I remember the first day my family and I arrived in England. We were escorted to the country house of Lady Catherine by horse guard and coach after abandoning ours on the outskirts of London. I was only 10 and untrained in the art of defence when my...
It was a maybe a week or two later when Fitz and I returned from our honeymoon cottage and the edge of the estate and made our way through the front doors of Rosings house once more. But this time, we did so together. I asked a footman where everyone would be and he replied that the women would be in the upper sitting room and the men were in Mr Darcy's drawing room. So the two of us parted ways to find the group of our gender and reshow ourselves as married. I went my own way and marched through the halls of the Rosings mansion with my heeled shoes echoing all around me on the bare wooden floors, and it was only on the thin red carpets that they would be silenced. But whilst climbing the second set of stairs which would lead me to the top floor of the house, I suddenly felt ill. My stomach was churning and it was though I could have been sick in that moment on the stairs. I bent double over the banister on the stairs as a maid came to my side. "Madam Darcy, are you alright?" The Scottish voiced young woman asked me, her hand on my back and the other on my arm.
"I'm woozy suddenly" I told her, and placed my head in my hands as my head started spinning and the urge to throw up was more than before and I covered my mouth. "Just take me to my new rooms please" I said to the maid and put my arm through hers as I started climbing back down the second set of stairs. She helped me along the corridors to my new married chambers that I would share with my husband.
But the sound of my husband made me not want to make him worried. "Eve? Are you alright?" I heard Fitzwilliam ask me from where he and the rest of the gentlemen were sitting and smoking in the drawing room at the opposite end of the corridor.
"Fine. I'm fine!" I called over my shoulder to him, not wanting him to worry about me. I was perfectly fine. Nothing but a spot of morning sickness I thought just before I passed out.
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I was comfortable in the new soft bed that I would share with my new husband as I awoke from my sudden lightheadedness and opened my eyes. The sunlight poured in through the drapes hanging from the tall windows at Rosings and my feet were cold beneath the bedsheets. I rolled onto my bed from where I was laying on my right side and looked over to the door to where my husband was standing with my sister and her fiancée. "Come now, Darcy, are you trying to scare my sister away from marriage?" I joked as I sat up on my elbows in bed and gave the trio a cheeky smirk, to which I saw Fitz return with his signature smirk.
"Eve!" Annabelle leapt up onto the bed and instantly embraced me, neither of us having seen each other since my sudden wedding. "How are you feeling? You must be thrilled!" She asked as she embraced me.
"I'm fine, Annabelle. I feel fine" I responded calmly to my sister as I sat up completely and crossed my legs beneath me. But then I saw their faces and mine dropped. Oh no. Was I bitten?
"Annabelle, Cedric. Do you mind?" Fitzwilliam said before the two of them cleared out of the room.
"Fitz, what's going on?" I asked my husband as he made his way to the side of my bed and sat himself down on the edge, taking my hands in his tentatively, as though he thought whether or not to do so. His eyes were cast down at them as his thumbs slowly began stroking the back of my hands.
"Let me tell you a story of a woman who could not write, but told amazing poetry" Fitzwilliam began and looked at my face as he spoke, his dark eyes watching my face's every movement. "She was beautiful and kind, but she preferred to stay inside. And while she stayed inside, she walked around her home in search of secrets to discover. One night, she found upon a hidden doorway at the back of a cupboard and the doorway lead through to a room that she had not seen before. It was a large room, rather the size of this room,-" He indicated our average sized bedroom. "and it was filled with new dresses and gowns of which the woman had never seen before. It was like they had appeared from heaven. And the woman wanted so bad to write down her thoughts of those moments, but she couldn't because she could not write. So over time, she went back into that room and repeatedly thought the same words"
I smiled every now and then as I watched Fitz speak of this woman as though he knew the story so well. As though it were a bedtime story or a comfort to him.
"She lives in the poetry she cannot write" Fitz concluded and it took me a while to come up with a moral of the story in my head.
"Darling, you're worrying me" I told my husband as i leaned my body closer to his, to comfort him if I needed. His face dropped slowly and he lowered his eyes back to my hands as he continued to hold and stroke them. "Please tell me what is wrong" I whispered.
Fitz shook his head and smiled, still looking down. "It's nothing wrong" He looked up at me. "It's amazing" He said, tears brimming in his eyes. "We are expecting a child, Eve" Fitz told me and instantly burst with happiness as tears started running down his face.
I was shook. I didn't feel my mouth drop until I took a sudden gasp of air and clutched my hands at my stomach, now knowing that something was growing inside of it. I was shaking. I was nervous. I felt sick. My hands felt numb. I didn't know what to think. I was so happy. Fitz threw his arms around me and embraced me, but we were sent tumbling back onto the bed as his hug took me back and we ended up in amongst the pillows, crying of happiness.
