Order Restored
Elizabeth went again to the cottage the next morning, but she did not go alone.
Jane and Mary joined her at the hall door, shawls gathered close, and Mr Darcy was already waiting in the yard.
Wicked stamped once as he was handed up, and Darcy rode beside the carriage as far as the lane, speaking little, yet, never so far away as to be merely a figure on the road.
Inside, the air had changed. It was not yet wholly sweet, but it was no longer heavy.
The windows were thrown wide wherever the frames would allow it, and a draught moved steadily through the rooms, lifting dust from the bare boards and carrying it outward.
The worst of the smoke had been driven into the old woodwork, lingering only where nothing but time would conquer it.
In its place was something sharper and cleaner: fresh paint, still faintly wet to the senses, and the dry, chalky smell of new plaster where the walls had been cut back and made sound again.
They divided without speaking of it. Jane paused in the passage, her eyes moving from door to door, already arranging the day’s work. Mary went on to the little sitting-room, where the light fell kindly, and then to the parlour beyond. Elizabeth turned to the kitchen.
It had been scrubbed until the stone shone damply in the light, and the range stood black and respectable, with no ash scattered about it. A kettle sat ready upon the hob. She reached out, and touched the handle before she thought why.
Mr Darcy came in after her, alone.
“Will it serve?” he asked quietly.
She set her hand back at her side, and turned, meaning only to ask whether the men had said anything more of the chimney.
Mr Darcy was watching her. Not the room, not the range, but her, as though the order of the kitchen mattered only for what it might restore to her.
The steadiness of his attention unsettled her more than it ought.
She had grown used to his courtesy, to his care made quiet and orderly, but there was something in his face at that moment which did not feel like duty.
“It will serve,” she began, and then, because his silence made her braver, she went on.
“More than serve. I did not think I should ever stand in this room again and feel only the ordinary concerns of a household. To look at a kettle and consider whether it will boil quickly, rather than whether the smoke will choke us.”
She heard how her voice softened on the last words, and despised herself for it. Gratitude was safe; anything more was not.
“If you have arranged this,” she said, quieter still, “then you have given me back something I believed I had lost.”
He did not answer at once. He only drew a breath, the simplicity of her thanks seeming both relief and danger. Then he inclined his head, careful, restrained.
“I wished it to be ready,” he said. “Nothing more.”
And yet he remained, unable, it seemed, quite to leave her to it, watching her with that same steady attention which made her feel seen in ways she did not know how to name. Elizabeth turned away first, because it was easier to look at shelves than at a man who might read too much in her face.
From the passage came Jane’s light step, and Mary’s quieter tread behind her.
The rest of the morning was spent in a quiet sort of command.
Jane directed the men as they began to carry the furniture in again, setting down chairs and tables where she indicated, shifting pieces by inches until the rooms looked as though they had always meant to hold them.
Mary kept account of what had come and what had not, her pencil moving steadily over a page as each item was named.
From Pemberley and from Highfield came maids with bundles on their arms, returning curtains to their poles and laying fresh linen in neat, white piles, as though order itself might be unpacked.
Elizabeth tried to keep her attention upon what was needed and where, yet little things began to press themselves upon her notice.
The linen was not merely clean, but new, with a firmness to it that spoke of recent purchase.
In the kitchen there were jars and canisters that had not belonged to the cottage before, set in their places with an ease that might have concealed the fact from anyone less attentive.
Mrs Reynolds was everywhere at once, calm and capable, speaking to the maids as though this were the most natural extension of her duties, and to Elizabeth with a deference that never felt like pity.
When at last there was a pause, Elizabeth found herself looking towards the door, expecting to see Mr Darcy again in the passage or at the threshold, as though he might appear whenever she had a question.
She did not see him. The yard beyond the window was empty of Wicked, and the sound of hooves had long since faded from the lane.
For a moment she stood quite still, with a strange sense of having missed something she had not meant to seek; then she turned back to the work, telling herself that it was better so.
By the time they returned to the carriage, the day had grown warm, and dust clung to their hems in spite of care.
Jane settled back with a sigh she did not attempt to hide; Mary loosened her gloves and flexed her fingers as though she had been copying for hours.
Elizabeth leaned her head against the squab for a moment and felt the pleasant ache of honest exertion.
The cottage was still not wholly theirs, not yet, but it no longer frightened her.
They drove back to Pemberley tired, heated, and quietly content.
“I had forgotten,” Jane said, “how much labour it is to make four walls feel like home.”
Mary, with her gloves half off, looked down at the dust upon her fingers. “It is not the labour that surprises me,” she replied. “It is how quickly one grows used to order, and how unwillingly one tolerates its absence.”
Elizabeth let her head rest against the squab a moment longer. “Today was a beginning,” she said, and heard the steadiness in her own voice. “That is a start.”
It was settled that they would remain at Pemberley that night and then return home the next morning.
Elizabeth went to pack her things and paused to look out of the window towards the lake.
She could see only a sliver of it from there, a pale gleam between trees, and the sight had become familiar enough that it no longer startled her.
A week ago she had watched that water as a stranger, wondering what place she could possibly have in such a house.
Now she watched it as one who had been kindly received, and the difference sat upon her with a weight that was not unpleasant, yet not quite easy either.
She turned back to the half-packed trunk and folded her gown with care, letting order in a drawer stand in for order in her thoughts.
When the last ribbon was tucked away and there was nothing more she could do without calling for help, she took her bonnet and went out, telling herself she wanted only a little air.
Near the edge of the grass she stopped. Two rabbits were there, bold with the hour, nosing among the shoots with all the unconcern in the world. Elizabeth watched them for a long moment, and felt something in her chest ease, not into happiness, but into steadiness. Life went on. It always had.
A soft crush of gravel made her turn. Mr Darcy was there, not so near as to intrude, yet close enough that his presence altered the air.
“You are not cold?” he asked.
“No.” She hesitated, then gave a small, foolish gesture towards the rabbits. “It is absurd, but I envy them. They have no memory.”
His gaze followed hers. “They have no duty,” he said quietly.
Elizabeth looked back at the rabbits, then at him. “Today was better than I expected,” she said, and did not know whether she spoke of plaster and paint, or of something else entirely.
“I am glad,” he replied, and the words were ordinary, but his attention was not.
She drew a breath and made herself go on. “I cannot see you doubt yourself,” she said, more quietly than she intended. “Not when you have done more than anyone could have required, and done it so that we need not feel it a burden.”
His eyes held hers, steady and unreadable. For a moment she thought he might speak, and then he only inclined his head, unwilling, perhaps, to take more from her than she had offered.
Then voices drifted nearer along the path.
Miss Bingley’s laughter rang out first, bright as a bell; Mr Bingley answered with easy cheer, and Jane’s gentler tone followed, smoothing the edge of it all without effort.
They came into view a moment later, Miss Bingley with her head turned as she spoke, Mr Bingley smiling as though he had never been capable of ill-humour, and Jane between them with that quiet presence which made even Miss Bingley seem less sharp than she meant to be.
Elizabeth stepped back a fraction, more from habit than design. Mr Darcy’s posture altered too, not with displeasure, but with restraint, as though he had remembered himself.
“There you are,” Mr Bingley called, with the warmth of a man who expected to be welcome everywhere. “We were persuaded you had vanished entirely, Miss Elizabeth.”
“I only wished for a little air,” Elizabeth said, and was grateful that her voice did not betray her.
Mr Darcy said nothing more than the necessary courtesies, but when his gaze met hers it held a moment too long for indifference, and then he looked away.