Chapter 15 #2
“Very few,” he replied; and though his manner stayed easy, his voice grew more careful.
“My father’s sister married Mr Finch, what my grandmother used to call an imprudent match.
He was in the Navy, and by every account an honourable man.
” He looked ahead, finding the road easier company than memory.
“But his people farm their own land. Respectable, industrious, entirely decent, and yet not the sort of connection my grandmother wished for Willowbank.”
Elizabeth’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “Your grandmother had a strong opinion, then.”
“She did,” he replied, after a moment. “And it was my aunt who bore the consequences most heavily.” He kept his eyes before him as he went on, as though the road required his attention.
“She went to live among them. She died when her child was born. Mr Finch was lost at sea some years later. Amelia was brought to Willowbank and lived with us for a time.” A pause followed, brief but not empty.
“She was away at school when my father and brother fell ill,” he added, the fact seeming still to sit oddly with him, though no blame could rest anywhere.
“She lives now with the Finch family, on their farm beyond the lane.”
Elizabeth’s expression softened. “It seems a harsh thing,” she said quietly, “to call a marriage imprudent merely because it brings one closer to honest work.”
For a few minutes they walked without speaking.
The lane narrowed between hedgerows newly leafed, and the damp of the morning still clung to the grass at the verge.
Elizabeth kept her eyes upon the path, yet she was aware of him beside her in a way she did not choose to examine.
He did not press the silence. He seemed, if anything, grateful for it.
At length, when the roofs of Lambton began to show through the trees, Elizabeth said, quietly, “And your cousin — Miss Finch. Is she well?”
Mr Ashton answered at once. “She is well enough,” he said. “Not robust, perhaps, and not formed for noise. She keeps much to herself, and she has learnt to be useful where she may. For some women, that is the nearest thing to independence.”
His tone stayed even, yet there was a gentleness beneath it that made Elizabeth listen more closely than she meant to do.
They walked on. The lane drew them between hedges newly green, and the air smelt of damp earth and crushed leaves.
A lark rose somewhere beyond the field, and for a time neither of them spoke.
Mr Ashton did not attempt to fill the quiet.
Elizabeth, who so often guarded her solitude like property, found it less guarded in his company than she expected.
When the first cottages of Lambton appeared, she adjusted the basket on her arm and said, with a return to lighter things, “If you mean to escort me, Mr Ashton, you must be prepared to stand idle while I bargain with a miller who believes every new face is an opportunity.”
“I shall endure it heroically,” he replied, and the humour in his voice eased the last of her self-consciousness.
The village was stirring when they entered it; doors stood open, a child ran with a crust of bread in his hand, and the scent of baking drifted from the little shop near the corner. Elizabeth turned towards the mill without further ceremony, and Mr Ashton followed without needing to be asked.
He would not allow her to carry the basket when it was filled, taking it from her hand with an ease that made refusal seem affected, and walking beside her from one small shop to another as though such errands were entirely within his province.
Elizabeth completed what was necessary first, and only then paused at the stationer’s window, where papers lay neatly stacked and pencils stood in a little glass like slender sticks of coal.
There were also small cakes of colour in a shallow box, tempting in their order and brightness, and for a moment she considered them; but the price made sense of her restraint.
She asked instead for a modest book of drawing paper, a single black-lead pencil, and a narrow ribbon to tie it all together, and when they stepped back into the street she slipped the parcel beneath the basket’s edge, trying to make it look like nothing at all.
They fell into conversation as they walked, not of anything important, but of the sort of small things that made the road shorter: the late spring that could not decide whether it meant to be warm, the state of the hedgerows, and whether the baker’s new boy would ever learn to carry a tray without tilting it.
Mr Ashton spoke with an easy humour, and Elizabeth found herself answering without guarding every word, almost persuaded that it was possible to be companionable without consequence.
They lingered a moment near the little shop at the corner, for Mr Ashton insisted upon remarking that the baker’s new sign had been painted as if the man meant to sell pictures, and Elizabeth answered him with the sort of dry agreement that required no thought and gave no offence.
She was laughing, quietly and without intending it, when the sound of wheels upon the stones interrupted them, measured, deliberate, and altogether too elegant for Lambton’s morning traffic.
A carriage came into view at the turning, its panels dark, its harness bright where the light caught it, and it slowed as it approached with the air of a vehicle never permitted to hurry where haste might be remarked upon. Elizabeth’s attention went to it at once, more from habit than expectation.
The horses stopped beside them. Elizabeth tightened her hold on the small parcel she had insisted upon keeping. The footman moved, the door opened, and Mr Darcy stepped down into the street.
“Miss Elizabeth.”