Sea Air & Silence
Three carriages stood before the cottage the lane looking for once, equal to ceremony.
The first was the Darcys’, dark and well sprung, with horses that looked capable of reaching the sea without so much as drawing breath.
The second waited behind it, smaller, but still of a comfort the Bennets had never called their own.
The third was already burdened with trunks and bandboxes, and the footman moved between them with quiet authority while the luggage was secured.
A man whom Elizabeth took to be Mr Darcy’s valet conferred briefly with the driver, consulting a small memorandum before giving one or two calm instructions that were obeyed at once.
Rugs were laid, straps tightened, a hatbox shifted to spare a corner.
Elizabeth watched the efficiency of it with the odd sensation of having no place in the business at all.
Mrs Bennet lingered in the doorway, her expression sharpened by anxiety.
“If Mr Ashton hears that you are gone to the sea, he will suppose himself forgotten,” she said. “Everybody expects it to be settled the moment mourning is over, and if he delays, he may be persuaded elsewhere.”
Jane answered calmly, “Mama, nothing can be determined until we are properly out of mourning. A little absence will not alter what is meant to be.”
“Absence alters everything,” Mrs Bennet insisted.
Mr Darcy stepped forward with composed civility. “Miss Elizabeth. Miss Catherine. With me, if you please. Miss Mary, you will accompany Miss Darcy.”
Elizabeth obeyed at once. Pudding chose that moment to appear upon the step, plainly meaning to object to the whole arrangement.
She rubbed herself against Elizabeth’s skirts, then turned her attention to Kitty, purring with determined affection.
Kitty stooped at once, burying her face for an instant in the warm fur.
“You shall be very well cared for,” she whispered, speaking to the cat as though offence might genuinely be taken. Pudding blinked slowly, unimpressed, and settled upon the mat with the air of a creature granting permission.
Mrs Bennet sniffed. “Even the cat knows what it is to be left behind.”
Mr Darcy turned to Mrs Bennet before the final doors were shut.
“Madam, I am sensible of your kindness in permitting your daughters to accompany my sister. They will be well taken care of, and every comfort that can be afforded them shall be provided. Georgiana has been much in want of female society, and your indulgence in this particular is of real consequence to her.”
Mrs Bennet softened at once. “Well, I am sure I only hope you will not spoil them, Mr Darcy, for they have had very little indulgence of late.”
He bowed. “I shall endeavour to deserve your trust.”
Jane kissed Elizabeth first, then Mary, then Kitty, holding each a moment longer than she meant to show.
“Write to me,” she whispered, fastening the request with her eyes as much as with the words.
Georgiana received a gentler embrace, her cheek cool beneath Jane’s hand, and Mrs Younge thanked her with quick propriety. Lydia pressed in at Kitty’s shoulder, determined not to be overlooked in the ordering.
“Do not expect me to envy you,” she said, with a brightness that did not quite hold.
“I shall have my own entertainments, and far more important ones. Cobweb’s foal will be born the moment you are out of sight.
” She kissed Kitty’s cheek with sudden force, then caught Elizabeth’s hand and squeezed it once, quickly, before she seemed aware she had done it.
“Write,” she added, and turned away at once, calling for Susan as though nothing had touched her at all.
Only then did the footman open the door of the first carriage.
Mr Darcy offered his hand, and Elizabeth stepped up, the carriage step higher than Longbourn’s and steadier beneath her foot.
Kitty followed at once, smoothing her skirts with great care, as though travelling in style required a particular composure.
The footman shut the door with quiet finality, and the world outside became framed by glass and curtained corners.
Kitty leaned to the window at once, waving until Jane was no more than a pale shape at the gate.
“We shall be there before anyone has time to miss us,” she declared, and laughed as though it were true.
The road took them into a country that altered by degrees, field giving way to thicker hedges, villages to wider stretches of open land.
Kitty supplied remarks enough for all three, naming every curious cottage and every ill-mannered horse, laughing at a flock of geese that would not yield, and pitying a lady in a jolting chaise as though she had been condemned to hardship for life.
Mr Darcy answered when she appealed to him and gave directions at each change of horses with an ease that suggested the day had been considered long before it began.
Elizabeth listened and found herself thinking, against her will, of leaving Longbourn, when every mile had been heavy, and how different this journey was.
They slept that night at an inn chosen before they arrived, a private parlour already prepared, the fire lit, and supper laid in readiness.
It was not only comfort that had been arranged, but privacy.
The passage outside was busy with other travellers, boots and voices and the scrape of chairs upon boards, yet the door shut upon it all so firmly that the noise seemed to belong to another establishment.
Mr Darcy’s servant went out once and returned without having raised his voice. A tray appeared soon after with what they had ordered, and one or two things besides, precisely suited to fatigue and late arrival. Kitty noticed it at once.
“How do they do that?” she whispered, with pleased astonishment.
Mr Darcy only said, “It is the advantage of travelling with proper arrangements in place,” and turned the conversation to the road they must take in the morning.
Later, as they were rising, the innkeeper himself came to the door with a bow too eager to be entirely natural.
“Mr Darcy,” he began, and checked himself at once. “Your horses will be ready at first light, sir, and the rooms at the next place are prepared. We were told—” He stopped again, smiled, and attempted a different civility. “I hope you have found everything agreeable.”
Mr Darcy’s reply was perfectly even. “You have done very well,” he said, and the innkeeper withdrew with the air of a man who had been both praised and dismissed by the same sentence.
Elizabeth stood a moment with her hand upon the back of her chair.
The words remained with her, not for their sense, but for their implication.
We were told. She told herself it was nothing but diligence, a message sent ahead to spare delay.
Yet she felt, faintly, the oddness of being preceded, of arriving where her comfort was already known.
In the morning they rose early, as travellers must, with the grey light barely established and the inn already stirring below.
Servants moved with practised quiet, and the carriages stood ready before Elizabeth had finished fastening her cloak.
Kitty appeared with determined cheerfulness and declared she would ride with Mary and Georgiana for the day, for she was tired of looking from the same window and had been promised a reading aloud.
Mr Darcy did not oppose it. He only nodded once, and the matter was settled.
At the first change of horses Kitty climbed down with cheerful haste, darted across to the second carriage, and was received with such ready warmth that the alteration looked no more than amusement.
The maid who had attended the Bennet sisters the night before was directed into Kitty’s place before the door was shut again, and the space that remained seemed immediately smaller.
Elizabeth was aware of the altered air, the quiet made respectable by the maid’s presence and yet sharpened by the loss of Kitty’s constant motion.
They set off once more, wheels finding their rhythm, and Elizabeth told herself she was not listening for Mr Darcy’s voice.
They travelled on through miles of hedged fields and market towns, the road measured by milestones and the changing teams. Elizabeth looked out and spoke of what she saw, if only to keep her thoughts from turning inward.
When a church tower rose above the trees she remarked upon it, and Mr Darcy named the village without hesitation, adding, as though it were nothing, that the river beyond had once flooded the low road in winter.
She asked how he knew it. He answered simply that he made a habit of observing where he was.
“You observe everything,” Elizabeth said.
Mr Darcy’s gaze shifted to her, then away again. “It is useful to know where one is,” he replied. After a moment he added, more quietly, “particularly when others depend upon it.”
She looked down at her hands and found her fingers had loosened upon her reticule without her noticing. The carriage rolled on, the maid’s breathing soft in the corner, and the road felt smoother than it had any right to be.
Mr Darcy reached to the strap above the window and drew it a fraction tighter, shutting out a stream of air Elizabeth had not acknowledged until it ceased.
The maid shifted at once to steady the rug, and the movement made it plain how many small comforts were managed without discussion.
Elizabeth watched the fields slide past and tried to fix her mind upon them, yet found herself listening for the next instruction given in that low, even tone.
When the road grew rough and the carriage began to jolt, the pace eased almost at once.
“Do you prefer travel-books that instruct,” Mr Darcy asked, “or those that merely describe?”
Elizabeth turned her head a little. “I prefer a writer who is honest,” she replied. “If he pretends a hard road is delightful, I cannot trust him in anything else.”