitty looked harassed, but bore the weeping of her elder sisters with tolerable good grace. “Oh... oh well. I love you too Lizzy. But I am sitting on a basket and it is not very comfortable.”

Jane and Elizabeth released Kitty, who still seemed to think her elder sisters had run mad. Jane tried to explain, “Do not be too alarmed, Kitty; I am happy that Elizabeth will come stay with me this summer, but sad at the circumstances that lead to it.”

“You will both be in Derbyshire this summer?” asked Kitty, consideringly. “Will you be in London this winter?”

“Oh, I shall be,” said Elizabeth, grimly. “I intend to see this bill passed, or throttle an MP or two myself.”

“I must to Derbyshire,” said Jane, regretfully. “We had meant to make a number of improvements on the estate and properties while we were gone, but the work does not seem to get on without Bingley there. We hope to come to town after Easter.”

Kitty contemplated this and said, a little abruptly, “Then... perhaps Georgiana might visit me at Longbourn for some of the winter. I know she and her brother go to Pemberley for the fall, but I think... if you and Mr. Darcy are in London this winter, Lizzy, the Gardiners could bring Georgiana to Hertfordshire at Christmas.”

“What are you and Georgiana up to?” Elizabeth asked.

“We are learning to knit,” said Kitty, a response so absurd that Elizabeth and Jane finally laughed away the last of their tears.

***

The Fitzwilliams moved to London in January, for the opening of Parliament, taking Elizabeth along with them. Almost the first day they were at Fitzwilliam House, Mr. Pattinson came to the handsome sitting room that Marjorie had given over to Elizabeth’s private use, and said that a Colonel Pes-kull, or somesuch, was come to see her.

“Who?” asked Elizabeth, bewildered.

“A regimental surgeon, madame,” said Mr. Pattinson. “He gave me his card— hold a moment, I shall find it again.”

“Oh, it is probably a friend of Mrs. Kirke’s, or her brother’s,” said Elizabeth. She set aside the christening gown she was making for her Aunt Gardiner (now expecting her fifth child) and tried to brush out the wrinkles in her black bombazine gown. “I suppose he must bear a letter from her. Show him in, and have some tea sent up.”

This did not sit entirely right with Mr. Pattinson. “Receiving a gentleman alone, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

“I sit with Mr. Darcy alone often enough.”

“That,” said Mr. Pattinson, fishing in his trouser pockets, “is different, ma’am.”

“Because of the Newfoundland?” Elizabeth asked, rather impishly. By September Boatswain had decided the only greater joy in life than running into the sea was following Darcy from room to room, and the Earl had made a present of Boatswain to Darcy. It was difficult to say whether man or beast was better pleased with the arrangement. The coachmen certainly weren’t. It was not an easy thing transporting a large, slobbery Newfoundland from Hampshire to Derbyshire and then from Derbyshire to London.

“Because Mr. Darcy is family,” said Mr. Pattinson, disapprovingly. “This gentleman is unknown to you. A member of the family ought to be present. Ah! Here it is.” He handed over a calling card reading ‘Colonel Bénet Pascal, regimental surgeon, Coldstream Guards.’

Elizabeth stared at it a moment and said, “Very well. Would you see if Lady Honoria is free?”

Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan arrived just before Mr. Pattinson showed in a dark-haired, nearly handsome man in his late thirties. Colonel Pascal was in looks and manner very clearly a doctor, and one of the better classes of doctor to boot. He looked as if he should be wearing a black coat in a Harley Street examining room, speaking softly and kindly to a society lady of the benefits of sea bathing for nervous complaints. That was not to say he looked ill at ease in his uniform. Indeed, he wore his gold braid and sword as Elizabeth wore her diamonds— with a sort of muted pleasure and self-awareness that though it had not been his idea to put it on, he knew the decoration became him very well, and he was proud someone had seen fit to bestow it upon him. He greeted Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan first, and then turned to look at Elizabeth.

“Pascal, this is Elizabeth, Richard’s widow,” said Lady Honoria.

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said he, with a little bow. Elizabeth curtsied, with the vague feeling she had curtsied to him before.

Honoria cleared her throat. “I... I think you will want to speak in private; Dora and I shall be by the fire, if you have need of us.”

“Please, will you sit?” asked Elizabeth, gesturing at the chair on the opposite side of her work table.  

Colonel Pascal perched straight-backed on the edge of his chair, an act that somehow combined nervousness with good breeding.

Before he could speak, Elizabeth said, suddenly, “I have seen you before, I think. In Belgium.”

He inclined his head and said, with heightened color, “I had no idea you would be at the interment madam, or I would never have dared—”

“Oh no,” said Elizabeth quickly, “I technically was not supposed to be there. If I hadn’t appealed to Duke of Wellington less than five minutes after my husband died, I really doubt he would have yielded to my entreaties. And I know very well it was only his being there that allowed me to go. So extraordinary a circumstance could not have been predicted. You must not think so meanly of me, or apologize— or if you must apologize, only do so for not introducing yourself to me at the interment. It would have saved Honoria some trouble.”

“I think it was trouble she was glad to have,” said Colonel Pascal. Then, uncertainly, “I beg your pardon, I am... I suppose, having seen you commandeer the Duke of Wellington so you might attend your husband’s funeral, I ought not to have been surprised you would like to meet me. The more ridiculous dictates of society do not govern you. But....”

“But Honoria’s letter surprised you?”  

“Since receiving such an extraordinary communication, I have been... bouleversé ,” said he, delicately— though Elizabeth already could not imagine him doing anything crudely ; even his amputations must be as quick and graceful as a haberdasher cutting silk. “I was surprised to hear from Lady Honoria, surprised indeed at the contents of her letter, surprised again you would have any desire to meet me, and shocked that you should actually receive me.”

Elizabeth hastened to assure him she had greatly desired his visit and, added, “I did not ask you here to demand answers of you, I just....” She felt tears stinging at her eyes. She took a moment and said, in a tone of forced composure, “If our situations were reversed, I would have wished to hear from you.”

Almost involuntarily, Colonel Pascal put his hand upon the table, near hers. “I confess, when I saw you at the interment I had a wish— a very unworthy wish— to make myself known to you. You see—” this he said with great difficulty, and a hint of an accent, in the pronunciation of his vowels “—I hold myself in some way responsible for Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death. I am the regimental surgeon for the Coldstream Guards. I could have gone to Hougoumont, but I chose to send one of my assistants in my place. Only four companies were at Hougoumont, after all; the other six were engaged elsewhere.” His hand trembled a little on the table. “I ought to have gone, I know I ought— I heard from three other surgeons a joke, what they thought a good joke— that Colonel Dunne was so understaffed he’d enlisted the officers’ wives as stewards. I ought to have known Colonel Dunne would not therefore go to Hougoumont. He would not risk the lives and honors of so many respectable ladies; he would set himself up a decent distance from the battle and wait for the injured there.”

Elizabeth hesitantly put her hand over his and said, trying her best to ignore the tears streaming down her cheeks, “Please, there was nothing you could have done; Richard died of septicemia, not any immediate injury.”

This did not cheer Colonel Pascal. “I have... a talent,” said he, haltingly, “or I suppose a reputation— any patient I personally attend has a greater chance of recovery without infection than nearly any other surgeon in the army. It is one my family has enjoyed for generations; my mother’s father was Abraham Bénet, chirguin to King Louis XV. I highly doubt it is an inherited ability, merely inherited method.”

“What do you mean?”

Colonel Pascal hesitated and asked her if she knew anything of Jewish custom; she admitted she knew only that one of Marjorie’s friends, Mrs. Cohen, did not serve meat and dairy at table at the same time. “There are certain rituals,” said he, “about what one does when touching that which is unclean. My grandfather taught me to wash away the impurity with vinegar, before and after each surgery. To this I have added washing the wound itself in vinegar. The scent is so strong, it keeps away the miasmas that bring fever.”

Elizabeth did not know what to say to this, but talked of the Earl of Matlock’s new ambition, to establish a corps of medical officials, as there were corps of engineers. It was impossible for Colonel Pascal to be cheerful in such circumstances, but he at least grew interested in such an idea, and, after offering some suggestions of his own, promised to think over any further proposals and write them to Honoria.

They lapsed into silence and Colonel Pascal asked, “Is this why you wished to see me, Mrs. Fitzwilliam? I am of course happy to be of any service to you or your father-in-law in this regard.”

“Partly,” said she, glancing at the door, to make sure it was closed. It was. Elizabeth moved her embroidery hoop, revealing the stack of letters she had taken from her writing desk, and pushed them across the table.

Colonel Pascal caught them and looked down at them in disbelief. “ Putain ! Oh, pardon me, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I am only... surprised. Again. He kept these? And you...?”

“I thought I ought to return them,” said Elizabeth. “I am afraid that I looked through some of the letters, to be sure I was returning the correct ones. I tried not to read them, but I could not help noticing that the last time you wrote to each other was 1810. I met Richard in 1812. I can hardly be jealous of a relationship that ended two years before I knew Richard existed.”

He looked down at the letters, and ran his thumb over the length of black velvet ribbon in which Elizabeth had bound them.

“I have not... offended you, I hope?”

“No,” said he, slowly. “Only surprised me. I keep coming back to that word, though it does not encompass what I mean to say at all.”

“You may tell me whatever you like.”

Colonel Pascal made a soft noise, almost a laugh. “I hope you will not be too distressed, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, when I say that I came to see you because I was curious. Very ill-bred of me, I know. It is only that I never believed that Richard could like a woman as well as a man. I was inclined to think it one of his many social shields, to prevent him from being utterly crushed by his family’s disappointment and disapproval. We ended things because I insisted I was right, and he ought to admit he was an invert, and make his family accept him as one. He claimed better self-knowledge and would not. There was no compromise to be reached. But I was shocked to see the depth of your grief, and the respect that it engendered in no less a person than the Duke of Wellington, who has more reason than most to be skeptical of soulmates. I began to doubt myself. When Honoria— Honoria , whom I’d heard of as one of our most outspoken campaigners for equal rights— wrote to me saying her brother’s much beloved widow wished to meet me, I— I cannot tell you what I thought.”

“You can,” said Elizabeth. “I am not missish.”

He cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon in advance, all the same. I suppose— I imagined a society match, the sort that had always tempted Richard. Not a true one.”

Elizabeth began to see why Colonel Fitzwilliam had felt happy about his soulmark only after meeting her. Feeling a little offended she said, flatly, “I can assure you, sir, that was not the case. I very deeply loved my husband, and he loved me.”

He looked rather ashamed and said, “I know how shamefully I have been in the wrong. I have been writing to Honoria, and thinking over all I—  I see now, that Richard did not need to, nay could not compromise on his own identity; all he was asking, of me, and of everyone else he loved, was to be accepted for all he was. And not... feted or fussed over, per say— just to be a normal, unremarkable part of his family and his society once again, as he had been before his mark appeared. And I am heartily ashamed— so heartily sorry— that I can never apologize for so injuring Richard. You never doubted his inclinations.”

This sounded more like a statement than a question, but Elizabeth said, firmly, “No, never.”

“Nor found them... distressing?”

“No.”

“Nor—”

“I loved my husband as he was,” said Elizabeth. “That is it and that is all.”

Colonel Pascal’s smile was wry, and a little sad. “I am quite glad you married Richard, then. I think you made him happier than he felt he had a right to be.”

Elizabeth could not respond to this, but tried to dash away her tears to do so.

He moved his chair to be beside hers and said, in what was evidently his best bedside manner, “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I see you loved him just as much as I did— perhaps moreso, for you actually understood and accepted who he was, unlike myself.” He coughed. “If you will forgive the impropriety, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

“Of course.”

He pulled back his sleeve to reveal ‘Ricard.’

Elizabeth undid the ribbon at her wrist and showed him the ‘Fitzwilliam’ there.

“Yours was a more exact match,” said Colonel Pascal, comparing their marks. “No errors in translation. We always justified it to ourselves that I would be Bennet, not Bénet in Hampshire, where he was born, and he would be ‘Ricard’ in Roussillon, where I was.”

“Did you flee the Revolution, then?”

“Yes, though, as I was only five at the time, I do not much recall it. Though in general Napoleon has been kinder to my people than any English king, my grandfather was too much at court to be popular with the French peasantry. When I saw Roussillon again, at the end of the Spanish campaign, I recognized precisely nothing.” He stared at the ‘Fitzwilliam’ at her wrist. “If it will not distress you, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I should like to call upon you again, to discuss the Earl of Matlock’s reforms. I am in England until March, giving medical exams to all the new recruits at the Guards’ headquarters in London.” He looked awkward. “As long as....”

“His Lordship... expected you existed, but has no notion what you were to Richard, or what your name actually is. I think if we pronounced your name the French way, there would be no....” Elizabeth hesitated and then supplied, “My father-in-law has a very specific image of Richard he wishes to preserve. He will very determinedly fail to notice anything that contradicts it.”

Colonel Pascal offered her a sweet and fleeting smile. “I had always gotten that impression.”

***

To her surprise, Colonel Pascal’s company made the interminable discussions of wording and phrasing, and initiatives to push or let fall much easier to bear. He knew Elizabeth’s world of mud, tents, and drumbeats, but could more deftly and easily package it for the Fitzwilliams to slot into their rigid narrative of clauses and subclauses. He brought to them medical officers who had long wished for reforms, professors of medicine who could speak to new technologies and trainings, the members of Whitehall with whom he interacted, and whose importance must be flattered if such ideas were to actually be implemented.

In some ways, Elizabeth thought, Colonel Pascal would fit in much better with the Fitzwilliams than she did. But there was no use in thinking about it. She and Colonel Fitzwilliam had chosen each other, rather than anyone else. They had all made their choices, and all accepted what they could and rejected what they could not.

Elizabeth admittedly struggled to accept all she could, but began to feel as if she was really shaping something important and useful. The actual practice of politicking, outside of bill writing, was as dull and aggravating as Elizabeth had found it to be that summer and fall. There was such hedging, such flattering, such trading— and yet so little progress made— perhaps a line changed, or a single vote secured.

Darcy, at least, hated it as much as she did. She was frequently unguarded in her remarks to him when he visited or dined at Fitzwilliam House. (Though Elizabeth was now into her seventh month of mourning, and could permissibly wear greys and purples, and go out into the world, she still, stubbornly clung to her gowns of black crepe and bombazine, and refused to dine anywhere but at home.)

Though Elizabeth had somewhat feared her need of Darcy’s company was far greater than his want of her own, Darcy seemed to seek out her company with increasing frequency... especially since Georgianna was behaving very oddly. She had spent Christmas with her brother at Pemberley, and was spending all January with Kitty, at Longbourn. Mr. Bennet had agreed to bring Miss Darcy to town in late February, as he had already committed himself to going to town with Mary, who had been accepted to another course (this time in archeology) at the British Museum. Mr. Bennet did not pretend to understand why Georgiana, who had always wintered in London, should wish to be in Longbourn when the cold weather rather negated all the benefits of the country; he was inclined to think this visit one of the absurdities of close female friendship, mixed with the Darcy habit of wishing to have one’s own way even— or especially— when it was inconvenient. Mrs. Bennet insisted her husband was wrong and that the country was a vast deal pleasanter than the city in any season, and that, after two seasons of London, of course Miss Darcy would wish a nice long, restorative lease in the unspoilt hills and meadows of Hertfordshire. Elizabeth was inclined to believe her father on this point, as— judging by the number of worked slippers, embroidered handkerchiefs, and horribly ugly knitted scarves that were almost daily sent from Longbourn to Darcy House— there could be no amusements to tempt Georgiana to Hertfordshire.

Darcy had a different interpretation of the overabundance of accoutrements he now possessed: Georgiana was not bored, she was merely trying to show how productive and accomplished she would be if she was always in the presence of Kitty Bennet. Ever since leaving for Longbourn, Georgiana had been asking to have Kitty stay at Darcy House for the season. Though Darcy almost always acquiesced to Georgiana’s demands, he held firm in his repeated refusals. It did not fit his notions of propriety for his household to be comprised of merely himself and two young ladies, without a female chaperone.

“Or because you do not want to endure twice the talk of lace without a guard?” asked Elizabeth, dryly, when he had come to call on her one frigid, late January afternoon.

Darcy, leaning with his arm on the mantle above the fire, cleared his throat, but could offer no better defense. Boatswain, lolling adoringly at his feet like a living hearthrug, made soft, cozy grumbling sound, as if in agreement.

“Whatever happened to Mrs. Annesley?”

“She is now Mrs. Grantley.” Darcy looked slightly amused as he crouched to rub Boatswain’s upturned belly. “I had meant to give Mr. Grantley a hint Georgiana would not make a suitable mother to his children, as they were her own age, but before I had finished offering him port, he informed me he was carrying off Georgiana’s companion instead. They were obliging enough to wait to marry until the end of June, when the Bingleys could take Georgiana to Matlock.”

“Oh, I am very sorry I did not send her a wedding present,” said Elizabeth.

“It would be unlike Mrs. Annesley— that is, Mrs. Grantley— to resent you for it, given the circumstances.”

“Have you any thought of finding Georgiana a new companion?”

Darcy grimaced. “I suppose I must. Though Georgiana was very upset by Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death; I cannot think she will wish to be much in society. Perhaps I will suffice as a chaperone this season.”

Elizabeth remembered Darcy’s earlier troubles with Mrs. Younge and understood his reluctance. She offered a sympathetic grimace.

Darcy addressed Boatswain for a moment, and when the dog had obediently rolled over and had gone to sleep, asked Elizabeth, “And are you enjoying your own stay at Fitzwilliam House?”

“There is a reason,” replied Elizabeth, “that someone as meek as Georgiana categorically refused to live here, and prefered her own establishment. That is not to say it is not very comfortable. It is far preferable to have meat and claret at every meal instead of salt beef and tea boiled in a cauldron over a campfire. It is only that everything here is a performance. I do not like being a stoic widow, but they are so dreadfully disappointed when I am not.”

Darcy looked at her consideringly and said, “You are not, I think, the sort of person to dwell upon your grief forever.”

“No,” Elizabeth admitted. “And I am a little ashamed of it. I am... to be quite honest, Mr. Darcy, I do not know what I am. I am not stoic. I still feel terrifically blue-deviled at times, and I will always miss Colonel Fitzwilliam, but I am so tired of crying.”

Mr. Darcy said, after a moment, “It sometimes feels to me like learning to jump over a missing stair that cannot be repaired. I know all is not as it should be, but....”

“There are times when you are grown horribly accustomed to it, and no longer notice it,” agreed Elizabeth. “Is it that a good thing? Is it not? I can hardly tell. It is , and that is all I am prepared to acknowledge.” She leaned her elbow on the arm of her chair, and her cheek against her hand. “Oh, it’s a wretched business. I wish grief was something tidy and timely, like I have always been lead to believe. Six months of deepest grief, then six months of resignation, and then a lifetime thereafter of perfect cheerfulness. Or, as Lady Catherine and my father-in-law would have it, a year and a day of perfect stoicism. How are you ?”

To her surprise, Darcy smiled.

At her bewildered look, he said, “I had a letter from Bingley this morning.”

“Are he and the Janes well? Are the renovations are progressing apace?”

“Yes to both. And Miss Bingley is engaged.”

Elizabeth’s arm slid off her chair in shock. “And not to you!”

“She was determined,” said Darcy, “but I was moreso.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Good God, Darcy, that is worth a smile! Do we know the gentleman in question?”

“No, I don’t think so. She met him in Bath— a Mr. William Elliot, a widower, and cousin and heir to Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch.”

“Have you met Sir Walter then?”

“Yes, and his eldest daughter, Miss Elizabeth Elliot. We were introduced....” He considered it. “When did we meet in Hertfordshire? Was it in the fall of 1811 or 1812?”

“1811.”

“Then I had the displeasure of dancing with Miss Elliot at Almack’s, and at several private balls in the spring of 1811.” He turned from Elizabeth to pick up the poker and stir up the fire. “It is rare that a man in my station in life is looked down upon as a social inferior, but so it was with Miss Elliot.”

“What was your crime?”

“I am not a baronet.”

“Oh dear,” said Elizabeth, lips twitching. “That is a heavy crime indeed. I wonder she did not inform the nearest magistrate.”

“By virtue of being a magistrate of Derbyshire myself, I suppose she did manage to do so.”

“I hope you were very severe with yourself!”

“I certainly asked myself some very searching questions after enduring her company for an entire season.”

“Too lenient by half,” said Elizabeth, leaning back in her chair. “Poor Darcy! Plagued by rude Elizabeths, all that year. One condescended to you all spring, the other was impertinent to you all fall.”

“I vastly prefer the second Elizabeth whom I met that year,” said Darcy, still prodding the fire.

“Have a care, Darcy! You have just given me licence to be impertinent to you forever.”

“Four years of it has done no harm. In fact, it improved me considerably.”

“So be it then! I shall tease you until one or the other of us dies.”

He seemed to be smiling at the fire. “You may regret so lasting a promise.”

“Perhaps, but I have just sworn it before a magistrate; I cannot renege on it now.” Then in a more serious mood, she added, “You must tell me if I do plague you unduly. I take such comfort in your society; I would not have it be otherwise for you.” But, as she knew Darcy could be easily made uncomfortable with displays of affection, Elizabeth immediately changed the subject to the opening of Parliament, until Boatswain pawed at the door to be let out, and Darcy returned home.

***

Elizabeth reported the news of Caroline Bingley’s engagement to Marjorie and Mary Crawford the next day.

“No!” exclaimed Marjorie, with dismay. “A William Walter Elliot just bought the rotten borough of Meddleford. I need his vote!”

Mary was surprisingly vexed by the news. “I thought Mr. Elliot was courting Anne Elliot.” For Elizabeth’s benefit, she added, “The second daughter of Sir Walter, and a fellow inmate of ours at the Bath Seminary for Young Ladies.”

“You do not think it a true match, between Miss Bingley and Mr. Elliot?” asked Marjorie, in a tone of put-upon shock.

“I think Mr. Elliot has been unkind to Anne, one way or another. Pray, what was the name of his first wife?” It was the work of quite half an hour to find some old letters from Anne Elliot, which confirmed that Mr. Elliot had been unhappily married to a woman rich in both pounds sterling and first names. She had thirteen of them, including both ‘Anne’ and ‘Caroline.’

“Well, we are no closer, then,” said Mary, frustrated. “I cannot blame Miss Bingley for securing a man with such good prospects, and indeed, I applaud her for it, but I only wish it had not come at the expense of Anne. Everything seems to come at Anne’s expense.”

“It seems to me a stroke of fortune for your friend,” said Elizabeth. “This gentleman’s character does not hold up under even so mild a scrutiny as three ladies consulting an old letter.”

“I cannot think him a sensible man,” agreed Mary, “if he should profess to like an Anne Elliot and then instead marry a Caroline Bingley.”

Marjorie had been rifling through her desk, and withdrew some notes on the new crop of MPs she hoped to cultivate. “I meant to invite Mr. Elliot to a dinner at some point. I suppose it shall have to be sooner than I intended. I do not want to see the new Mrs. Elliot fighting for precedence when going into dinner. Merely imagining it puts me off my tea. I do not think I could eat a whole dinner after actually seeing such a display.”

Mary laughed delightedly. “Oh Marjorie, you are upset! I have never heard you say such a thing aloud.”

“I usually just think it,” agreed Marjorie, sourly. “But after having successfully avoided Miss Bingley all last season, I am extremely vexed I should have to take notice of her.” Marjorie tore some paper to bits, which seemed to restore her to equanimity, and began to write names on them and arrange them around a sheet of paper meant to represent a dinner table. “I suppose there is nothing to be done for it. Mr. Elliot will marry Miss Bingley. At least we may have the excuse of mourning to give only small dinners, no balls or parties, and never dine with them again, after the initial invitation.”

Mary was still too disgusted on behalf of her friend to happily cede this first point. “What advantages does Caroline Bingley have that Anne Elliot does not?”

“A fortune of twenty thousand pounds?” suggested Elizabeth, reading Marjorie’s notes. “Mr. Elliot received four hundred and three votes in favor of his becoming the MP of Meddleford... which is two hundred and thirty-seven people more than currently reside in Meddleford. It must cost a great deal indeed to raise the inhabitants of the churchyard to cast their ballots. I am pleased to see so democratic a man has taken power.”

Mary grimaced over the paper slips. “Marjorie, dearest, what are you doing? If one was forced to use this dinner party as a representative sample of English citizens, one would be forced to conclude that the male sex ought to be exterminated for the good of the race as a whole. What are you about?”

“Winning,” said Marjorie. “Also, that is very cruel to Mr. Darcy; he is less stupid than most men.”

“But more censorious. I stand by my first assessment.”

“Well, this will change your opinion.” She finished one last slip of paper and slid it over. “What do you think of my guest of honor?”

Mary picked it up and snorted. “The Duke of Wellington? I think you should set a chair out for Elijah instead, like Mrs. Cohen does at Passover. You are far more likely to get an ancient Israelite than the Duke of Wellington. He is only in England a month, for the opening of Parliament. He has been deluged with invitations.”

“Yes, which is why I have thrown precedence to the wind, and seated Elizabeth on his left,” said Marjorie, calmly. “Oh dear, that will upset Lady Catherine. Best not to invite her.”

“With such an inducement as one of England's many war widows, the Duke of Wellington will of course attend,” said Elizabeth, but Marjorie chose not to accept this as sarcasm.

“He will.”

“Marjorie, really, do not make me responsible for securing you the most sought- after guest in London!”

“You do not recall,” said Marjorie, placing Miss Bingley far from Elizabeth, “how he said the entire battle of Waterloo hinged upon my poor brother-in-law barring the gate of Hougoumont?”

Elizabeth replied, dryly, “As your poor brother-in-law is now buried not five miles from that gate, I doubt he can tempt the Duke of Wellington to attend a dinner party in London.”

Marjorie continued on unperturbed. “You do not think he will at least feel intrigued by the idea of seeing the widow of the man who won him Waterloo? The widow he personally escorted to her husband’s graveside, in defiance of strict propriety?”

“A widow still wearing full mourning?” Mary asked.

“Mary, after all the awe and adulation, you do not think the Duke of Wellington is eager to sit next to a pretty, witty woman whose bombazine and blacks declares she is not and cannot be in pursuit of him? One who will give him a well-informed discussion about military tactics? You know as well as I do that His Grace has no coherent conversation about anything but the battlefield.”

Mary scanned the paper scraps and asked, “Are you inviting the Duchess of Wellington, my dear?”

“Of course,” said Marjorie, “but it is such a pity she promised to attend Mrs. Willoughby’s ball that evening. I believe it is a promise of long standing.”

Mary laughed suddenly. “Why did I ever doubt you? Marjorie, you are a marvel! What shall he choose? The jealous squints and continual, fussy inanities of the Duchess of Wellington and her friends, or the fine eyes and finer wit of Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

Put this way, his attendance did not seem unlikely.

Elizabeth was therefore unsurprised to come down for dinner and see the Duke of Wellington waiting in the drawing room, standing a little apart from the rest of the guests with Mr. Darcy. They were talking, or at least, as much as two reserved men who did not know each other and hadn’t much liked each other the first time they met could talk, and both turned to her with patent relief.

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam!” exclaimed the Duke, taking her outstretched hand and kissing it. “By God, it pains me to see you in black like this. How are you, madam?”

Elizabeth answered as composedly as she could, taking some comfort from Mr. Darcy’s steady, slightly worried gaze on her, and his continuing, if silent presence by her side.

The Duke of Wellington replied, “Colonel Fitzwilliam was a most competent man. I do not use that word lightly.”

Elizabeth smiled. “As I am well aware!”

“I should have recalled my lecturer on the picaresque would have already a good example of how rare competence is in the British Army.”

“I saw incompetence both major and general,” said Elizabeth, recalling a pun of which she was still rather proud. “A very rarified combination, sir, and one difficult to forget.”

He shook his head. “I only hope Boney trembled as much as I did when reading our list of generals.”

They were so long in talking about the retreat from Burgos His Grace greeted the other guests distractedly, if at all. Miss Bingley sought to remedy this by going over to Elizabeth with her usual show of false friendliness.

“Dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said she, all graciousness, “how very elegant you look this evening. Your bombazine is so simply cut! Not even a ruffle or a band of embroidery at the hem. So modest!”

So unfashionable, translated Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had never been a dedicated follower of fashion; she preferred to look as if she had stepped out of an Ancient Greek frieze, rather than a fashion plate. “There is so little one can do with the broad hem required by mourning; I am glad to see my poor efforts have not gone unnoticed. Miss Bingley, may I introduce you to His Grace, the Duke of Wellington?”

Wellington clicked his heels together, already predisposed to dislike Miss Bingley for interrupting his conversation on military tactics to speak of bombazine.

Miss Bingley turned to Wellington with a smile. “You will not believe it, Your Grace, but I knew Mrs. Fitzwilliam when she was a young girl running wild in Hertfordshire, her petticoats six inches deep in mud.”

The Duke of Wellington said nothing.

It was impressive, the degree to which the Duke of Wellington said nothing.

Miss Bingley began to doubt herself. She turned to Mr. Darcy. “Mr. Darcy, I am sure you recall Mrs. Fitzwilliam tramping three or four miles, above her ankles in dirt, from her father’s estate all the way to Netherfield?” To the Duke of Wellington, “That was my brother’s estate, sir, before he purchased another in Derbyshire.”

“I recall Mrs. Fitzwilliam making the journey to visit her sister,” said Mr. Darcy, “who had fallen so ill she was unable to leave Netherfield.”

The Duke of Wellington turned fully to Elizabeth saying, a little abruptly, “I do believe I saw you twice at Waterloo, did I not?”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Both times triumphing over the mud to render aid to some fellow creature— the first time rescuing your regiment’s medical supplies from the thunderstorms, and the second pulling a drowning man from a well.”

This second was an accident, as she had really only meant to draw water to treat Colonel Fitzwilliam’s fever and she protested this. His Grace raised an eyebrow. “Ah yes, only attempting to render assistance to your mortally wounded husband, upon whose actions hung my whole strategy for my right flank. I see. You have acted with the most abject self-interest.”

Elizabeth was startled into a smile. “If Your Grace is so determined to compliment me, I shall not try to stop you. After all, Napoleon himself could not manage to stop you from your Sunday dinner, when you were determined to have it.”

Wellington found this style of teasing gratifying, and expressed his pleasure that Elizabeth should be his seat partner for the evening. He was attentive to her, in his way, and though they spoke almost entirely of Hougoumont, the conversation was lively and did not lag or lapse. Indeed, it soon drew in everyone else at the table.  

Elizabeth ceded her share of it when the Earl of Matlock began steering the conversation away from the battle, to his bill, and finished her meal in relative silence. She was not displeased to leave the table when Lady Stornoway suggested they leave the gentlemen to port and cigars. For a half-hour after that Elizabeth was forced to politick with Marjorie, which she hated, and it was with real relief that she saw the gentlemen coming in from dinner.

Darcy, as was his habit, came immediately to her side.

“How was it?”

Darcy grimaced expressively.

“Did Lord Matlock carry the day at least?”

“Fortunately.”

Elizabeth offered him a half-smile. “I think we will be equally glad when this battle is won— oh Mr. Elliot! I must congratulate you on your engagement.”

Mr. Elliot was a good-looking man, as elegant and fashionable as Caroline Bingley, with a similar, albeit better hidden sense of his own superiority. He smiled and, as Darcy refused to give up his place on Elizabeth’s divan by the fire, took the chair opposite them. “I thank you indeed, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I believe— no, I daresay that I know we have some acquaintances in common, besides my fiance, my sweet Caroline. I think you are acquainted with Colonel and Mrs. Wallis?”

Elizabeth maintained, with great effort, the polite smile with which she had begun the conversation. She had indeed known them; they had been in the more fashionable first battalion of her husband’s brigade in Spain. She had cordially despised both Wallises for their frivolity and want of sense. “Yes, we are a little acquainted. I have not seen them since Toulouse! I hope they are in good health?”

“Indeed, yes. They are presently in Bath, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, very comfortably so, and Mrs. Wallis is in daily expectation of her confinement.”

“What happy news! I hope you will convey my sincerest congratulations to her.”

“I shall, and she and the colonel of course send their condolences. I have often heard them say Colonel Fitzwilliam was a very competent man— a colonel for the battlefield rather than the parade grounds, if memory serves.” It did— except for the context of the statement, which Elizabeth well remembered. It had not been a compliment when it had first been uttered. “I did not have the pleasure of knowing your husband, but as a fairly recent widower myself, I believe I can understand your feelings at the present moment.”

“Too kind,” murmured Elizabeth. Darcy shifted next to her, and when Elizabeth glanced at him, the twitch of his mouth and lift of an eyebrow seemed to convey what he thought of the sincerity of this speech. But the conversation they had thereafter was sensible enough Elizabeth began to wonder if Caroline Bingley might actually have found her match. There was sense enough, and a decent understanding, and an emphasis on gentility above all. As long as he had the appearance of gentility, he did not care if he was actually acting as a gentleman should; and Elizabeth had found this to be pretty near Miss Bingley’s sense of what was ladylike. Mr. Elliot and Miss Bingley seemed to be equally concerned with appearances, and any inconsistency of manner or character arose chiefly from wishing to shew themselves in the best light possible to their interlocutors.  

When Marjorie grew exasperated with Miss Bingley’s attentions, she suggested parlor games “for the young couples” and devoted herself to the tea service. Mr. Elliot, expressing a wish to please his hostess as well as his intended, finally left Darcy and Elizabeth. They parted with him without a pang.

Elizabeth did not feel up to the frivolity of parlor games, and shuddered at the thought of having to kiss any of the male guests, and so kept to her divan, with the excuse of the christening gown she was still making for her Aunt Gardiner, a task to which she was rapidly proving unequal.  Darcy maintained his hold on other half of the divan, taking care to produce a novel he did not intend to read, so nobody would talk to him. To Elizabeth’s mild surprise, Wellington took Mr. Elliot’s chair, where he sat and silently read a newspaper.

His Grace spoke only once to her, to ask if there was any coffee, and, after thanking Elizabeth for procuring him a cup, lapsed back into silence.

Elizabeth was by now too constantly in Darcy’s company to find such reticence unusual, and did not think to talk herself until Wellington tossed aside the paper with a sigh of deep satisfaction.

“Napoleon still on St. Helena, sir?” Elizabeth asked, briefly raising her eyes from the filmy batiste she was trying (and failing) to pin into pleats.

“Not a word on Boney,” His Grace said, with relish. “By Gad, what a pleasant change. You know, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I cannot get through an entire newspaper at home? A novel would be straight out.”

Darcy, who had not advanced much in his own, made a noncommittal noise.

“Nor any of my clubs,” Wellington mused aloud. “And I cannot think of the last dinner I attended where I was not fussed over so incessantly I could read more than a sentence. Hm.”

Marjorie declared the dinner successful in all its aims, because His Grace, having at last found the one place in London where he could read a newspaper without being disturbed, accepted whatever invitations Marjorie sent him, as long as it was understood and accepted by the rest of the party that he would only sit next to Mrs. Fitzwilliam at dinner, and afterwards.

Elizabeth was more amused than flattered by this; her great friendship with Mr. Darcy had habituated her to the habits and preferences of rich and taciturn men of importance, and she had known of Wellington’s fondness for defensive works from the Peninsular War. That so great a man as the Duke of Wellington would chose to build her up as a wall against the society of people he disliked, like he had built up the forts around Torres Vedreas against the French, occasionally made her laugh, but did not alarm or surprise her. After all, like Torres Vedreas, His Grace had three lines of defense at Fitzwilliam House: Marjorie first, as gatekeeper, who let her guests know the lay of the land, and skillfully tripped them up when they dared trespass; Darcy, next, whose manner frightened strangers away from approaching during port, and even moreso after dinner; and Elizabeth last, whose conversation and presence deterred all but the most determined. Wellington even had a final defense, like Napoleon’s Old Guard, in the discussion of the Earl of Matlock’s bill, which, without fail, always brought over the Earl of Matlock or Lord Stornoway, to bear the unwanted guest away, to talk of how he would be voting, or how her husband or father or uncle etc. thought to vote. His Grace was happy to lend his support to the bill; he had no objections the establishment of a Royal Army Medical Corps, as long as it fit into a hierarchy that pleased him, and as this proposed department would be part of the Army Medical Service, and under the command of his good friend, and the Surgeon-General of the Spanish Campaign, James McGrigor, this pleased him very much indeed.

***

After what seemed an interminably long time (but was really only a month), Lord Matlock’s Bill for the Establishment of a Permanent Royal Army Medical Corps and the Standards Thereof was presented before the House of Lords. Elizabeth sat with Marjorie in the lady’s gallery, wearing her widow’s veil and longest, most draping gown of black bombazine (and simplest fur-lined black cloak) while trying to look like patience on a monument, instead of bored. As important as she knew this all to be, she was not captivated by a number of old men blustering at each other. The main argument against the bill seemed to be this: our army beat Napoleon’s. It obviously works. Why tinker with it?

Lord Matlock and his allies were long in explaining why, and his opponents were longer in accusing them of being unpatriotic. This, at least, was something interesting. Elizabeth got to see her father-in-law, quite red with rage, ask no less a person than the Duke of Marlborough if his son had given his life for Britain, and if his son had been martyred on the very gate that won Waterloo. This was not actually true, as the true culprit in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death had been septicemia, but it was so good a rhetorical flourish, Elizabeth was inclined to let it slide.

But thereafter the objections grew less interesting, and Elizabeth grew bored. She almost didn’t realize when the bill had been passed. Only Marjorie tightening her grip suddenly on Elizabeth’s arm pulled her out of some vague thoughts of whether or not she had answered Mrs. Kirke’s latest letter.

The votes were tallied; the bill cleared the House. Now it was over to the Commons. The MP from Lambton, whom old Mr. Darcy had hand-picked some years ago, introduced the bill, with a gravity and decorum that no other MP bothered to emulate.

This debate was the more amusing of the two, for the Commons was the rowdier of the houses. It was very much like going to the theatre, as everyone clapped, or cheered, or jeered, or booed as they were so moved. And mostly, they were moved to boo.

For two or three really dreadful hours, Elizabeth was convinced the bill would fail. The Earl of Matlock could not obviously sweep into the house and demand to know who else’s son sacrificed his life for Britain on the very gates of Hougoumont, and fumed silently on the bench before Elizabeth, Marjorie, and Mary. From time to time he would turn to Lord Stornoway, which was not a helpful exercise, and he increasingly turned to Honoria, who could offer him better information.

Elizabeth was tormented by the idea of having to go through all this again , when Darcy, watching implacably next to Stornoway, turned to Marjorie and said, “I think your dinners have been well digested.”

Mr. Elliot had risen to speak. Mr. Elliot was a very smooth orator, calm, elegant, and damnably persuasive. He settled the crowd quite admirably, and by dint of addressing only MPs who had supported the bill, at least in part, managed to imply that the debate was not whether or not the bill would pass, for surely no one thought that the Duke of Wellington, who had helped shape the bill, could be in any way wrong about what was necessary for the British Army. The debate was about how it should be implemented. Surely it was better to pass the bill now, to establish the corp, and then pass subsequent bills to reform and reformat? He then broke out a wholly unnecessary anecdote about the Duke of Wellington’s mentioning Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s mud at Lady Stornoway’s dinner party— or, at least, Elizabeth thought it unnecessary, and highly embarrassing— but when Mr. Elliot implored the other MPs, “And this, gentlemen, a widow, a respectable widow, of good birth and breeding, whose sense of delicacy and propriety is so great, she remains all in black, though her husband is gone an eight month— this lady was forced to run out into the mud like a kitchen maid, collecting bandages, for there were no men to help her, and no other supplies to be had. How can we, as a civilized nation, allow this to be the standard of the British Army?” provoked more outrage than Elizabeth would really have liked.

She had not minded assisting Colonel Dunne, and was still grateful she had been allowed to do so. To hear what had seemed to her very rational, pragmatic choices made out of necessity and a sense of duty, treated with horror by politicians who had little to no idea of what actually happened on a battlefield, or what it was women actually did there, was aggravating in the extreme. “For heaven’s sake,’ she thought. ‘Even in the fashionable regiments the wives of common soldiers helped to ferry the wounded off the field!’

“I do not know if that dinner was well digested,” was all Elizabeth said. She knew Darcy had heard her, for he had raised one of his folded arms in order to hide a smile behind his hand, but Marjorie said, distractedly, “Well, it will do.”

Everyone agreed with Mr. Elliot, it appeared. Sir Thomas Bertram, whom Mary Crawford despised, got up and took the MPs soundly to task for allowing standards to so slip that good English ladies, who ought to have been safely at home, were instead forced to make up for the improper and quite shameful failings of English men, by going into battlefields like this. What was next, forcing women to pick up guns and shoot at enemy soldiers? (Elizabeth wanted badly to mention that this already happened, especially in artillery units, and was so common an occurrence Wellington had made one Spanish lady a captain of artillery during the Peninsular campaign). But there it was, the final push to seize, once more, the mantle of patriotism from the other side! The fragility of British womanhood had been invoked, and it was sacrilege not to defend it.

The bill passed.

Elizabeth was infuriated.

Darcy was shaking with laughter when he helped her into the carriage.

“Not a word from you,” said Elizabeth, arms folded. But, as he was so disobliging as to take her at her word, Elizabeth burst out, “Did you recognize the Mrs. Fitzwilliam Mr. Elliot spoke of, and Sir Thomas took up? A strong gust of wind seemed likely to blow her away.”

“It is no very great likeness,” agreed Darcy.

Elizabeth nearly threw something at him, but as he then handed in Mary Crawford, she nobly refrained. Mary was in roughly the same humor as Elizabeth. It was not, she said, that she was unused to men being wholly ignorant of the efforts of women, and decrying female efforts in any public thing— for her pet political issue was the abolition of slavery and she and the other female abolitionists were neither welcomed nor appreciated by Mr. Wilberforce and the other Evangelicals with whom they were forced to ally— but it was very galling to have to listen to Sir Thomas Bertram speak for so long on so irritating a subject.

“I have never heard someone speak so long on a subject they know so little about outside of Rosings Park,” said Elizabeth, with some asperity. “Good God, women have always been going onto battlefields. From whence sprang the myth of the Valkyries but women doing what they have always done, and carting the wounded off the field?”

“I know his answer: excessive drink and unEnglish behavior,” replied Mary. She snapped her fingers. “ That for Sir Thomas! Do you know, Elizabeth, that he was almost my father-in-law? I have made a very narrow escape.”

Elizabeth grimaced.

Darcy managed to pull Miss Duncan from the crowd, and helped her into the carriage as well— or rather, held out the door as Miss Duncan scrambled nimbly up the steps. She nodded to Mary and Elizabeth and said, “Ach, ‘tis an honor to be in the presence of the personification of female delicacy. I bet your votives burn feathers and leave offerings of smelling salts to ye.”

“So fitting a portrait of me, is it not?” asked Elizabeth, with some asperity.

“I envision now,” said Miss Duncan, “a replacement of your portrait in Fitzwilliam House. Your imitation of the Lavoisiers, with your white muslin and with Colonel Fitzwilliam at his desk, will no longer do. No, you must be painted afresh, with your widow’s veil and a broad hem of mud on your bombazine gown, in a dead faint.”

This hardly improved Elizabeth’s good humor and she was in rather a foul mood at the celebratory dinner that followed. She was half-tempted to throw off her blacks out of spite, but as she hadn’t even bothered to order any fabric, let alone any gowns, in the appropriate greys and purples of half-mourning, this was not possible. A gown of black spangled muslin, with a demi-train and short sleeves, was the limit of her defiance.

She was able to vent some of her displeasure at dinner, when the Duke of Wellington asked for a summary of the debate. He was departing the next day for France, where he was head of the Anglo-Allied Army of Occupation (something he enjoyed, and the French did not) and though he had made time for the debate in the Lords, he did not hold the Commons in high enough esteem to gift them with his presence. Colonel Pascal, who was on her right, also tried to soothe Elizabeth out of her crochets with talk of all the bill would do.

“It is of great practical value,” said Colonel Pascal. “Unless there is severe mismanagement or very bad action, no surgeon will ever be forced to take bandages off the dead to use upon the living. There will be less likelihood of miasmas entering through wounds and throwing off the humors. We will save a great many lives.”

Mr. McGrigor, the Surgeon General of the Armed Medical Services, overheard this and called down the table at Colonel Pascal to expound on this understanding of how making doctors wash with vinegar fit into what they knew of miasma theory. Mr. McGrigor had been at pains during the Spanish campaign and afterwards, to insist that, though regimental surgeons and assistant surgeons were warrant officers (officers assigned to a regiment, rather than purchasing a place in one), were gentlemen nonetheless. It was a hard sell, for medicine was not yet ranked among the gentlemanly professions of the law (and politics), the Army or the Navy, or the Church. The implications that a gentleman’s hands could be unclean, even up to the elbows in battlefield amputations, rather distressed Mr. McGrigor. He was very willing to allow wards and tents ought to be scrubbed with vinegar, or the chlorinated lime water which smelled better, though as strongly as vinegar, but doctors?

“Sir, doctors are the closest to the wound—”

“Then the wound should be washed.”

“I am not entirely sure why,” admitted Colonel Pascal, “but I have noticed that when I washed my hands as well as the wound, none of my patients developed septicemia. When I did not wash my hands, some still did. I can only imagine it has something to do with scent—”

This developed into a very complicated argument amongst all the doctors assembled at the table, and was only resolved when Darcy invited Colonel Pascal to try a more monitored experiment at the hospital for the poor he had built in one of the villages near Pemberley. Elizabeth returned her attention to the Duke of Wellington, and, for her pains, was teased for being a model of feminine delicacy.

The usual division of the sexes after dinner did not stop the great fun everyone had at Elizabeth’s expense over Mr. Elliott and Sir Thomas’s remarks, or the quarrel that broke out between the ladies who thought a regiment of female soldiers absurd, and those who did not. Elizabeth and Lady Honoria got into a tedious, two-smiles-away-from-open-warfare discussion of Joan of Arc with Lady Metcalfe, one of the Earl of Matlock’s closest allies; Wollstonecraft was misquoted by a dowager baroness; the Sacred Band of Thebes was unwisely and ineptly invoked; and, thanks somehow to Lady Catherine, everyone got into a vicious fight about the proclivities of Alexander the Great. Lady Catherine tried to argue that there was only one way virtuous women could understand Alexander the Great’s friendship with Hephaestion, and Marjorie warningly steered Elizabeth to her usual divan when she grew too sarcastic before a half-dozen allies the Earl of Matlock could ill afford to lose.

Elizabeth took up a volume of Byron’s poetry, in further protest. Her aunt Gardiner had smuggled it into Fitzwilliam House, as the Earl of Matlock had a unconscious but (to the women of his family) quite transparent aversion to Byron, who treated the ambiguity of his soulmark as a subject of considerable interest, not a problem, or something of which to be ashamed. Colonel Fitzwilliam had always been reticent on the subject of Byron, for though it had somewhat relieved him to know there was one person in England not only public about his dual loves, but proud of it, Byron’s more unconventional desires were so antithetical to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s conventional ones, Colonel Fitzwilliam had more often been irritated rather than not at Byron’s notoriety. (This had not stopped him from reading all Byron’s works; it had merely stopped him from confessing he enjoyed them.) Elizabeth had fewer qualms than any Fitzwilliam; Byron’s poems moved her, and certain of them struck at sentiments she had seen in her husband but never heard him express. It felt sometimes, when reading the poems, she was soothing the long buried hurts she had not entirely been able to excavate or understand in the three years of her marriage to Colonel Fitzwilliam— a final closure, as necessary to her as the bill had been to the Earl or Marjorie.

When the gentlemen rejoined them, Colonel Pascal saw what she was about and offered his usual sweet, fleeting smile.

“I realize it is a day of misunderstandings,” said Colonel Pascal, “but a partial victory is better than none.”

“To acknowledge that would be to put aside the stoicism expected by my nearest and dearest, as well as all my farthest and most cordially despised.”

“But not by any who know you,” said Colonel Pascal. “You know, I wonder, really, how history will remember us. Will anyone know why I, a stranger to the Fitzwilliams, a mere regimental surgeon, should have been involved with so important a bill? Will future army surgeons, staring at the two barrels of vinegar per company, think, ‘it is because of that dratted Colonel Pascal I must take valuable time sticking my hands into this dreadful smelling stuff when he didn't even know why this helped’?”

“Your wishes of fame are so modest!”

“Yes, I only wish to be complained about by the future generations.”

“Do you mean to take up Darcy's offer?”

“If I can get leave for it, or if McGrigor will transfer me from the Coldstream Guards to his staff,” said Colonel Pascal. “Do you think Mr. Darcy means his offer? One does not always know with these great men.”

“One knows with Darcy,” said Elizabeth. “If he makes a promise he will fulfill it. He made me a very vague promise to me once about being of service, if ever I should need him, and came straight away to Belgium, to take me home after Richard’s death, even before he knew who had won at Waterloo.”

Darcy was still getting his coffee from Marjorie and Honoria, but seemed to notice her looking at him; at least, Elizabeth caught him starting to smile as he looked at her, and before he turned his attention back to his coffee.

Colonel Pascal followed the line of her gaze and frowned at Darcy’s back. “If you will stand credit for me, as you did with the Fitzwilliams, perhaps...?”

“Of course! It still remains a family affair, you know. Mr. Darcy was named for his mother rather than his father. He, too, is a Fitzwilliam.”

Colonel Pascal seemed to realize Darcy was a man to be trusted, for when Darcy came over, he politely brought up the hospital, and asked for particulars of patients and staff. Darcy answered matter-of-factly, and if he did not know an answer, he promised to find it. As they talked, Elizabeth began to move past her own irritation and realize just how great a thing had been accomplished and grew a little more contented.

Perhaps the Fitzwilliams had not treated her husband as they ought, but they had loved him enough to change the world for him, in a small way. She had done her part; she had avenged her husband’s death as much as she could.

This particular thought startled her a little. She had thought it unfair to be widowed so young, unfair that society had demanded even this sacrifice from someone it had made feel unwanted, despite the position his birth, breeding, and accomplishments ought to have commanded. She and her husband had been wronged by society and she had— however minorly— been revenged upon it.

The great weight of her grief had been by degrees lifting. At this, at the knowledge she had helped force society to consider her husband a hero, worthy of immortalization via this act of parliament, she felt almost light.

Darcy noticed his and said, with a raised eyebrow, “I am pleased to see the widespread acceptance of smallpox inoculation in the parish of Kympton causes you such delight.”

“I beg your pardon, I was not attending.”

“I daresay your mind was more agreeably engaged.”

“It was. I was thinking— you will laugh, but I am so relieved I do not care, so here it is: I have had my revenge on society, for taking my husband from me.”

Colonel Pascal was bemused by this speech, but Darcy understood her.

She attempted to explain, “For the first time since Waterloo, I do not feel like any second I might burst into tears or fly into a temper. It all sounds ridiculous, but—”

“I know Mr. Elliot’s speech displeased you, but he did speak truly on one point. We are comfortable with a really appalling standard of care within the military. You have made society uncomfortable about it—”

Elizabeth inadvertently interrupted him with a laugh. “That sounds petty enough for me!”

“—as uncomfortable,” continued Darcy, “as it made you. Either you or society must change, and you won. Society changed.”

She wondered how much of this speech applied more to Darcy than herself. He had been quietly useful wherever he could— concerning himself with the ordinary business of Matlock so the Earl and Lord Stornoway might focus their energies on politics instead of estate management, assisting with the hundreds of re-writes bills demanded, and attending dinners when he hated the society of strangers. Elizabeth's heart and her spirits were light; she teased him, “Thank you, Mr. Darcy! You make me seem a proper heroine, when all I have done is obey society’s dictates despite my own impulses. I was stoic when I would have cried, friendly when I would have withdrawn from the company of strangers, and eloquent on Hougoumont when I would rather have shrieked at the heavens. In so saying, I suppose I have, in my small way, sacrificed a great deal to see this bill passed, and I hope my poor husband may rest easily, knowing he will not be forgot— by me, or by history.”

“That is more than most of us can claim,” said Colonel Pascal.

The Duke of Wellington came over at that, and there followed a very good conversation about history, before the Duke reached for the paper and they fell into their usual habits— or mostly. Elizabeth moved a little ways away to vent her spleen about Lady Catherine to Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan, with Colonel Pascal to look pleasantly scandalized in all the appropriate places. She returned when the Duke of Wellington set aside his paper, and Darcy (shanghai’d by Lady Catherine), managed to make good his escape, to form their usual trio.

As Elizabeth had been sharpening her wit on Lady Catherine for quite ten minutes, her conversation was at its liveliest. She managed to get laughs from both gentlemen, a triumph she had not anticipated, and even to make Darcy speak a little (usually he merely listened to whatever conversation Elizabeth had with Wellington). Wellington was usually one of the first to leave, and he did not break this habit. However, when Elizabeth rose to curtsey, His Grace chucked her under the chin and saluted her in courtly, rather than military fashion.

She was considerably startled to be kissed and involuntarily put a hand to her veil, half wishing to hide behind it.

The Duke of Wellington looked smug. “My dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I look forward to seeing you without your veil, next time I am in England. You are too charming to stay a widow.”

Elizabeth blushed violently; she suddenly recalled the dry, but rather ribald message His Grace had sent to Colonel Fitzwilliam before the eve of Quatre Bras, that the Duke of Wellington would likewise prefer to be closeted with her, than preparing for battle. “Too kind,” she managed.

“Too right,” said the Duke of Wellington. “See if Matlock will give you that Italian wingback chair I sit in as part of your dowry; I find it very comfortable.”

“I am not sure,” said Elizabeth, dumbly. “I believe that chair has been in the family for years.”

“A pity! This was a comfortable refuge. But we must all march on. Let me know your new address, once you have it, and I shall write you.”

With that he departed, leaving Elizabeth extremely confused. She turned around to see Darcy looking at her with what seemed to be absence of mind, and Mary Crawford, coming over with a cup of coffee, staring at the scene with raised eyebrows.

“ Well ,” said Mary, taking the Duke’s vacated chair.

Elizabeth was suddenly very glad she hadn’t told Mary about Wellington’s bit of impudence before Quatre Bras. She would never hear the end of it. “Well nothing .”

“If the Duke of Wellington kissed me —”

“I did not ask him to!”

“But he still did .”

“It was nothing more than a courtesy!”

“ Was it?” Mary turned to Darcy. “You are a man, Mr. Darcy. What do you think?”

Darcy seemed to come out of a sudden abstraction and said, “I beg your pardon, I was not attending.”

“That, sir, was quite obvious,” said Mary. “Elizabeth, I am not sure if the Duke of Wellington was hinting he’d offer for you, but—”

“He was not in the least,” said Elizabeth, in some exasperation. “His Grace is married.”

“His Grace can be un married. He could well afford a divorce. Any judge would grant it to him as soon as they compared the Duke and Duchess’s soulmarks.”

“There are times, Mary,” said Elizabeth, almost throwing herself onto the divan, “where you remind me far too much of my friend Mrs. Collins. You are always wanting to marry me off to everybody.”

“I am not at all,” said Mary. “I am only wishing you to be married to the Duke of Wellington, and not very seriously at that. He thought you’d be married the next time he was in England. I wonder,” said she, turning to Mr. Darcy, “what he could mean by that?”

Darcy gave her a look which would have checked the impudence in anyone else.  

To Mary Crawford, who did not highly think of men or marriage, and who had given up claims to both, as soon as she realized they were unnecessary to her happiness, it merely dampened it. She turned instead to Elizabeth and asked, “How many invitations did you receive today, Elizabeth?”

“Too many,” said Elizabeth. “I am really considering hiring a secretary to write back, ‘Mrs. Fitzwilliam thanks you for your kind invitation, but regrets to say she cannot attend, because she is in mourning.’ No matter how many times I write it, no one seems to be able to read it. The invitations still come. I think my handwriting is become illegible.”

To Mary and Marjorie’s amusement, and Elizabeth's alarm and dismay, there was now a great misinterpretation of the circumstances that lead to the Duke of Wellington reading his newspaper in Fitzwilliam House every evening. Most of society believed that if one wished the Duke of Wellington to attend a party or a dinner, one must invite Mrs. Fitzwilliam. And, as Elizabeth rejected all invitations with the excuse that she was in mourning, and the Duke continued to spend his evenings at Fitzwilliam House, this impression did not go away.

She was now distressed that some further misinterpretation would be placed upon the Duke of Wellington’s preference for her society. Elizabeth had not really thought of remarrying— her grief had been too profound— and though she was now ready to admit that her husband’s death had not effectively destroyed all hope of future happiness, she was not prepared, as of yet, to go much farther than that. And though she had met a number of women, both on campaign and in society, who took on lovers, Elizabeth was not in the least tempted to emulate their example. Almost abruptly, she said, “I am not ready to think on... on going back into society and all that would imply. It was only today that the most lasting tribute to my husband’s memory was accomplished. I must have some time to—”

“To become accustomed to the idea,” suggested Mary. “But you have wealth and position, which are the usual inducements to wed; you need never marry again if you do not wish it.”

Elizabeth flushed and said, “Mary!”

“Believe it or not, I was not actually insinuating anything there. Perhaps five years ago, or even four I might have suggested your indulging in a liason, but I would not now . Not after what caused my engagement to be broken off. Did I ever tell you about it?”

Elizabeth glanced at Darcy, who had decided the most interesting thing in the world was the fire, and could not be pulled away its rapt contemplation.

Mary caught the tail end of this look and said, “Mr. Darcy knows, I’m sure. It was something of a scandal.”

“I had put it out of my mind,” said Darcy, with more politeness than accuracy.

“My brother,” said Mary, “formed a liaison with the eldest, married sister of my intended. She left her husband for him, and now lives in a secluded farmhouse where I dare say she tells the neighbors that her husband died on the Peninsula.”

Elizabeth was shocked beyond all power of speech.

Darcy looked uncomfortable, but he had ever since Mary had started teasing Elizabeth about a second marriage.

“Obviously, Mr. Bertram and I did not marry after that. He seemed rather offended, actually, that I tried to smooth things over and make it easier on his sister— but that is that. As common as they are, I cannot think any good can come out of a liaison where one partner is married. No, take up with a bachelor, if you must.”

“Mary!”

“I only tease you with that because I know you won't. You’d remarry if you wanted that sort of affection again. For my part, I can live very happily without it. I used to be fairly evenly split in the issue, but these days, I find the company of women provides all I desire.” Elizabeth had been more surprised by the idea of Mary’s actually wanting to marry a man than the news that Mary now preferred her own sex. It explained, too, the very close friendship that had existed between Mary and Colonel Fitzwilliam.

They talked of more indifferent subjects after that, though Darcy continued to stare at the fire, his arm and clenched fist upon the mantel. Before he left that evening, Elizabeth whispered to him, “I wish you would not be so censorious; I am convinced nothing in my manner invited such a salute.”

“No,” said Darcy. “But there is a playfulness and an archness to your manner that can be easily misinterpreted.”