Elizabeth Darcy rubbed her swollen belly with one hand and wiped her sweaty brow with the other. Lord it was hot. July in Massachusetts was never a pleasant thing, especially with its oppressive summer heat and humidity. Elizabeth looked up at the golden sun, shielding her eyes from its glaring rays. She wished it would rain and wash away some of the sticky heat.
Of course, carrying around an extra twenty pounds never helped much either, even if it was a precious burden. Elizabeth often wondered how it was that she had managed to be pregnant during the summer months. Next time, she vowed to have her child during the winter months. Anything to avoid having to carry around extra weight when it was painful enough even with out it during the summertime.
Elizabeth had spent the latter half of the morning working on the nursery. She had been repainting a crib for the baby that she and her husband had purchased at a lawn sale the weekend before. Elizabeth loved staying busy and she especially loved doing things for her unborn child. All morning long she had run through a list of possible names through her head while giving the crib a new, clean coat of white paint. If only it did not have to be so unbearably hot in their house.
Now she sat, waiting on the front porch of her house waiting for her husband to come home. Elizabeth bit her lower lip thinking of her husband. He would chide her later when he found out that she had been doing manual labor again. Elizabeth knew that if William could have his way, she would not have to lift a finger in her delicate state. He was fiercely protective of his wife and even more so of the baby. This baby, this creation of theirs, represented everything that they had shared and dreamed of. In short, it was their entire world.
Elizabeth smiled at the thought of being able to one day soon hold their baby in her arms. She would coddle it and sing it soft, sweet lullabies. And together they would sit, rocking back and forth in the rocking chair, just as she was doing now, and wait for its daddy to come home from work. In the meantime, Elizabeth rocked alone and sewed clothes for the baby instead. Letting the needle and cloth slip to the wayside one more time, Elizabeth took a large sip of her lemonade and tried to cool herself off by fanning herself with a large, woven fans. She looked down at her watch, 5:45. William would be home soon. Comforted by that thought, Elizabeth picked up her needle and cloth and resumed her sewing with renewed fervor.
Several minutes later, Elizabeth's ears perked up at the sound of whistling. She looked up just in time to see her husband rounding the corner and making his way towards the house. How handsome he looked with his long, confident, and purposeful strides. Elizabeth's heart never ceased to swell with pride each and every time she looked at him. It was as if she was falling in love with him all over again.
As William walked through the front gate, he could not help but smile seeing his young wife, seated there, waiting for him. It was a refreshing sight to see her there day after day and the knowledge of her being there was the only thing that got him through each day. He was hopelessly in love and he knew it and thrilled at it. Bounding up the stairs, William was by Elizabeth's side in less than thirty seconds. After giving her a long, hard kiss, he breathlessly said, "My, don't we look lovely this evening?"
Elizabeth blushed immediately and grew a crimson red. "Oh, stop it, Will. You know I look like no such thing."
Groping her tangled, damp hair and faded, wrinkled maternity dress, Elizabeth pointed out, "My hair is a mess, my clothes are a mess, and my entire being is a mess. In short, I look like a fat cow."
William shook his head and took her hands into his own, kissing her on the forehead before looking deep into her eyes and saying, "Never, my love. You will never look like a fat cow to me. You are a vision of no other. You are a veritable goddess."
Elizabeth laughed. "And you sir, are a veritable liar!"
William affected a mocked and offended air. "Are you questioning my sincerity and honesty, madam? I am mortally wounded!"
"Forgive me milord, it was not intentionally meant." She tried to give a little bow from her sitting position, but was impeded from doing so by her large and obstructive stomach.
"Well, I'll have to think about whether or not I want to forgive you," William sniffed. "In the meantime, I think I shall have to punish you by withholding my present to you."
It was about this time that Elizabeth noticed her husband was carrying a plastic bag in his right hand. "What's in it?"
"That, my undeserving wench of a wife, is for me to know and for you to find out!"
"Fine, be that way," Elizabeth pouted. "It's really not fair to do stuff like that when you know I can't chase after you or beat you up anymore."
Laughing gaily, William gently dropped the bag into his wife's lap and said, "There, look. Take a good look and tell me now if your husband isn't the best one in the whole wide world."
Like a child opening a birthday present, Elizabeth ploughed through the bag until she reached the bottom, holding up triumphantly a carton of ice cream. "Ice cream?!?" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Oh, Will! You shouldn't have!"
"Oh dear, you're not going to start turning into a blubbering idiot are you, Liz?" William asked.
Elizabeth tried to steady her trembling lips and wobbling hands by shaking her head in the negative.
"Good, look! I even brought you a spoon so that you could start in on it immediately," Will said brightly, whipping out a wrapped, plastic spoon from his back pocket. "After all, what's the saying? How does it go? Never stand between a pregnant woman and her food?"
Giggling at her husband's silly antics, Elizabeth took the proffered spoon from him but not before saying in a low and quiet voice, "You really shouldn't have, Will. We don't have the money to spend on frivolous things nowadays."
Will sighed and took his wife's head in his arms, cradling it against his broad chest. "Let me spoil you, Liz. I know you've been craving ice cream and you deserve to have everything you can. It's just a carton of ice cream. We'll be all right. Don't worry about a thing, okay?"
Elizabeth looked up at him, looked deep into his eyes and saw the way they burned with love and passion. She nodded her head. She trusted him. She would always trust him.
"Come," William said, pulling Elizabeth to her feet. "No more arguing over the ice cream or else it's going to melt even more than it already has and once that happens, you'll be drinking ice cream soup and then it really will be a waste. Boy, I'm hot. Come on, you can keep me company while you snack on your Chocolate Fudge Brownie and I take a nice, cold bath."
Elizabeth walked gleefully ahead of her husband, munching on the dough bits found within the ice cream. William was telling her about his day, but to be honest, she was not paying much attention to him. All her attention was focused on the ice cream she had been craving for weeks now, but never dared to tell her husband. How had he known?
By this time, William was now asking Elizabeth how she had spent her day. Noticing that there was a lull in the conversation, Elizabeth realized that she was supposed to be saying something, but what? Caught like a child whose hand was midway in a cookie jar, William laughed at his wife. But as he looked curiously past her left shoulder onto the veranda, William ceased to laugh and frowned. He rushed around her and pushed open the screen door, revealing a freshly painted baby's crib drying in the baking sun.
"Elizabeth, what have you been doing?"
The spoon sat poised in her mouth and her eyes were wide with shock. When William addressed her by her full name, Elizabeth knew that she was always in for trouble. "What?"
"Well, how do you explain that?" William asked, pointing to the crib.
"The little stork elves?" Elizabeth quipped.
"Elizabeth," William growled. He was not amused. "You know you're not supposed to be doing any heavy work!"
"But I didn't do any heavy work," Elizabeth protested. "It's not as if I moved the crib around or anything like that, Will. It was already out on the back porch! All I did was spread newspaper around it and paint it! And now you won't have to do it this weekend. Wasn't that nice of me?"
"You are insufferable, you know that?" William asked, shaking his head at his lovely wife. He never could stay mad at her for very long, no matter how hard he tried.
Elizabeth fed William a spoonful of her ice cream. "Ahhh... But that's why you love me," she reminded him.
William gathered his wife into his arms, holding onto her tightly with one hand and protectively rubbing her tummy with the other. "I just don't want anything to happen to you or to the baby, Liz. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened... to either of you. I'd never forgive myself."
Elizabeth looked up at her husband with her big and bright, adoring brown eyes. "William, you worry too much. Nothing wrong is going to happen," she reassured, taking the hand that had been formerly lying on her stomach into her own and entwined their fingers. "I visit the doctor regularly, he says everything is fine. I watch what I do and what I eat. Or rather, you monitor my every action. And all in all, I'm a perfectly healthy, pregnant woman. In no time our baby will be here and you can stop worrying about us."
William sighed. "By that time, I'll no doubt have new things to worry about."
"You worry too much! Now go take a bath while I'll cook us some dinner. I don't want to hug a stinky husband," she said, wrinkling her pert nose.
William gave his wife a horrified look at he mention of his wife cooking. Elizabeth laughed while pushing him towards the bathroom. "William, I'm pregnant, not an invalid!!!"
William eased himself slowly into the bathtub, letting the cold water wash over his warm skin and cool him off. Sitting back and letting his tense muscles relax, he felt his day's cares and worries being slowly released into the pool of water surrounding him. William closed his eyes, swirling his hands around him in the water and letting his thoughts wander in the direction of more pleasant realms. He smiled indulgently. It was so nice to be home.
Several minutes later, a loud ruckus of falling pots and pans shattered William's happy trance-like state.
"Shoot!" he heard Elizabeth yelling from the kitchen and then a bunch of unintelligible grumbles and gripes.
Sitting up in the bathtub immediately, he called out through the paper-thin walls of their one-story house, "Elizabeth? What's wrong? What's happened? Are you all right?"
The silence that followed was deafening. "What's going on in there? Did you fall and knock over a bunch of pots and pans?" William was concerned for his wife's welfare and the suspense of not knowing what was going on was killing him. He prayed that his wife had not slipped or fallen.
His hand reached for the towel and he started to stand when Elizabeth called back out to him. "It's all right. Don't worry! I'm all right; really! Sorry, was just trying to get everything straightened in here. It's just that the shelf that you supposedly fixed last week is apparently not fixed and toppled over again."
"What? Did anything land on you?" William asked in horrified shock.
"No, no, no. I wasn't even standing near it. It just fell, force of gravity, I suppose. Everything is all right except for a few dented pots and pans here and there."
William heaved a sigh of relief. "Well, okay then. Don't bother picking them up though," he warned. "I don't want you bending up and down retrieving them. You might hurt the baby or your back. Besides, there's no need for you to senselessly tire yourself out when I can pick everything up. I'll clean it up as soon as I'm done in here."
William could hear Elizabeth huffing and puffing and muttering about something in the kitchen before she yelled, "Okay!"
Leaning back into his now very cold water, William exhaled loudly and let the water slosh around him as he wiped his eyes from exhaustion. How different his life was now from only a year ago. Dangerously, William tried to think about what he would be doing right then had it been the same time last year. He wistfully thought about the swimming pool that he used to lounge by after work at his parent's estate right outside of Boston.
Even though William had used to live in his own brownstone in Back Bay, he would often venture home, like a dutiful son, with his father after work to share an evening meal with his parents and younger sister, Georgiana. The swimming pool was just the added incentive to go home after work during the summer months. After a few cooling laps around the pool, William would sun bathe off to the side and sip the lemonade or iced tea that had been so thoughtfully prepared by Mrs. Reynolds, their housekeeper, ahead of time.
William sighed once more that evening. It really was pointless thinking about the past. That would never be again. Moreover, he loved his new life. It was albeit it very different than what he had grown up with and been accustomed to, but it was not at all unpleasant. In fact, it was quite the opposite of unpleasant. His home, though small, was cozy. He had a job that he not only enjoyed, but had also earned on his own. For the first time in William's life, he was not either working for his father or working at a job his father had pulled strings to get for him. Most importantly, he had a beautiful wife whom he loved and who loved him. And in a few short months, they would also have a brand new baby to complete the picture.
William wondered if it would be a son or a daughter. He liked the idea of having a son. Someone to one day carry on the family name. Someone to take to baseball games at Fenway Park and spoil with hot dogs and ice cream. Someone to teach the family business... William shook his head. No, not the family business... but nonetheless, still, someone to teach. But the idea of a little daughter, tugged at William's heart too. He could even picture her smiling and laughing with her mother's curly brown hair and sparkling eyes. He wondered whether or not she would sit primly in a pink dress or if she would be more likely to run around and get her pink dress muddied. William suspected that if the child had her mother's disposition as well as looks, it would be something more like that latter. He was still chuckling over the image when he emerged from the bathroom five minutes later, toweling his hair.
"There you are," Elizabeth called out to him, tousling his dark, damp curls as she walked past him. "Feeling better now? I'm almost done with dinner. You want to finish setting the table for me?"
William looked around him at the spotless floor. "Elizabeth..." William groaned. "Where are all the pots and pans? I thought I told you I would clean it up!"
Elizabeth grinned sheepishly. "They were getting in my way and I couldn't cook."
"Can't you do anything I ask you to do?" William shook his head.
Elizabeth walked over to her husband and slipped her arms around him, or as far as she could get her arms around him with her belly getting in the way. "Of course I can," she whispered in his ear. "See? I left the shelves untouched for you to fix later."
He looked over to where she pointed and saw that indeed the shelves were still lopsided with one, halfway on its way to the ground. "I thought I fixed those shelves!"
"So did I, my darling Handyman," Elizabeth teased. "So did I."
Reaching out, William removed the bottom shelf and placed it on the table before it could really fall and cause even more damage. He would have to fix it again later. He began to laugh at his own ineptness. When it came to fixing things up around the house, William knew he was incapable. He was not used to having to fix things on his own. He was accustomed to calling the repairman or sending things in to be serviced. But he was trying and Elizabeth thought he was a trooper.
Elizabeth hugged him even tighter and encouragingly said, "You'll get it right the next time."
William looked back at his wife's face and noticed her charming smile. "You are incredible, you know that? Simply incredible."
"I hope you meant that in a good way," Elizabeth cheekily replied, kissing her husband fully on his lips. Before she could pull away, William had grabbed her by the base of the neck and continued to kiss her back.
Needless to say, it took Elizabeth and William a while to get around to eating dinner that evening. And all hopes of William fixing the shelves after dinner was put off indefinitely, as they had something better with which to occupy themselves.