Page 125 of The Crown’s Gift

Not Jane.

A thin, furious infant voice entered Longbourn.

Bingley's cup fell to the carpet.

The library door opened. Lady Bennet stood there exhausted, tear-streaked, and smiling.

"A girl," she said. "A beautiful little girl. Jane is well."

Bingley made a sound none of them had heard from a grown man and ran past her.

Sir Thomas caught the back of a chair. Darcy looked away, giving him the dignity of tears.

Elizabeth came downstairs later carrying the child wrapped in white.

"Papa."

Sir Thomas took his first grandchild with more fear than he had taken any royal document. The infant's face was red, her dark hair damp, one fist pressed beside her cheek.

"She is very small."

"She was considerably larger to Jane," Lady Bennet said.

Sir Thomas laughed through tears.

The baby opened her eyes briefly.

"Emma Jane Bingley," Elizabeth said. "They chose Emma because they liked it and Jane because Charles insisted."

"He could not insist upon his own name?"

"He proposed Charles if it was a boy and admitted defeat."

Sir Thomas looked at Emma. "You will know your father from the beginning. See that you appreciate the advantage."

Jane received visitors that afternoon in carefully limited numbers. Bingley sat beside the bed holding the baby and looking as if he had discovered both terror and divinity.

"She has Jane's nose," he told everyone.

"She is six hours old," Mrs Jones said. "She has a baby's nose."

Darcy stood with Elizabeth near the door. His gaze moved from Emma to Elizabeth's still-flat figure.

She knew what he felt because it moved through her too: relief for Jane, wonder at the child, fear of the autumn waiting for them.

He did not speak of it until they were alone that night.

"I thought I understood courage," he said. "I did not understand waiting while someone you love enters danger you cannot share."

Elizabeth lay beside him at Netherfield, his hand spread protectively over their unborn child.

"Papa learned that today too."

"And you?"

"I learned that Mama is magnificent in a crisis and intolerable afterward. She has already advised me to bring Mrs Jones to Pemberley."

"Should we?"