Amanda looked in amazement at the door frame. “My stars, Mr. Darcy did that? It’s hard for me to imagine him losing his temper at all. He is such an elegant gentleman.” Another pain caused Lizzy to unexpectedly bend over, nearly toppling Amanda with her sudden shift in weight. After a moment, she relaxed, and they continued their slow progress.

Upon reaching the bedroom, Lizzy sat down heavily on the edge of the Darcy family’s massive heirloom bed and resumed her attempts to tamp down her unbridled fear, watching as Amanda pulled off the counterpane and top sheets. Her voice, when she next spoke, was shaky. “Well, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, it is indeed a pleasure to meet you. Please tell me something of yourself. Do you have family here? You should have used our home for the ceremony, you know. The more I think on it, the more disappointed I am becoming. Richard and William are closer than brothers. You would think…” Elizabeth gasped and doubled over with pain, almost falling to the floor. Spasm after spasm of throbbing agony was washing over her, covering her, overwhelming her senses.

Amanda stooped down before Elizabeth and gathered up her hands. “Mrs. Darcy, have you at all begun to time your contractions?” she asked gently. Lizzy shook her head no, clinging tightly to Amanda’s hands. The fear she had so desperately been trying to hold at bay was finally beginning to overtake her.

Chapter 3

Little Harry stood at the doorway, transfixed, fascinated by the scene unfolding before him. Clearly this was one of those moments that Colonel Fitz had told him about, those moments in a gentleman’s life where he must care for the welfare of his ladies. He slipped his hand from the distracted maid’s and walked purposefully up to his mother. He crouched down, holding his knees tight, and stared intently, first into his mother’s face and then into Lizzy’s. “Is Mrs. Darling unwell, Mama?” He squinted, examining Lizzy’s face closely, deciding what he saw there could not be good. He was greatly concerned, worried about her weakened appearance. Suddenly he shouted into her ear, “ Did the Frenchies do this to you, madam?!” Lizzy turned a surprised look at him and then at Amanda.

“We are having a bit of a problem with the concept of the French,” Amanda explained to her quietly. She turned to her son. “Dearest, despite what the colonel says, French people are not responsible for all the pain in the world.”

Harry’s eyes rounded as he stared back at her, clearly registering his doubt as to that statement. He then looked behind them on the carpet. He tugged on her sleeve. “Mummy…?” he whispered.

“Dearest, why don’t you wait for Mummy in the other room. Mary, could you please take him out to the sitting room?”

“But, Mummy,” he whispered again, anxiously.

“Mummy is very busy at the moment, sweetheart. Go with Mary now.”

“But, Mummy, look. Mrs. Darling has wet the carpet. Will she be in trouble? Oh, I hope not. She’s not well. Will Mr. Darling make her sleep outside like Grandmama makes Ruffles?” His eyes were wide with concern, and he placed a protective hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. Again, he shouted into Elizabeth’s ear, “ I say, will you be in trouble? Please do not be afraid. I shall protect you.” He lowered his voice and turned back to Amanda to plead for leniency. “I don’t think she meant to do it, Mummy. You see, she is not feeling at all well. I think she must be very old, poor dear.”

“Oh fiddles.” Amanda had not heard Harry’s rather rude comment about Lizzy’s advanced age. Amanda had been staring where her son was pointing, at the large water stain on the carpet. She looked back at Elizabeth.

“Mary,” she called over to the maid. “Go downstairs and get someone from the household up here immediately. Look everywhere. Please take Harry into the next room. Harry, you will remain in the sitting room, and you will behave like the wonderful boy you are, all right, my angel?” The maid grabbed Harry’s hand but remained motionless, staring wide-eyed as Lizzy struggled with her growing fright.

“Mrs. Darcy, I am afraid that, early or not, your baby is coming quite quickly.” Amanda helped Lizzy off with her wet underclothes then to lie back on the bed, placing pillows beneath her head. She ran to a cupboard and grabbed sheets from within.

“After you bring someone up here, I want you go back downstairs and wait for Colonel Fitzwilliam. Mary, do you understand? Are you listening to me?”

The maid began backing out of the room. “I’ll just take Sir Harry with me now, mum.”

“No!” Amanda felt a sudden apprehension. “Please just settle Sir Harry into the adjoining sitting room and leave him there, where I can see him.” At her maid’s raised eyebrows, Amanda almost succumbed to the urge to shout. “Give him that Mother Goose book from my valise to read and then go and wait for the colonel downstairs. Harry, you will wait in the next room and read aloud to Mrs. Darcy and me. That will help Mrs. Darcy very much. Do not stop reading—read very loudly, Harry, until the colonel comes for you!”

When she looked back down into Elizabeth’s eyes, they were bright with terror. “Mrs. Darcy, please listen to me. There can be only one of two things happening here. Either your physician has made an error in your delivery date, or”—she hesitated with the second, knowing it was the most dangerous of the two for the child—“or the baby is coming early. If it is the former, I will be perfectly able to assist you. I have assisted in many births at my father’s hospital in Boston.”

Elizabeth fought off her panic. “What if it is the latter?”

Amanda swallowed. “I don’t really think it is.”

Elizabeth looked straight up at the ceiling and nodded.

After waiting patiently through a few minutes of quiet counting, Elizabeth squeezed Amanda’s hand. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I have heard that extreme stress or shock can bring on labor. Is that true?” Amanda dampened a cloth in cool water and gently wiped Elizabeth’s forehead then used her fingers to tenderly comb her hair back from her face.

“I have heard that also, and it may be possible, although my father never mentioned that. Why do you ask?”

Elizabeth stared intently back at her. “I received a letter that upset me to such an extent that I initiated the fight with Mr. Darcy and drove him to walk out.” Another pain shot through Elizabeth, and she gripped Amanda’s hand convulsively. “He is really such a good man. He looks so calm on the surface but is in actuality more like a duck. All the turmoil is going on beneath the surface.”

Amanda smiled, holding Elizabeth’s hand. “You must love him a great deal.”

“I love him more than my life.”

***

It was nearly twenty minutes later, and the contractions appeared to have abated. As Lizzy relaxed, her curiosity returned. “So I am now wondering whether my husband was aware of your coming here this evening. He never informed me.”

Amanda sat beside Lizzy, holding her hand and dabbing a cool cloth across her forehead. “You know how men are. I mean besides the general lack of imagination or patience on their part, they are really quite unable to deal with more than one situation.” She wrinkled her nose. “It is best when they are presented with one problem at a time, you know. Anything more than that seems to muddle their thinking.”

“I agree with you completely. The bigger picture is all they see, and they never concern themselves with small details like packing or servants or food. The most terrifying words I ever hear William utter are”—Lizzy dropped her voice several registers and sounded very aristocratic—“All that is required, Elizabeth, is…’ After he makes that pronouncement, I know it will probably be up to me to get the impossible accomplished.”

“And have you noticed that they never listen? I swear to it,” continued Amanda. “I tell Richard times, and he arbitrarily adds or subtracts a half hour…always. When I speak, he nods and nods, but he never remembers what I say. But then of course, he cannot remember what I said because he did not listen in the first place. Now, this evening he was to be at the door at seven in the evening. I waited another half hour but could not wait a moment longer, and we took off on our own. He never listens.”

“Do you love him very much?” Elizabeth smiled up at Amanda.

“With all my heart.”

***

“Can Mrs. Darling hear me, Mummy?” Harry called out from the adjoining room. “Am I helping her?”

“Yes, dearest. You are helping Mrs. Darling very much.”

Harry was into his fifth rendition of Mother Hubbard, none of them the same, the many words he could not read replaced by his vivid imagination. He had a gift for creating fanciful tales from the kernels of his children’s stories, embellishing details and adding his own characters and animal sounds. For this reading, Mother Hubbard was a woman named Mrs. Darling, deathly ill with a stomach ache from eating green apples and currently having a baby in France. She and her baby were then going to eat chocolate cake. Amanda and Lizzy both smiled in amusement as they listened.

Then the pains began again, growing closer in time and much greater in intensity. “I believe you are now two minutes apart. Things should be moving more quickly now.” Amanda leaned over Lizzy and gently smoothed back the sweat-dampened hair that had matted on her forehead. “Mrs. Darcy, I will try to feel for the child, if I have your permission?”

Elizabeth nodded and then smiled, her eyes crinkling in amusement. “I think that we are embarking onto a level of acquaintance where we may begin calling each other by our Christian names, do you not agree, Cousin Amanda?”