Beyond His Pride (Pride and Prejudice Variation)

PROLOGUE

Harrogate, Yorkshire.

Darcy

The wedding breakfast lasted the better part of three hours, and Fitzwilliam Darcy — married, as of that very morning, to the woman he loved — had not minded a single minute of it.

That, in itself, was a thing worthy of remark.

He was not a man who took pleasure in long social occasions.

He endured them, managed them, stood at the edges of them and waited with as much patience as he could muster for them to draw to a close.

Yet here he sat at Mr. Edmund Holt's table, among Mr. Holt's guests, in Mr. Holt's house in Harrogate, and found himself thoroughly, entirely, and without qualification glad to be there.

It was a sufficiently uncommon sensation that he had spent some portion of the meal simply taking stock of it.

Mr. Holt gave a toast. It was long, as all things Mr. Holt did tended toward length.

He spoke of his daughter, Miss Clara Holt — now Mrs. Darcy, as of that very morning — from infancy to the present day, with the unhurried thoroughness of a man who had earned the right to take his time and fully intended to use it.

He spoke of her with the plain, unvarnished pride of a father who knew his own mind and did not require the approbation of others to feel it.

At the last, he looked at Darcy steadily across the table.

It was not a long look. It did not need to be.

He had given away the best thing in his life and wished it known that he had not done so without taking the full measure of the man receiving her.

Darcy held his gaze and inclined his head.

Mr. Holt nodded once, and raised his glass.

Since then, the guests ate, drank and laughed with considerable enthusiasm.

Clara spent a lively quarter of an hour disputing the merits of Bath against those of Harrogate with her cousin, a gentleman of strong opinions and weak arguments, and routed him thoroughly and in good humour.

Darcy watched from across the room and felt something loosen in his chest that he could not readily name.

He was not a man given to lightness. He had not been, for a very long time.

But watching Clara dismantle her cousin's argument with a smile and a raised eyebrow, he found that he was very nearly laughing, and that he did not particularly wish to stop himself.

He did not stop himself.

Her cousin noticed. Clara noticed her cousin notice, and glanced across the room at Darcy with an expression of such warm, private amusement that he felt it like a hand against his sternum. He held her gaze a moment longer than was strictly necessary. She did not look away first.

It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he was a very fortunate man.

Here he was. Among friends and family. Watching the woman he loved hold court from across the room.

The woman he had married some few hours ago.

The woman who would soon journey with him back to Pemberley, where she belonged.

When the guests began to remove themselves to the garden, Clara appeared at his elbow.

“My mother,” she said, with perfect composure, “has been making her way across the room these past several minutes. I am certain she means to embrace you again.”

Darcy glanced across the parlour. Mrs. Margaret Holt was indeed advancing, her expression that of a woman with settled intentions. “So I observe.”

“You have perhaps thirty seconds to decide if you wish to avoid it.”

“Then I suggest we take our leave.”

Clara looked up at him. Her eyes were bright. “I had begun to wonder if you would ever say so.”

They were crossing the hall when Darcy caught the sound of a familiar footfall behind them.

Unhurried. Even. The tread was measured enough for him to know it belonged to someone who had long mastered the art of appearing at precisely the correct moment and never a moment before it.

Darcy turned. Mr. Thomas Marsh, his valet these past nine years, fell into step beside them, dressed for the road, his bearing as composed as ever it was.

“Sir.” He turned to Clara. “Mrs. Darcy. My congratulations to you both, once again.”

Darcy heard everything Marsh had not put into words. There was, as usual, considerably more of it than what had been said aloud.

“Thank you, Marsh.”

Clara regarded him with the warmth she extended to those upon whom she had already passed a favourable judgement. “You have been very good to us this week, Marsh. I am most grateful.”

“The honour has been entirely mine, ma'am.” His expression shifted in the manner it did when he had a practical matter requiring dispatch. “Sir, Mr. Charles Bingley wished to enquire whether you might spare him a word before your departure. He mentioned a matter of some consequence.”

“No.” Darcy steered Clara toward the door without pause. “I have just got married, Marsh. Whatever Bingley requires of me will keep a fortnight.”

“Very good, sir. I shall follow with the second carriage.”

They had reached the front steps, the afternoon sun falling warm upon the gravel, when Clara shielded her eyes and looked out across the grounds.

“Is that Georgiana? There, by the east gate.”

Darcy followed her gaze. Some distance across the grounds, a young lady in a pale travelling gown was being handed up into a waiting carriage. Marsh raised a hand against the light and looked.

“Miss Georgiana Darcy and Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, ma'am. They departed not half an hour past, though I believe Miss Darcy was most reluctant about it.”

“She came to bid me farewell earlier,” Clara said, her eyes still on the distant carriage. “I simply did not mark when she slipped away.”

“Fitzwilliam does not care for travelling after dark,” Darcy said. “It is why they set off early. He is particular about it.”

Clara was quiet a moment. “I still cannot understand why she would not ride with us to Pemberley.”

Darcy looked at her. “Because we are newly married,” he said, “and she thought we deserved the privacy. That is very like her.” He paused. “Besides, she will be at Pemberley within the fortnight. She told me herself she intends to remain the full month.”

“Good.” Clara took his arm. “I have a great many opinions regarding the east garden that I wish to discuss with her at considerable length.”

“She will receive them with far greater enthusiasm than I have done.”

“You have no opinions regarding gardens.”

“I hold the opinion that they ought to exist and be properly kept.”

“That,” said Clara, “is a policy, not an opinion. It is as well you have me.”

It was. He was sensible of that fact with a clarity that had been growing steadily for the better part of a year and gave no indication of abating.

They had not yet descended the steps when Mr. Holt appeared at the door behind them, Mrs. Holt upon his arm.

She was weeping again, prettily and with great feeling, in the manner she had been perfecting since the morning.

Mr. Holt's expression was composed, though something in it was not quite steady.

“Safe travels, my dear,” Mr. Holt said, and took Clara's hands in both of his. He held them a moment, then released her and turned to Darcy. He said nothing further. He did not need to.

Mrs. Holt embraced Clara at length and with considerable feeling, and then, to Darcy's mild surprise, embraced him also. He submitted to it with more willingness than he might once have managed.

“You will write,” Mrs. Holt said, to Clara, to Darcy, to the afternoon in general.

“The moment we arrive,” Clara promised.

With the farewells done, Darcy handed his new wife up into the carriage.

Marsh closed the door. The horses moved, and the house and the garden and Mr. Holt's broad, steady countenance fell away behind them as the road opened south.

Clara settled herself against the cushion with the ease of a woman entirely at her comfort, her shoulder coming to rest against his in the unhurried way she had of doing things she had already decided upon.

He did not stir. Outside, the last of Harrogate gave way to open country, dry-stone walls running away across the moorland, the sky wide and beginning to gild at its western edge.

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” said he.

She turned her head to observe him. “You are very well pleased with yourself.”

“I am very well pleased,” he allowed. “Whether it is with myself precisely, I could not say with confidence.”

She considered this. “That is tolerably romantic.”

“I thought it rather good.”

She laughed — the laugh she did not produce for drawing rooms, unguarded and entirely genuine — and he felt it as he always felt it, as something worth a great deal of trouble to occasion.

He had first heard it at a dinner table in Leeds fourteen months past and had arranged a considerable portion of his subsequent conduct toward the object of hearing it again.

It had not seemed an unreasonable ambition.

"Tell me something of Pemberley," she said, turning to the window.

"You have been to Pemberley at least five times."

"Not as its mistress." She laughed. "Tell me something you have not already told me. Something I have not seen."

He gave the matter honest consideration. "Mrs Albright."

“Your cook. You have spoken of her.”

“I have not spoken of her habit of taking her morning tea in the hothouse, in a chair she conveyed there herself some years since. The light falls in from the southeast. No one has prevailed upon her to take it elsewhere.”

Clara turned from the window. “No one has made the attempt?”

“None possessed of both the standing and the requisite imprudence.”

“I possess both,” she said, with perfect equanimity.

“I am well aware of it. I anticipate the first fortnight at Pemberley will be most instructive.”

She returned her gaze to the window and said nothing, which was her manner of agreeing to something she did not intend to concede aloud. He had learned to distinguish that particular silence from her others. There were several.