Concessions & Compromise
Darcy had been up for an hour before the house admitted it was morning.
The lamp still burned on the escritoire, its flame thinned by the first grey light.
He wrote steadily, the scratch of the pen the only sound in the room, setting down orders with an exactness that almost persuaded him order could prevent a second disaster.
When he had finished, he sanded the page, folded it neatly, and set it atop the sealed letters already waiting.
Footsteps, soft upon the corridor.
Fletcher entered at the usual hour with his accustomed quietness, carrying fresh linen over one arm, entirely untouched, it seemed, by any disorder outside his own province. He set the shirt upon the chair and began to arrange the rest with practised hands.
“Has my steward returned from the cottage?” Darcy asked, without turning from the window.
“He has, sir.” Fletcher’s tone did not alter. “He left a note upon your escritoire.”
“And Mrs Reynolds?”
“She says the ladies were comfortable, sir. Breakfast may be taken privately, if you prefer.”
“No,” Darcy said, and his voice came sharper than he intended. He steadied it at once. “I will dine with the others. I will ride out to Ivy Cottage and then return to breakfast with them.”
Fletcher inclined his head, receiving the change without curiosity. “Very good, sir.”
Darcy crossed to the escritoire, took up the note, and read it without sitting. The sweep would return, the flue would be opened higher, and the work would begin.
“Have my steward attend me before breakfast,” Darcy said. “And send word to Mrs Reynolds that nothing is to be altered for the ladies without my sister’s knowledge.”
When Fletcher had finished and the last button was set to rights, Darcy went down at once to his study. The house was still quiet, the corridors cool, the only sound his own measured steps.
Mr Booth was already there, standing by the escritoire with a folded paper in his hand, plainly waiting only for permission to speak.
“Mr Booth,” Darcy said, taking the note. “Your report.”
“The fire was confined to the kitchen hearth, sir. No timber caught. The flags are wet through, and the passage boards have taken it at the seams. The little parlour has smoke in the curtains where the water ran under the door.”
“The sweep says the flue has been drawing poorly for some time,” Mr Booth continued. “There is a narrowing above the first bend. He cannot swear to the cause until he opens it higher, but he believes there is an obstruction, or a fault in the lining.”
“And the kitchen may not be used,” Darcy said.
“No, sir.”
Darcy folded the paper once, exact again. “Then you will lend them what we can without charge. Men to carry, screens to dry linens, trestles, whatever keeps their accounts smaller. Keep a careful note of what is provided, and what must be hired. I will ride there now.”
Mr Booth bowed and went at once.
Darcy crossed the hall with the same quiet haste he would have used in a matter of tenants and rents, though he did not deceive himself; it was not land that troubled him, but the thought of a family forced out of their home and made subject to every tongue in the parish.
Outside, the morning was clear and deceptively mild. His horse was brought round; he mounted, gathered the reins, and set off without ceremony.
The park fell behind him. The lanes narrowed. Ivy Cottage lay ahead, small and dark against the green, its windows still open to a breeze that could not carry away disgrace as easily as smoke.
Darcy rode up to Ivy Cottage to find windows propped wide and doors standing open, the whole house made to breathe whether it liked it or not.
The air still held that sour, stubborn taint which lingered after smoke.
Mr Harding met him at the gate with the sweep from Lambton and two men from Highfield.
There had been no fault in the timbers; the danger lay in the flue, narrowed and drawing badly.
The sweep meant to open it higher and clear it properly. Until then, no fire would be lit.
Darcy went inside with them, not from curiosity, but because he would not give orders on guesswork.
The passage boards were still damp at the edges; the little parlour smelled worst, with curtains drawn back and chairs set in the yard like patients turned out for air.
He listened, asked two questions, and then nodded once.
Miss Elizabeth’s voice returned to him, quiet and exact, and with it the reminder that help could insult as easily as it could ease.
He would send men, screens, trestles, whatever Pemberley already possessed and could spare without comment.
He would have a careful account kept of what must be hired, and what could be done with his own hands, so that no one need argue over generosity later.
“Do what you must,” he said. “Take the time. I would rather lose a day than risk haste.”
Satisfied that all was well in hand, he mounted Wicked and rode back towards Pemberley. He would be expected at breakfast; to absent himself would invite questions. He told himself he returned for Georgiana, for Bingley, for propriety.
Yet it was Elizabeth whom his mind supplied, with her clear eyes and brisk refusal to be indebted. The thought of meeting her across his table was absurdly comforting. Comfort, he suspected, was a habit that formed too quickly.
He let himself linger on it for one moment only: Miss Elizabeth seated in his breakfast-room, the morning light upon her hair, her voice cutting through ceremony as cleanly as it had cut through smoke.
He would hear her say something dry; Bingley would laugh; Georgiana would look relieved to have the attention drawn elsewhere.
It was a picture so orderly that he almost trusted it.
The lane bent, narrowing beneath overhanging boughs, and the hedgerows rose high enough to make a private passage of it. Darcy had settled into an easy pace when a figure came into view ahead, walking steadily, skirts gathered from the mud with more impatience than delicacy.
For a moment he did not understand what he saw, because he had been thinking of her too clearly to expect her in the road.
Then the light shifted, and there was no mistake.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
She looked up as his horse’s hoofs sounded, her bonnet shadowing her face. She did not stop in alarm. She stopped as a person interrupted in business, and as though the interruption were an inconvenience rather than a fear.
Darcy drew Wicked in at once, keeping him well to the side. “Miss Elizabeth.”
“Mr Darcy.” She made a curtsey where the lane allowed it, and straightened again, her hand still upon her skirts. There was colour in her cheeks from walking, and a steadiness in her gaze that made the morning feel sharper.
He glanced behind her without meaning to.
“You are alone,” he said, and heard, too late, how it sounded.
“I am on a road,” she returned, with that quickness of hers, “not upon a stage.”
He deserved it. Darcy steadied his tone. “I did not mean—only that it is early, and the lanes are not always kind to a lady without company.”
“The lanes were not kind to my kitchen either,” she said, and though the words were light, her mouth was not. “I could not sit still and wonder. I wished to see what was being done, and what remains. Mr Harding is capable, but it is still my home.”
“I have just left the cottage,” he said. “The sweep is there, and Mr Harding. There is no danger of the fire returning. The flue will be opened higher and cleared properly. No timber caught.”
Her shoulders eased by a fraction, as though she had been holding herself against worse news. “Thank you.”
Silence sat between them for a beat; the birds did what they pleased in the hedges. Wicked shifted, patient.
Elizabeth’s eyes travelled once over the saddle and the horse, then back to Darcy. “You rode there?”
“I did.”
“And now you ride back to breakfast,” she said, and there was a wryness in it that was almost familiar already. “While I walk to the same place.”
He felt the rebuke plainly. “You should not be made to do so.”
“I am not made,” she replied at once. “I chose it.”
Of course she did.
Darcy exhaled, careful with himself. “Then allow me to make a different offer. My horse is steady. If you will take the saddle, I will walk.”
Her brows rose. “You would have me ride your horse while you tramp beside him like a groom?”
“I would have you reach Pemberley without further fatigue,” he said, and then, because she would hear any attempt at authority at once, added, “and without finding later that the walk cost you more than it was worth.”
She studied him for a moment, deciding, he thought, whether he was absurd or merely stubborn.
“I do not think Wicked will thank you for exchanging his rider,” she said at last.
“He will endure it,” Darcy returned. “He is well trained.”
“And are you?” she asked, very softly, and it was so like her that he almost smiled.
He did not, because smiling would have been too much like victory. “In this, perhaps.”
Elizabeth’s mouth tightened. “No, sir. I will not take your horse. I am not an invalid, and I will not be carried into my own trouble as though I had no feet.”
Darcy’s hand tightened on the rein. After a moment he swung down, gathered Wicked closer to the hedge, and fell into step beside her.
“Then I will walk,” he said, and turned with her towards Ivy Cottage. “You may see what you wished to see, and hear what is said. Afterward, I will send the carriage.”
He took Wicked by the rein and walked on at her side, making the arrangement look as ordinary as he could. He said little as they went, only pointing once to a place where the lane dipped, where the mud would catch her hem if she was not watchful.
At the cottage gate he halted. “You may go in,” he said. “I will ride back and send the carriage. While you are under my roof, you will not be expected to wear out your shoes for pride.”
Elizabeth’s mouth tightened. “And if I decline?”
“Then I shall have it wait anyway.”
“You are determined to be unreasonable.”
“I am determined that you shall not be made a spectacle in the lanes,” he replied, and held her gaze long enough to make her hear the difference.
She drew a breath, then gave a short nod, yielding, it seemed, to necessity rather than to him. “Very well. Send your carriage. But do not send it to fetch my pride.”
“I will send it to fetch you,” Darcy said simply.
At the gate she stopped, the cottage evidently a boundary she meant to cross alone.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said again, quieter now, and with a steadiness that gave him no opening for further argument.
Then she turned in, skirts lifted, head high, and was gone into the open doorway before he could decide whether to be satisfied or offended.
Darcy stood a moment with Wicked shifting beneath him. He told himself, with some heat, that it was unreasonable. He told himself, with equal heat, that he admired it. Then he gathered the reins, rode back towards Pemberley, and found the morning less orderly than he had planned.
He rode back at a brisk, controlled pace, irritation lending energy where the morning had offered none.
At Pemberley he gave the order for the carriage to go down to Ivy Cottage within the hour.
The arrangements made, he went in to breakfast with the composure of a man who had not been turned from his own plans by a woman walking alone in a lane.
At table he spoke little, listened more than he ate, and when the meal was done he returned at once to his study, where papers waited and numbers behaved.
He had barely settled at his desk when the sound reached him through the open window: wheels upon gravel, a soft check of the horses, a footman’s call. He set down his pen at once.
Across the court, the carriage stood, and Elizabeth was stepping down as though she had never belonged to it.
The day’s walking had coloured her cheeks; her mourning made that colour look brighter.
She did not wait to be helped farther than necessity required.
She only thanked the footman, adjusted her grip on the basket, and lifted her chin towards the door.
He watched from the window as she crossed the flagstones and vanished into the house. He made himself sit again, took up his pen, wrote two lines, and knew he had written nothing. So he laid the page aside and drew the nearer stack towards him, because figures, at least, could be mastered.
The morning swallowed itself in tenants and correspondence, in Mr Booth’s brief returns and his own short answers. It was only when the bell sounded for dressing that he rose, aware at once of how long he had managed to forget her.
Fletcher was waiting when Darcy entered, his evening coat laid out with the same quiet certainty as the morning linen. Darcy submitted to the familiar motions, collar set, cuffs adjusted, hair smoothed back, while his mind tried to return to ledgers and failed.
“Have the Miss Bennets gone up to change?” Darcy asked, keeping his voice as even as the set of his collar.
“They have, sir,” Fletcher replied, his hands never pausing. “Miss Darcy and Miss Mary went up some time ago. Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth went up when the bell rang.”
Darcy inclined his head, taking the information as though it were of no consequence, and took up his gloves from the table. Fletcher stepped back, finished, and opened the door.
In the corridor, the house sounded as it always did before dinner: a distant rustle of silk, the soft hurry of feet, a murmur of voices gathering below.
As Darcy reached the stairs, Mr Bingley’s laugh rose from the drawing room, warm and unguarded, and Miss Bingley’s voice followed it, bright with intention.
“…so obliging of you, Mr Darcy. One would think Miss Elizabeth could not cross a lane without an escort.”
Darcy’s hand tightened once on the rail, and he went on.