CHAPTER 8 #2
Firelight held in the brass fender and caught upon the polished curves of old furniture.
The curtains had been drawn against the grey street, and the room within seemed almost impertinently alive by contrast: amber, brown, gold, deep green shadow, the shine of china, the low stir of servants withdrawing after duty done.
It was a room formed by an older woman’s taste and still governed by her habits, but its present centre was unmistakably the young lady who had brought him there.
She stood near the hearth, bonnet removed now, the loosened curls at her temples softened by the fire.
Alarm had left colour in her face and animation in every movement.
She was giving orders still — not loudly, not foolishly, but as one accustomed to being obeyed by a house that loved her enough to move before she finished asking.
“You must sit down,” she said.
“I am perfectly able to stand.”
“I did not ask whether you were able.”
“No. I begin to perceive that distinction.”
“Then you are recovering already.”
He sat.
It was not, he reflected, his finest act of independence.
Her questions came next, too many of them and too quickly, but with feeling enough beneath them to make their number pardonable.
Had the horse struck him? Was his hand injured?
Had the mud stained through? Did he take sugar?
Was he chilled? Where had he been walking from?
Darcy answered as best he could, though with increasing brevity, while Mrs. Albright oversaw the necessary restorations with silent efficiency and Mrs. Doddridge sat behind the tea things with her basket, neither interfering nor withdrawing.
At last Miss Bennet said, “Your hand.”
“My hand is well.”
“That is the second time you have said so.”
“It remains true.”
“Then it will survive inspection.”
“That is not necessary.”
“It is necessary to me.”
That silenced him for half a second too long.
She did not appear to perceive the effect of it.
She had come nearer, and before he could find any respectable reason to prevent it, she was looking not at his face but at his ungloved hand with the grave attention of a woman who had decided that gratitude gave her jurisdiction.
Her own hands did not touch him. They did not need to.
Her nearness, the heat of the fire, the faint scent of damp wool and something cleaner beneath it, and the memory of her fingers closing over his around the dog returned all at once with a force entirely out of proportion to circumstance.
“There,” she said, after a moment. “No blood.”
“I had ventured to believe as much.”
“Yes, but gentlemen venture to believe many things which cannot be relied upon.”
From the cushion, the dog yawned in a manner that seemed to contain an opinion.
“Do not support me with that air of superiority,” she told him. “You behaved abominably.”
The dog blinked with perfect impenitence.
Her voice altered when she addressed him, softening in a way that ought to have made the scene ridiculous and did not. “You wicked creature. If you had been stepped on, I should never have forgiven you.”
It would have been easier if she had been merely beautiful.
Beauty, when one had learned discipline, could be acknowledged and put aside.
Darcy had done it before in rooms where his presence was tolerated but not desired, where admiration, if indulged, would only have made reduced circumstances ridiculous.
A handsome woman was not a claim upon him.
Fine eyes did not alter income, name, reputation, or fact.
But Miss Bennet — for he had by now learned that much from some servant’s address — was not merely beautiful.
She was warm.
Worse, she made warmth active. She had drawn him from the street, ordered him to the fire, set the household in motion, examined his hand, scolded the dog, and now pressed tea upon him with an air that made care seem less like kindness than conquest.
He had put such things away from himself.
Not formally. No man of five or six and twenty declares to himself that beauty, warmth, domestic ease, and female attention have passed beyond his reach.
But he had learned, by steady correction, to regard them as belonging to rooms into which he might be admitted by business, not by hope.
A gentleman in reduced circumstances might keep his manners, his coat, his accounts, and his self-command.
He could not afford to mistake a young woman’s gratitude for invitation.
Yet there she stood in firelight, green-eyed, brown-curled, decisive, and too vivid for the grey day that had delivered him to her door; and he discovered, with a shock almost like anger, that being cared for by her was not merely pleasant.
It was not safe.
He looked down into his cup and wanted to look at her again.
That was worse.
The tea was excellent. Naturally it was excellent.
Everything in the house seemed to arrive with the speed and accuracy of long custom: tea, biscuits, a small plate, a folded cloth, a fresh glove from somewhere to cover the indignity of his own being removed.
He had the sensation not of being entertained, but of being absorbed into domestic practice.
The house had made a place for him before he had consented to occupy one.
Miss Bennet, having apparently brought him indoors, restored his circulation, and proved him unwounded, recollected at last that names had not been exchanged.
“I have been very rude,” she said.
“You have been very decisive.”
“That is often mistaken for the same thing.”
“Not always unjustly.”
Her eyes lifted to his, bright again. “Then I shall repair it. I am Elizabeth Bennet.”
“Fitzwilliam Darcy.”
“Mr. Darcy,” she repeated, as if trying whether it suited him.
He bowed. “Miss Bennet.”
The name, once supplied, did not make her less disconcerting. It merely gave shape to the discomposure.
She looked toward the cushion. “And that is Lord Pomington.”
The dog gave a small snort, as if impatient with the delay of proper recognition.
“Lord Pomington,” Darcy repeated.
“Pom-Pom to his friends.”
“Has he many?”
“No. He is selective.”
“I am not surprised.”
“He may come to tolerate you,” she said. “You preserved his lordship, which counts in your favour. You also prevented him from killing the rat, which does not.”
“I shall endeavour to bear the uncertainty.”
Her mouth curved.
It was not a grand smile. It was worse: sudden, vivid, and intimate in the way of expressions not prepared for display. Darcy felt it somewhere below the orderly level of thought.
He set down his cup.
Mrs. Albright entered again at that moment to report, without ceremony, that the coat would do very well, though the glove was beyond Christian restoration. Miss Bennet accepted this verdict as if gloves, like men, must submit to judgment when they had failed in public.
“Thank you, Mrs. Albright.”
“The gentleman’s coat will be ready directly, miss. His lordship is not to be taken out again this evening.”
Pom-Pom yipped once.
“No, sir,” said Mrs. Albright, without turning her head. “You are not.”
Darcy, despite himself, nearly smiled.
Miss Bennet saw it. He was almost certain she did, because her own eyes warmed, though she did not comment. The interruption steadied him and unsettled him in equal measure.
For several minutes, conversation shifted into the more harmless matter of the street, the coachman, and Lord Pomington’s habits, though with Miss Bennet even harmless matter had a tendency to grow animated.
“He has no sense of proportion,” she said, looking toward the dog.
“He appears to have a strong sense of consequence.”
“Entirely unearned.”
“Then he is not alone in the world.”
That made her glance back at him quickly. “Mr. Darcy, was that wit?”
“I should not like to answer too hastily.”
“Then I shall give you credit for the attempt.”
“I am obliged to you.”
“You need not be. I am generous only when recently frightened.”
Mrs. Doddridge, from behind the tea things, said, “Lord Pomington commonly has that effect, miss.”
“Yes,” said Miss Bennet. “But seldom so profitably.”
The dog whined faintly, as if bored by his own rescue now that it had ceased to centre him.
Miss Bennet turned from him to Darcy again. “You were walking home, Mr. Darcy?”
“Yes.”
“From business?”
“Yes.”
“What business?”
The question was very direct. Not impertinent, because her manner had no vulgar curiosity in it; but direct enough to make evasion tiresome.
When he said he was in the law, her attention sharpened.
When he admitted he was a solicitor, it lit.
“A solicitor?” she said. “Oh, perfect.”
Darcy stared at her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I have trustees.”
That, he thought, was not the explanation she imagined it to be.
“Indeed.”
“Yes. Excellent men. Worthy men. Ancient men.”
“Age is not always a professional defect.”
“No, but it may become a practical one. Mr. Hartwood is kindness in legal form, and Mr. Beaker is caution in human form; between them I am preserved from ruin, folly, and most of my own impatience. But neither is near enough, nor young enough, nor easily provoked into speed.”
“Miss Bennet—”
“I do not mean to entrust you with everything because you rescued Pom-Pom.”
“I am relieved to hear it.”
“Though you must allow it is a promising beginning.”
“As a solicitor?”
“As a man who can act before disaster has arranged itself.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No. But it is something.”
It was reasonable.
That was the trouble.
Beauty and warmth might be fought by silence.
Gratitude might be dismissed as temporary.
But this practical turn offered him both refuge and temptation.
As a solicitor he might call. As a solicitor he might sit in this room without presumption.
As a solicitor he could answer questions, review papers, write letters, occupy the chair near the fire, hear her voice, watch those green eyes grow intent over business, and call the whole arrangement proper.
He disliked himself for seeing the temptation so quickly.
“You know nothing of me,” he said.