A/N: Some of you are still quite skeptical about whether I can redeem Red Darcy, so I guess we'll see in the end. In the meantime, let's leave France behind and return to London.

Wade


GREEN

"Mrs. Darcy – It is half-three. The master's fever has started rising noticeably, and he is starting to sweat and thrash about."

"Thank you, Bates," Mrs. Darcy answered blearily.

The conversation, which was thoroughly out of bounds by the usual standards of propriety, was happening in Elizabeth's bedchamber with Mr. Bates, her husband's valet, whom Mrs. Darcy had come to greatly admire. Elizabeth found that the idea of waking up the entire household, or even only her maid, just so she could walk twenty feet to check on her husband was ridiculous. Besides that, in the middle of winter in London, she wore considerably more modest clothing to bed than she would to a ball. At that point, her main concern was practicality.

Bates nodded and returned to the connecting door that had caused poor Martha to blush so furiously that first night, back a few hundred years earlier. Mrs. Darcy knew that she need not panic and run towards her duty. Bates would see to things if necessary, and had he not awoken the mistress at all, her husband would have been in capable hands.

Elizabeth got up and took a few minutes to make sure her appearance was all right and collect herself; then she quickly coaxed her fire back to life and swung a kettle over it using a hook she had asked a footman to install at the doctor's suggestion. It would have water warm for washing or tea when she needed it, and Elizabeth was happy she had learned this bit of self‑sufficiency many years earlier (though she had hidden it from her mother who might have died from the shock).

Mrs. Darcy chuckled mirthlessly that if she had been asked a few months earlier what she was likely to be doing on the first of February, she would most emphatically not have guessed 'get up in the middle of the night to look in on my ailing husband who could very well die and leave me mistress of an enormous estate', but that was precisely what she was about to do.

Darcy's fever had been getting better and worse over the course of the five weeks following their marriage. At times, it seemed the doctor's diagnosis may have been incorrect, and he might escape the worst of it, but now his luck seemed to have run out. Those five weeks had been packed with instruction in how to be the mistress of a great estate. Trying to learn all that Darcy had been born and bred to do in a month seemed like a lot, but her husband always refused to make anyone else responsible. Despite numerous entreaties, he finally put his foot down in mid-January.

In one particularly testy moment, he snapped, "Elizabeth, you are my wife. God willing, you will be the mother of my children. I will entrust you with the next century or two of Pemberley's fortunes with our children, so what difference does it make if I start a few years early. I have given you trustworthy allies, reliable employees, reasonable accounts and all you need to succeed. I am entrusting you with my sister, and you cannot do that adequately and safely unless you have iron control of my fortune."

That had been the final nail in the coffin of her reservations. Like it or not, she was now responsible for the welfare of a sixteen-year-old girl who she had never been closer than two yards from, and somewhere between several hundred and a couple thousand people connected to Pemberley.

Mrs. and Miss Darcy were presently getting to know each other through correspondence, as it would be obviously suicidal to have the entire remaining Darcy family in the same house with a Typhus patient. Darcy had even argued that Elizabeth should not be the one to nurse him – once.

Elizabeth shook her head to bring her focus back to the present as she crossed the threshold into her husband's bedchamber. In an ordinary life, she would have been familiar with it for substantially different reasons, but an ordinary marriage did not seem to be her fate at that moment. She was perfectly aware that her position was one of extreme privilege that she had done nothing to earn, but she vowed that she would earn it over time.

Darcy was awake, though obviously a bit groggy. She approached the bed, sat down and took his hand. That was the entire reason for putting the kettle on, so she thought to take advantage of it. Nursing was a personal, hands‑on business and she thought to exert the right balance between caution and squeamishness. It was not the first time she would be in contact with her husband, nor would it be the last. She could not care for a man from several feet away, and in fact, she expected considerably more intimate contact as his illness got worse, but she would exercise what caution she could.

Darcy looked up at her, gave her a smile. "And so, it begins, my wife."

She sighed. "And so, it begins. I would tell you to be strong, but I doubt your pride would stand the affront of my lack of faith."

He chuckled in good humor, squeezed her hand and sighed in apparent contentment.

Bates had kicked the fire to life, or more likely had kept it going all night in the first place, and then placed a kettle with Willow Bark Tea to steep before he went to fetch the mistress.

Elizabeth spent a few minutes coaxing it down her husband's throat. He did not like it very much but did not complain. There was not a lot they could do about his fever, but they would do what they could. There were several other herbs that she thought to try, but each one would require some experimentation. His fever was not bad enough to warrant cold cloths yet, but it would certainly do so before all was said and done.

After taking the tea, Darcy seemed to drift in and out of sleep for a few minutes, and Elizabeth, having made certain there was a comfortable chair beside his bed was in no great hurry to return to her own blankets. She sent Bates to get some sleep, and hoped he would comply (unlikely), while she just watched her husband. Her feelings toward him were not love, not as she understood it, but they were far better than the grim acceptance she had expected to live her life with. She respected him. She liked him, and there was a possibility of love, but for the moment, it was only that – a possibility. Her only real emotion at that moment was a steady determination to keep him alive and healthy.

A cough snapped her back awake sometime later. From the height of the candle, she surmised that she had been asleep in the chair for an hour or two, and she looked quickly at Darcy who was coughing in his sleep. She could not think of anything positive to do for him, so prepared to watch him for a time, but then she saw his eyes snap open.

He croaked out a greeting, so she got a glass of water for him. He sat up and drank it on his own, which was at least a marginally good sign, and watched him sigh in satisfaction, and lay back on his pillows.

She thought he would fall asleep again, but he turned to her and began speaking.

"Elizabeth, can I just say that …" then he paused to get his bearings, and finally continued, "… while I am distressed that you are stuck with this miserable duty, I am happy you are here, and I am very happy you are my wife."

He followed it up with a cough, and it was a couple minutes before he could properly hear her reply. "I am very happy to be your wife, Fitzwilliam. Be strong – we will get through this together."

He nodded, and seemed to doze for a few minutes, but then startled awake to continue.

"Of everything I taught you Elizabeth, remember one thing. This is the one lesson I learned from my grandfather and my father, that I momentarily forgot in my ill‑conceived mission to rescue my cousin."

Elizabeth leaned forward and took his hands, judging that since she had already touched him, she would need to wash her hands soon anyway. "Perhaps your pride was your fault, Fitzwilliam, but I think it more likely it was your love for your cousin."

He grunted. "Do not make excuses for me, Elizabeth."

"Do not assume I am doing so, Fitzwilliam. I do not feel any need to coddle you. We promised each other truth, and truth is what you will get, like it or not. As I have said, your plan was not ideal, but it was done for the right reasons."

Darcy chuckled, not certain that raising her ire was truly his best strategy.

Elizabeth continued, "Now, you were going to tell me something. It might be a good idea to do so before breakfast."

Darcy once again chuckled. "Remember this. Strategy over Tactics. Safety over greed. Logic over pride. I have left you with good men – very good men – in the form of our steward, man of business, my cousins, uncles, friends and the like. You may even find that Bingley is a man you can listen to from time to time, as he is wiser than he looks."

Elizabeth smiled. "We have been over this, Fitzwilliam. I know who to trust."

"Yes, but here is my main point. Remember this. They are sergeants, and you are a general. They are good for making tactical decisions, but the strategic must be yours, always. You must decide. You must set the direction. You must choose who to listen to, and how much to listen to them."

Elizabeth leaned over to where only a foot separated them. "You win, Fitzwilliam. I will not go to France to retrieve your cousin."

His laugh would have been wonderful if it had not triggered a bout of coughing, and the gentleman himself seemed satisfied with the tradeoff.

Darcy fell back into a restless sleep. Elizabeth felt his forehead, trying to decide if he was bad enough to call the doctor. Since the doctor would almost certainly just confirm what she already knew, she decided to leave well enough alone. She did however wash her hands and arms, then went to her husband's desk, which she was more familiar with than would be expected, and then wrote a note to be delivered to the doctor in the morning. She left it in a pre-arranged shelf where the first servant who came to work early in the morning would take it to the butler for early delivery to the doctor, and then returned to watch Darcy for a bit.

After another hour, she heard Bates enter, and he asked, "How is the patient, Mrs. Darcy?"

"As expected, the fever is increasing. It seems to be about as we were led to expect."

"I am refreshed, ma'am. Perhaps you might care for a few more hours sleep?"

Elizabeth thought about it, but in the end, she decided she was unlikely to be able to really rest, so she returned to her room and rang for a bath and a simple breakfast. He had not quite gotten over the feeling of guilt associated with calling for bath water so early in the day, but she imagined she would need to if she wanted to follow the doctor's instructions.

Her early breakfast was a small amount of ham, eggs and porridge along with a healthy dose of tea. Her husband preferred coffee, but Elizabeth had never developed a taste for it. He had assured her that she would if she gave it a chance, but his eventual victory in that wager seemed unlikely at that time.

Once she was bathed and dressed, she decided to set about her day. Like it or not, at least for the next few weeks, she was the mistress of a vast estate, and the correspondence awaiting her perusal would not wait for her convenience.

Mrs. Weston, the older maid who volunteered for nursing duty stepped in as she started her correspondence, asked a few questions about the master's condition, then went to send Bates to his rest. Elizabeth made a note to herself that she might have to force him to his bed with reminders that this was a marathon, not a sprint, but that could wait.

By the time the weak February sun came shining into her bedroom, she was buried in correspondence, ledgers, old journals brought down from Pemberley from several past generations of Darcys, and she hardly even noticed. She was so engrossed in the correspondence, she forgot entirely about time, and was a bit startled to see Bates reenter the chamber.

"How fares my husband, Mr. Bates?"

She had resisted the urge to check on him each hour, as it was early days, and she had no concerns about his care in her absence. She thought that constantly checking on him would undermine the authority of his other caregivers, and she had to have complete faith in their abilities, or she would run herself ragged.

"As expected, madam. He is still feverish and has not woken since you last spoke to him."

"Thank you, Bates. I believe I will come for a visit now and allow Mrs. Weston to take some rest and refreshment."

With that, she left her correspondence and ledgers where they lay, and went to see if she might be able to discern her husband's condition through sheer force of will.