I am writing a book on Colonel Fitzwilliam, and I thought I’d share a bit. He felt to me like he was in danger of turning into one of those crusty old bachelor soldiers, so I made up a lady for him; I just love her to pieces. She has the acuity and insight of an Elizabeth, and the gentle vulnerability of a Jane. They meet at a dinner/ball (at the Darcys, just for a glimpse at their life) and are introduced (by Bingley), and fall rapidly and irrevocably in love. Unfortunately, theirs is not to be an easy love affair—less from their own doing than from the general disobligingness of the world. The Colonel, as an example, is ordered the very day after they meet to leave for Europe, within the week. They commit every possible moment to each other in the interim, but, of course, this serves only to make their separation harder.

The scene below comes toward the end of their week, and is the first time they actually reveal just how deeply they feel for one another—the first time they use each other’s first names. They are sitting in her home, having just left from attending her father, a consumptive, who now dozes in his room. John, to whom she refers, is her brother, who died in the war.

Disclaimer, sort of: this is an early draft, so changes will undoubtedly be made along the way. If nothing else, the grammar and syntax doesn’t have a proper Regency feel to it, yet.

*****

While they sat thus, the Colonel observed a certain tightening of her lips, and a strained look at the corners of her eyes. “What is troubling you?” he asked, his heart touched.

Coming to herself, she smiled and shook her head, saying, “It is nothing, really.”

“You did not release me when I offered that as an excuse,” he pointed out to her. “Please?” he pressed. “Tell me.”

She sighed, and her shoulders sagged; she said: “Father was very bad this morning before you came.”

“But he seems better, now: fatigued, but calm and lucid.”

“Yes, but it is a portent of things to come” she said; a deep but controlled melancholy could be felt in her tone. Her wounded air gave the Colonel a profound pang of sympathy; he had never experienced such a loss in his own life, and his imagination brought her pain directly before him, in the most powerful fashion. He wished he might take her up in his arms, and comfort her in the only way that comfort can be truly given, through the embrace of one who truly feels for the other, even if nothing be said between them. He did the best he could, by reaching out to place reassuring a hand on her arm. Looking over at him, she said gratefully, “Bless you,” but then abruptly melted into tears.

This brought Edmund instantly to his knees at her side, looking up into her face, asking with the most sincere urgency, “Dear Miss Chelwood…Emily, please…what is it? What can I do?”

She cried even harder, and he repeated his question again, until through her sobs he could just make out her reply: “Stay: that is what you can do. Stay.”

His heart tore at him; he seemed doomed to bring her pain. He straightened up, still kneeling by the side of her chair, and gently took her into his arms; she clung to him with a desperate strength, sobbing as though she could never again be comforted. He held her for as long as she cried, waiting for her pain to ease and her tears to abate. Coming at last to an awareness of her condition, she disentangled herself from his embrace with sudden embarrassment. She brought her handkerchief to her face, hiding from his view and turning away. “Forgive me, please, Colonel,” she said in a muffled and embarrassed voice. “Leave, if you would; you cannot wish my company in such a state.”

He gently drew her face back to him with the tips of his fingers on her chin; when she turned, with some reluctance, he lay his hand on the side of her face, very aware of how delicate it felt in his hand. “Dearest, sweetest Emily, it is I who must beg for forgiveness; I cannot seem to keep from hurting you: you from whom I would banish all pain, and shield with my life against all suffering—yet everything I do seems to injure you.” He brought her back into his arms, and she huddled there against his chest, crying intermittently for some time further. At length, still leaning against him, she murmured, “You must come back to me, Edmund—you must. I could not bear it if you…and with my father so ill, I shall be left with no one.” She leaned into his chest harder, curling in around her pain, threatening to dissolve again into tears.

“No, no, no,” he told her soothingly. “You must not think so. I shall always come back to you: unless God Himself turns His hand against me, nothing will prevent me from returning to you. Come, now, where is my brave Emily? Where is the one who said she would not fear the future?”

“But I have so much more to lose, now,” she said, with heart-breaking vulnerability. “Before I really knew you, it was easy to imagine I could be strong; but now, the thought of losing you, as I did John—it is too much…”

“Was it not you who pointed out that I am not going into battle? —just a junket around France. Where is the danger in that?”

“You say that, but have I not seen the burden you carry, in your eyes? Have I not heard the sentences broken off when the subject touched too closely on any possible hazard?”

This he could not deny: “Yes,” he admitted, “I do worry, and sometimes doubt; and I am careful of my words, but mainly for your sake: I would not injure your peace for the world.”

“Well, you have,” she said, with something like her usual spirit. “You have ruined my peace quite completely; whether I am with you or from you, whether I am daydreaming about the future or determined never to think of you again, my peace is done, and I shall know no more until you are gone and back again.” She drew back from him and struck him on the shoulder. “Beast!” she said forcibly. Then she took up his hand, which rested still on her shoulder, and kissed it, laying her cheek on the back of it.