This one is from Lady Anne's point of view. As was established in VMC I, Chapter 35: A Time for Reflection, she died of what was likely uterine or ovarian cancer after her husband died. This interlude details some of Lady Anne's thoughts while she was on her death bed as well as past memories, including the basis for the prologue in VMC I. The Bible verses referenced are Philippians 1:21-23 and Luke 20:34-36. As I was revising what I had into this interlude, it got rather long, which is why it is split into two parts, the second of which you will get a few chapters further along. I am still going to post a regular chapter tomorrow, so watch for that even though if I post it within 24 hours it won't bump up the post.

Interlude 1, Part 1: Lady Anne: To Die is Gain?

Today while Mrs. Reynolds was sitting with me, taking her turn so that Georgiana and Fitzwilliam might have some respite, she noticed the family Bible sitting by my bedside. She picked it up and asked, "Lady Anne, do you wish me to read the Good Book to you?"

I had been reading the Bible in preparation for meeting our Lord, but now when it seemed that time was growing short, I could not bear to rest the book against my turgid middle which was still swelling with the growth that was causing me to die. And turning the pages and focusing my eyes upon the page had become difficult, too.

I croaked out a "Yes," and then added, "Philippians 1." I had read before the Apostle Paul's words about living for Christ and dying being gain and wished to think upon them again and find some comfort for the transition that was to come. For there is no going back. The separation is approaching, and nothing can be done to halt it. I try to find peace where I can.

After Mrs. Reynolds finished reading it, she asked me if I wished her to continue onto the next chapter, but I declined, saying "I will rest now." I closed my eyes, but I did not sleep. Instead, I found that my mind began to contemplate other mysteries, foremost among them, love.

I love my children; I loved them before they were conceived, and I will love them after I am dead. Love cannot be bound by the length of time that we reside here in our fleshly bodies. I know that this is true because as my body fails me and constantly pains me, my love remains as strong as ever, perhaps even strengthens when there is less to distract from it.

My love for George is stronger now than when his soul left him and only his breathless broken body remained behind. When the stabbing pain of his death faded to an ever-present ache, all the little irritants of our life together were burned away it. It all was transformed to further love by some alchemy that I cannot explain and some of what bothered me before became cherished details of how he was not perfect but was mine because I knew all these things.

George used to come to my bed and brush his ice-cold feet against mine, wrap his cold hands around me. As a new bride, I said nothing about this, did my best not to startle when he did it. When I gained a little courage, I complained about how he was chilling me, knitted him stockings to wear to bed, bid him to rub his hands together to warm them before touching me. But still, when he was in a mercurial mood, he would forgo such preparations exclaiming, "Ah, how nice and warm you are."

I did not find it very endearing at the time. But now, what I would not give to feel his cold feet and hands again!

I still feel the love George had for me. It surrounds me and comforts me, blankets me in warmth. How much greater would this love be if I were nearer to its source?

As I prepare to leave this mortal coil, I should try to think about what I will gain. I know I should be thinking first and foremost of returning to the Creator our Lord, but perhaps because I am a silly mortal creature, I think about being with George. Indirectly this is thinking on God for surely George is with Christ and surely a loving Father wishes to reunite us. Yet I have read the passage in Matthew about how one is no longer married in heaven.

I only wish to stay here in this place of pain because my children still need me. Fitzwilliam because this world does not understand him and Georgiana because of her youth. However, I take comfort that when I am gone, they will still have each other to rely upon and the whole staff of Pemberley.

While I am sure that my love will survive my death as it permeates my soul, I do not know if when it wings away that my thoughts will still go with it, and as there is nothing else to do, I shall think as long as I can. At least there is a legacy for my children in my journals. I doubt they will be able to look at them for a long time, but they will be there when they are ready and need a bit of their mother with them.

I carefully documented everything about Fitzwilliam in my journal from his earliest moments in the womb. I wrote down when I first suspected myself to be with child (I wrote down the same thing the first time, too, though I abandoned that journal when I miscarried). I wrote down when the midwife confirmed my condition. I wrote down telling George (I remember his ecstasy mixed with trepidation given our prior experience). I wrote down how the slight swell of my belly felt, when it could be contained in the palm of my hand. I wrote down the first little quiver that I could definitively say was not caused by digestion and then how the stronger movements felt (which finally reassured me he would in fact be born, unlike that previous child who had only begun to swell my belly and died months before he should have been born).

I wrote down when the first stretch marks appeared (on my right side, near my hip). I wrote down when I first realized that turning sideways no longer helped me fit through a tight space. I wrote down when I had to remove my wedding ring before the swelling sunk it into my flesh. I wrote down when my belly stuck out enough that I could rest my journal comfortably a top it as I sat.

I wrote down how those first practice pains felt and my embarrassment when the midwife arrived and explained to me that if this was the beginning of my travailing that I would know it as these were nothing like the true pains that would follow. I recounted when the practice pains changed to what I thought might be real pains. I wrote between them as I could do naught but give into them while they were occurring, and soon they were too close together for me to be able to write anything down at all. Then there was a gap of a few days in my journal before I wrote again.

I wrote about the laboring and finally the joy of finally being able to do something: the need, desire, and fulfillment of pushing as my body wanted to do as a deep groan of effort escaped me. I wrote of being stretched and burning, touching the top of his head with my fingers when only the top of his head peeped out, pushing once or twice more and feeling him slither out in a gush and then the absence of sensation, only a little burning pain remaining.

I wrote about the wonder of seeing him that first time for just a moment, when the midwife held him up, misshapen from the birth, slimy, whitish and silent, blinking solemnly, as she announced, "Tis the Darcy heir, you've done well."

I wrote about seeing him again after the midwife rubbed him dry, wailing now, while I waited for her to place him in my arms. I wrote about a love so strong that I cried after I counted each finger and toe, saw his well-formed ears, eyes, nose and toothless mouth, voicing through my tears, "He is perfect."

I wrote about the relief and happiness I saw upon my George's face when he first beheld his son and called him "Fitzwilliam." I wrote all these things with my left arm curled around my sleeping son, whose mouth was still fastened to my left breast (as I could not bear to have another woman perform this service for me and take him away from me if only for a few minutes, when those few minutes would be repeated throughout the day).

I kept writing as weeks turned into months and then years. I tried to write down each significant event that occurred and many insignificant ones, too.

Fitzwilliam was a large baby when first born, so large in fact that the midwife, after her first pronouncement said "He looks to be a month old already." His limbs were long and lean. He was born with a full head of dark hair. I remember that within a few days of being born he did not like to be swaddled, or at least for his arms to be confined. He nursed frequently and vigorously, and though he never got very rounded as some babies do, Fitz grew and he grew and he grew. There was never any question that he looked almost exactly like his father and even in his baby face I saw familiar expressions cross them.

Fitzwilliam almost always smiled when he awoke and saw me for the first time each morning and I am certain my face also bore an enormous grin. Before he could crawl, he loved to be held in a standing position, he loved it when I moved my fan back and forth in front of his face and above all he loved it when I sang to him. He was never more content then when being held, but besides when nursing loved to be held in an upright manner, facing outward to see the world around him.

At first, Fitz did almost everything either early or when he was supposed to do it. He smiled early, within days of his birth. He rolled over when he was supposed to. He sat up when he was supposed to. He was a bit late in crawling even when we transitioned him into a light frock that left his knees bare, but I learned from Nurse Storey that the largest of babies crawl later.

Fitzwilliam started walking right around his first birthday. Prior to that he had pulled himself up on the bookcase in the nursery and was able to walk while using it for balance, gripping it with both hands. I arranged to have the bookcase affixed to the wall then.

Beginning when he was crawling, we could not keep books on the low bookcase shelves for long as Fitzwilliam liked nothing better than to take all the books down from the shelves and when the nursery maid replaced them would simply do it again and again. Finally, I had them boxed up (save for whichever we were reading to him that day which I kept on the highest shelf, well above his reach), and placed in the bottom of the wardrobe which could be locked with a key. How Fitz wailed when he noted that the shelves were empty!

Fitzwilliam began walking when George and I were having a picnic outside of Pemberley. We sat on chairs the staff had brought out, had a banquet on a table, while Fitzwilliam was on a large blanket beside us, under the care of Nurse Storey.

Fitzwilliam ate some bites of food Nurse Storey offered him and then chewed on toasted strips of bread, making rather a mess. However, he was finished eating far sooner than us and commenced to crawl. George noted Fitzwilliam's movement and mentioned, "I hope that Nurse Storey is quick on her feet for Fitzwilliam has now all of the outdoors to explore."

However, this did not become a problem as he had anticipated, for Fitz kept crawling happily until he reached the edge of the blanket and then whined when he touched the grass with his hands. Then he sat, pivoted and begin crawling again in another direction. He was content until he reached the grass again. This time his whining changed to wailing as he began reaching out toward a tree beyond him that he could not reach.

"He wants to walk!" George announced to me.

Fitzwilliam could already walk when Nurse Storey and I each held him by a hand to help him balance. His legs were strong and moved forward correctly. However, if either of us removed our hands he would either stop all forward motion, stand and whine, or try to continue on and collapse to the ground within a step or two. We had shown George his son's progress and I knew when he proposed a picnic and that we ought to bring Fitzwilliam as well, that he wished to take his turn teaching his son to walk.

We arose from our chairs and the two of us each held one of Fitz's hands. Fitzwilliam took a few steps with us and then George told me, "Let go." Fitz looked at me when I pulled away from him, reached out his hand toward me and I commenced to back away a little. I thought my son might collapse then, but then he took a couple more tentative steps with George helping to hold him up. Then George let go. Fitzwilliam stood there, wobbly on his own, a worried looking expression on his face, and then took a step or two by himself before he toppled forward upon the grass and cried.

We tried again and again. Fitzwilliam seemed eager for the activity, but each time he lost his balance and tumbled, and his hands and knees hit the grass, he cried.

"He is frustrated that he cannot yet walk," George told me.

I had a different theory, but I did not share it. It seemed to me that Fitzwilliam did not like the feel of the grass upon his hands and knees, was willing to try his best to walk to avoid touching the grass.

We tried again and again. Whereas past times we had tried to get Fitzwilliam to walk and after a few attempts he resumed crawling, this time he did not crawl, only cried and waited for us to try again. He seemed determined and indeed he did learn to walk by himself that day. As he did so, progressing a few more steps by himself most times, he had the happiest grin upon his face.

It was not long after that when we had to remove much of the furniture from the nursery as Fitzwilliam learned to move it and climb upon it to get quite high in the room. Although he was never left alone, his nursery maid might be busy cleaning up one mess he had made (there were many times that he "played" by throwing toys) and his nurse another one, only to discover Fitzwilliam halfway up the bookcase or perched upon the windowsill.

These things worried me a bit and so I spoke to my husband about it. I told him, "Something must be done. Fitz has been climbing atop the table and today he slid a chair over to climb upon the fender and the other day he climbed halfway up the bookcase. Although it is bolted through the wall, if he had fallen, he could have been hurt."

George responded, "Our Fitzwilliam is certainly a strong and clever lad, fearless too. But toddling children must be saved from inadvertent harm. I will certainly have everything he could climb upon removed."

George visited the nursery that day with a pair of footmen and resolved what types of furniture needed to go. In the end, nothing was left but the sofa, a chair, a couple of heavy trunks, and the wardrobe. In the empty room, the wardrobe loomed, but it was safe enough, for when it was locked there was no way for him to climb upon it and it was far too heavy for Fitzwilliam move.

By the time Fitzwilliam was a year and a half old he had been babbling for some time but never seemed to keep a word for more than a day or two. Nurse Storey and I were quite busy saying things to him and trying to name objects for him (ball, block, pillow). We were both determined to get him to keep a word. He did eventually, and more words besides, but he seemed to repeat far more words than he knew the meanings to.

I did not have much experience with babies. The families my family associated with before my marriage were few and my husband did not like the society of many. If there were any babies among those we knew, they were confined to the nursery when guests were in their home, save for perhaps making a brief appearance with a nurse to be admired before being whisked away again.

My brother married shortly after me, but the distance and the strain on our relationship for how George and I had forced our marriage to come to pass over his other designs to match me with a peer, was such that I had not yet seen him since my wedding day. I had neither met his wife nor his children, three boys born before my Fitzwilliam and one born shortly thereafter.

Although we had visited the de Bourghs and spent the summer together when Fitzwilliam was almost one year of age and Catherine's daughter, my namesake Anne, was a few months old, I did not have a sense from that of how my child should be now. Anne had not yet begun to crawl. I remember she usually had a solemn look on her face as she looked at things, seemed to take everything in.

There were certainly families among our tenants that had little ones, but I rarely saw them unless someone was ill and during my confinement and afterwards based on the midwife's advice, which George vigorously enforced, I was told to avoid anyone who was ill. It would not do for me to become ill and then have little Fitzwilliam sicken.

I did see the Wickhams' son in passing now and again, but not too often as I was not fond of his mother. It seemed to me from the slight impression I had from these past encounters that Fitzwilliam was a rather more active child than George, but I knew little else of how they might be different.

I spent rather a lot of time in the nursery in those days. Fitzwilliam was my child and I loved him dearly. While I was not always nursing him or entertaining him, I liked to be on hand.

When I brought my knitting with me, I had to bring a ball of knitting wool just for Fitz as if I did not, he would try to seize the one from my lap. And it had to be of equal quality to mine own as he was not fooled by ordinary wool when I had finer lambswool mixed with angora in my lap. He was like a kitten, unrolling it and getting himself tangled in it. Wool was the first word he truly learned and retained, though he said it as "ool."

I was quick to anticipate Fitzwilliam's needs as they were quite predictable, but as he grew and was slow to pick up more words, Nurse Storey kindly suggested that I wait and then ask, "Want _?" I should wait for him to respond by saying something and then say the name of the thing as I gave it to him, but never let him get overly frustrated. This seemed to help him acquire more words.

As he gradually moved to stringing words together, he began to attach "more" to everything. He especially liked to ask for more wool, drink and biscuit: "More ool. More dink. More bisit." Sometimes he asked for "More Mama" which meant he wanted to nurse or to be held.

I did not ask Nurse Storey if he was like other little ones. By now I feared somewhat the answer. It was something we did not talk about between ourselves. Although I was certainly fond of Nurse Storey, she knew her place and did not strive for such a level of intimacy in our discourse and I did not initiate it.

My husband, on the other hand, had no problem in voicing his concerns to me and such uncomfortable conversations were becoming more frequent as Fitz grew older. I recall an occasion when Fitzwilliam must have been about three and George came to the nursery and tried to play tin soldiers with him. Fitz was not having it, virtually ignored the soldiers my husband was drawing out of the box, save for overturning them now and again, instead played with his wool.

George told me that evening while escorting me to dinner, "While Fitz is certainly a well-formed child, he is just not like other children. Something is off. He should certainly be speaking better by now, and it is odd that a child his age would rather play with your wool than play war."

I was always quick to defend Fitzwilliam to George, even though at times I wondered, too. I said, "Each child is different. While I am sorry, he did not want to play with you, he is shy with those he does not know well."

Then I attacked George very deliberately, to turn his thoughts onto his own failings and away from those of our son, saying "You do not see Fitzwilliam often enough for him to know you well."

This led to a quarrel where George defended how much time he spent with Fitz. He noted, "As the master, I have all of the estate to manage. I cannot hide in the nursery and neglect my duties as you do."

That night as I lay alone and awake in my bed, I considered the matter further. In many ways Fitzwilliam seemed just like other children I had observed at a distance, but he did not play the same as I recalled playing as a child. He liked to line things up in long rows, to completely unwind a ball of wool and then wind it up again, to walk around and around a round table, dragging a toy upon a string. He was already reading the simplest of stories by then, but I had no idea if he understood the words. He could recite nursery rhymes from memory and sing simple tunes, but he was only recently reliably using a chamber pot.

In noting how much Fitzwilliam liked my wool and other long and thin things, I had begun presenting him with such things now and again, much to his delight. But I was not sure my husband would approve. But should I not seek to give my child things he liked, even if they were not the sorts of things that most children would have wanted?

When Fitzwilliam was four years of age, George accepted an invitation to visit my brother, the Earl of Matlock. When we were children, I simply called him Dudley but now I was not sure how to address him anymore. We were to visit him and his family at their country estate, my childhood home of Matlock, and to meet his now five sons. It was now looking as if Fitzwilliam would be an only child and I believe George wanted our son to become friendly with his cousins.

Fitzwilliam did surprisingly well during the long journey. Sometimes he rode in the carriage with his nurse and sometimes he rode with his father and me. When with us, Fitz played with a new ball of wool I had prepared for him specifically for the journey while I talked to him about meeting his cousins. It was difficult to know if he was paying any mind to what I was telling him. While played with his wool, I knit with mine and George read. Fitz would bring the ball over to me when I needed to untangle it.

When Fitz became tired of the wool, I also set my knitting aside. Then, he sat upon my lap and looked out the windows. I pointed out cows, goats, sheep and horses to him. He also slept for long stretches, rocked to sleep by the carriage.

When we arrived, Lady Matlock and I took my son to the nursery where her three youngest children awaited us. I noticed the three of them were sitting on a rug listening to a story. They arose when we entered.

Fitzwilliam seemed excited, saying "Boys, boys, boys!" He circled around them, looking them over, touched the yellow sleeve of one and examined their shoes.

Lady Matlock presented us to her sons, ignoring Fitzwilliam's antics. The eldest, a boy with dirty blonde hair who I could already tell would not be a handsome man when he was grown, quite politely said, "Hello Mother. Lady Anne, Cousin Fitzwilliam, I am glad to finally meet you. I am Edwin and these are my little brothers." He then told me their names and each of them in turn politely greeted us, even the youngest who was barely two years of age. I told them I was pleased to meet them, requested they address me as Aunt Anne.

The youngest seemed so much smaller than Fitzwilliam and was still all baby fat, but looked up at us and said, "Ello Mather, ello Auntie, ello Coss Fiss-illum."

I felt embarrassed then. Although Nurse Storey and I had worked with Fitzwilliam about greeting people, he had not even said hello and was even now climbing upon their rocking horse. I felt the need to explain his actions, "My Fitzwilliam has been confined to the carriage for so long, he has quite forgotten his manners. Please excuse him."

Lady Matlock responded, "That is quite alright." However, from the expression on her face, I did not think it was quite alright with her.

I found myself apologizing for Fitzwilliam so many, many times that day and for the duration of the trip. Imagining what they saw through their eyes showed me how blind I had been about my own son.

Nurse Storey seemed to understand, and we had a long talk that first day. We were in a guest chamber two doors down from the nursery where Fitzwilliam was taking a nap. I remember asking her, "Why did you not tell me how behind Fitzwilliam is? His youngest cousin can speak far better, and I do not see any of them throwing toys or tumbling books from the shelves."

She looked at me and said, "I thought you knew and that was the reason you were always in the nursery with us, to help him gain the skills he needs."

"I am there," I told her, "because he is my son. I do not understand how he cannot even speak as well as his cousin who is half his age."

"He is different," Nurse Storey told me, "but he is as smart a fellow as they come. I have never seen his like before, but he is who he is. While we can help him reach his potential, we cannot change his fundamental nature."

Then she told me something that I have long held in my heart, that I dust off in my mind when those long-ago written words in my journal where I first wrote, There is something wrong with my son, surface.

Nurse Storey said, "Lady Anne, nothing has changed. Master Darcy is still the same boy you loved yesterday and will love tomorrow. Your perception may have changed, but that is all. He can still have a good life. He just needs a bit more help and love."

I faced that next day with renewed determination. Together Nurse Storey and I worked to give Fitz what he needed. It was the focus of my life and I believe my husband was a bit jealous of my time. However, it was what needed to be done and my duties as a wife and mistress paled compared my responsibilities toward my son, for he needed me more than my husband or the household.