Beginning of Part 3! There is going to be one more part to this, so 13 chapters in all before we're finished.-Grace
Elizabeth Darcy yawned as she made her way down the long corridor towards the breakfast room alongside her husband. Her hand felt heavy where it rested on the crook his elbow.
"Are you well, Lizzy?" he asked, half expectant, half-mirthful. They both knew the likely reason for her current bout of exhaustion. For all her recent bouts of exhaustion, even. Their nightly activities behind the closed doors of Lizzy's room were as frequent as they were enjoyable.
Elizabeth had felt rather the wanton as of late. She couldn't seem to get enough of her husband. And he, most fortunately was more than happy to oblige his wife.
"I'm very well, William," she replied, a smile gracing her lovely face as they approached the breakfast room.
"Perhaps, given your current state, tonight, I should… keep to my own room?" he asked, his eyebrows raised slightly to show his concern. "You have been rather weary these past few days. I would hate to continue to be the reason for that weariness."
"I'm not weary," she said, waving off his concern. "I am merely living. And you, Fitzwilliam, are the reason I am living. Not the other way 'round."
He could scarcely keep the smile from his face, but he didn't make much of an effort on that endeavor. He was positively beaming by the time they took their seats at the prospective ends of the table in the breakfast room.
Georgiana arrived mere moments later, glancing at the both of them and chuckling to herself.
"I daresay, the two of you are making every attempt to remain newlyweds for your entire union, are you not?"
Fitzwilliam chuckled, shaking his head before addressing his wife. "Dearest Lizzy, I do believe my sister has implied the two of us are silly."
"We are silly, William. It is an apt observation."
"If we are silly, Sister, it is because we are happy," he replied, plopping a generous dollop of marmalade onto his toast. "Deliriously so."
"Deliriously, my goodness," Georgiana teased. "I should only hope to find someone to make me so 'deliriously' silly as my brother has become."
"You should hope for it, Georgie," William insisted, referring to his sister by her nursery name and causing her to blush scarlet.
"You are even more impossible than when you were mooning after her," she insisted, pouring herself a coffee.
"I never mooned after Lizzy," William protested.
Elizabeth beamed, realizing she was seeing a rare moment of sibling fellowship that was likely not oft repeated since they two had grown.
"You did moon after her," Georgiana insisted. "He was fit to be tied, Lizzy. You broke his heart."
Elizabeth felt a sudden pang of affection for her husband and suddenly wished he was closer to her, so that she might reach out and touch him, to o assuage any notion that she would ever do such a thing again.
"I was indeed impetuous," she conceded. "And as unmannerly as your brother was, I was just as unmannerly to him."
"I hurt your feelings, and deserved all that came to me," William assured her.
"It all turned out for the best," Georgiana said, lightening the mood considerably as she reached for a piece of toast. "A better match I certainly couldn't see. For either of you. You are allied in your silliness. You deserve each other."
The last part was a jab for certain, but Lizzy agreed. She couldn't imagine a better husband for herself than Fitzwilliam Darcy.
They finished their meal in good humor, all rising to go their separate ways following: Georgiana, to her lessons, William to his duties, and Elizabeth, to her sitting room. She was planning to pass the first morning this week in relative silence, as she had no callers scheduled.
It was a blessing, she was sure of it, and she aimed to take full advantage. She stifled a yawn as she went on her way.
She was fatigued almost daily but she suspected, as did her husband, it had to do with the nightly visits from him.
She supposed, at this point, it was less visiting and more that her husband was forgoing his own quarters altogether in favor of hers.
A smile passed over her lips the more she thought about it. A husband was supposed to have his own quarters, and a wife hers, but William had spent every single night in Elizabeth's rooms since they were wed.
More often than not, he took over for her lady's maid, undressing her and brushing her hair. His fingers had become nimble and lithe while loosening her stays, delicate as they removed her chemise, baring her to his gaze.
His own nightly routine wasn't all that difficult to learn. And, while Darcy enjoyed when Elizabeth undressed him, he preferred to be the one in the position of servitude. It suited Elizabeth just as well, especially given how prone she was to fits of exhaustion lately.
She tried to remember at what hour she and William had finally gone to sleep the night previous, as that could be the reason for all of her yawning this morning
It couldn't have been too late at night, she pondered. The moon wasn't even visible in her window, which meant that it was before midnight for certain. And they hadn't risen until a knock sounded on her bedroom door, well past dawn.
She shouldn't be so drained, by all accounts, even taking their nightly activities into account.
More curious still, were the aches and pains she'd been having as of late. She'd been loathe to mention them to her husband, but she was starting to think they should call for a doctor. At least to put her troubled mind to rest.
She swallowed thickly as she reached her sitting room, pulling open the door and sighing happily as she strolled inside, all thoughts and worries briefly forgotten as she took in her surroundings.
The paintings of Mr. Darcy's dogs were still here, but a fresh coat of paint and new paper had made the walls look decidedly more feminine. The bookshelves had been partially emptied so she could fill them with the books she'd bought in Bath. Novels, poetry, the likes of which she'd never been privy to at Longbourn. All of the new volumes looked bright against the older volumes still housed here.
She quite liked the contrast. Old and new. It was a bit like Pemberley and its inhabitants. Pemberly being the old, and the inhabitants being the new.
She settled herself upon the settee. All the furniture had been recovered, much to her delight. Even though she'd insisted to her husband that the existing fabrics covering the furniture would surely suffice her purposes, he'd sent away for samples from London and insisted she have them made over as it suited her. She'd chosen soft blues and greens, to complement the paintings on the walls and the new paper.
The entire room felt more airy now. Larger, if possible. At least when the light was being let in. The maids hadn't been in to open the curtains, so Elizabeth took it upon herself to complete the task.
She'd no sooner pulled one side of the drapes across the large windows then the overbearing weight of her exhaustion began to overtake her. Wanting to finish the job, she persisted until all the drapes were open and the room was filled with sunshine.
Of course, being weary as she was, she soon found herself sitting down once more upon the settee, a book open across her lap even though the prospect of reading it was at once too encompassing a task.
Her head lolled and her eyes closed, unable to decipher the words in the text in front of her as she fell asleep.
