pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 28

CHAPTER 28

After discovering the letter from Elizabeth in his aunt's study, Darcy took to his bed for two days. He didn't just take to it, in fact. He may as well have become it.

He did none of the things one usually feels obligated to do when "taking to bed": sleeping for long stretches, moaning, writhing in sweat-soaked linens, crying out at fever-born phantasms, slurping spoonfuls of broth offered by anxious loved ones, vomiting said broth back onto ones who are, as a result, even more anxious and slightly less loving.

No. All Darcy did was lie upon his bed so still and silent that he could have been the stone effigy of himself atop his own tomb.

He did not sleep. When his aunt had food sent up to him—not broth but dollops of calf's brain, bloody chunks of Kochi's unagi, lumpy pastes it was impossible to identify except as "flesh" freshly minced—he did not eat. Even when Lady Catherine herself came up with his daily dose of serum, he only grudgingly consented to part his lips and swallow the astringent crimson liquid that kept him alive (more or less).

What need had he for more life? His appetite for pain was sated.

"I don't know that I should tolerate this disagreeable humor of yours," Lady Catherine said on the second day of his self-imposed internment. "Wallowing in self pity—it is beneath you. What do you have to moon about, anyway? With each passing day, up till now, you have gained more strength. There is every reason to believe you will make a full recovery."

"You see more reasons than I, then," Darcy muttered. "There is much I fear I shall never recover."

"You talk twaddle, Fitzwilliam. You are a warrior! Face this battle like one, and you will lose nothing you do not choose to."

The old woman's tone was harsh. Yet even as she snapped at her nephew, she laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. It was, Darcy knew, as warm and nurturing as Lady Catherine de Bourgh ever was.

How easy it would be to turn her tenderness into disgust.

Anne had helped him erase every trace of his entry into the study, so his aunt had no way of knowing he'd penetrated her sanctum. If he told her he'd seen the letter, he'd also be admitting that he'd violated her trust.

And how would Lady Catherine feel if she knew he hadn't been eating because the plates being placed before him held nothing he now recognized as food? The kitchen might as well send up bowls of sand. It was the light alone he hungered for. The light of living things—such as glowed even in the bony old fingers that rested on his shoulder, so tantalizingly close to his mouth.

Darcy looked up into his aunt's dark, piercing eyes and forced himself to smile.

"You are right, as always. Soon, I'm sure, I will be well enough to take up my sword again, and together we shall finally rid this land of its last dreadful. If this cure of yours works, no Englishman or Englishwoman need ever again feel the shadow of the plague fall upon them."

Lady Catherine returned his smile, though it was so tight and dry, it was a wonder she could pry her lips apart to speak.

"There. That is what I like to hear. Keep thinking of England, Fitzwilliam, and before long you will be strong enough to save it."

Darcy managed—just barely—to keep smiling until his aunt left the room.

How could he be expected to save England when he hardly had the will to save himself?

Not a minute after Lady Catherine stepped out, Anne slipped in. She always managed to avoid her mother's visits. At first, Darcy had assumed it was because she didn't like seeing him take the serum; it would be a reminder of the foul pollution of his blood. Yet she'd proved so tolerant of his condition (unlike some others he could think of—and was, obsessively), he eventually concluded it was something far simpler: She didn't like Lady Catherine.