CHAPTER 48
A Common Licence
London had greeted March with enthusiasm: more light in the mornings, brave buds on the square trees, and rain determined to remind every hopeful creature that England did not surrender winter merely because the calendar suggested it.
Mr. Darcy came to Portman Square with a list on one of those bright mornings when the windows promised spring and the hall mats knew better.
Elizabeth had expected the list. He had promised a list of possible places to which they might remove after the wedding breakfast, and Mr. Darcy was not a man to promise a list and then arrive with a vague hope, three objections, and no paper.
He was shown into the library shortly after eleven, where Elizabeth sat with Mrs. Doddridge, Pom-Pom, two invitation drafts, three household notes from Mrs. Albright, and a headache that had begun with the words breakfast numbers.
Pom-Pom, who had learned to recognise Mr. Darcy’s step, opened his eyes and did not bark. This was now considered affection.
“You have brought geography,” said Elizabeth, as Mr. Darcy bowed over her hand.
“I have brought several possibilities,” he said. “Geography is less troublesome when narrowed.”
“That is true of many things.”
His mouth moved slightly. “Including wedding breakfasts?”
“Especially wedding breakfasts.”
Mrs. Doddridge, seated near the window with some narrow stitching in hand, said, “A breakfast is improved by boundaries.”
Mr. Darcy looked at her with perfect gravity. “I shall remember it.”
Elizabeth took the paper from him and found, as expected, several respectable possibilities: an inn recommended by Mr. Darcy’s uncle, a house near Richmond which might be lent by an acquaintance, a quiet lodging outside town, and then, written in Mr. Darcy’s hand with a little more space around it, a Surrey house belonging to Judge Edward Darcy.
She looked up. “A house?”
“A small one,” said Mr. Darcy at once. “My uncle uses it in summer, when London grows hot and dusty and his duties allow him to leave town. It is not an estate.”
“You say that as if I might accuse it of grandeur.”
“I thought denial the safest beginning.”
Elizabeth smiled and returned to the paper. “How far?”
“A half-day’s journey. If we leave directly after the breakfast, we should arrive before evening, provided the roads are tolerable.”
“And it has no expectations attached to it?”
“None beyond ordinary gratitude to my uncle and care not to set fire to the curtains.”
“A modest condition.”
“It has a small park, a garden, a stable sufficient for convenience, and a housekeeper who has known my uncle long enough to be trusted and short enough not to manage him.”
Elizabeth read the name written beside it.
“The Laurels.”
“It is not remarkable.”
“That is its first recommendation.” She sat back, unexpectedly pleased. “A house that can be reached before dinner and cannot be followed without intention. That is excellent geography.”
Mr. Darcy’s expression changed, barely, but she knew him well enough now to read the alteration. He had not expected her to like it quite so much.
“My uncle offered it freely,” he said.
“I am glad.”
The words came out softer than she intended.
It was not merely the convenience of Surrey, though the convenience was considerable.
It was not merely that the journey would remove them from Portman Square before Mrs. Bennet could discover new depths of maternal exhaustion.
It was that Mr. Darcy had a place which was not Pemberley, not Matlock, not his narrow London rooms, and not an apology.
A quiet house from the uncle who had helped him stand when others had left him to stand alone.
Elizabeth had expected distances, objections, and inns with questionable beds. She had not expected a garden.
“Then Surrey is settled?” asked Mr. Darcy.
“If you still approve it.”
“I would not have brought it if I did not.”
“No. You would have hidden it under three less pleasant choices and pretended the list was complete.”
He looked almost injured. “That would be very dishonest.”
“It would be very considerate.”
“I shall endeavour not to be considerate in that manner.”
“Excellent. I dislike being deprived of gardens.”
Mrs. Doddridge, without looking up, said, “A garden after a wedding is often beneficial.”
Elizabeth turned. “Is it?”
“I imagine so, miss.”
Mr. Darcy seemed to have difficulty with his composure for a moment, which improved Elizabeth’s morning beyond the power of any list.
Surrey settled what was to happen after the breakfast. It did not settle what the breakfast was to mean.
After Mr. Darcy departed for chambers, promising to write to his uncle at once, Elizabeth remained in the library with the list before her and the odd sensation that some door had been opened in a wall she had not known she had built.
Outside, rain tapped once against the window, considered its own discourtesy, and stopped.
A watery sunlight returned to the square as if nothing had happened.
She had spent days arranging escape routes, chair counts, servants’ orders, invitation limits, and refusals disguised as politeness. It occurred to her, only after Mr. Darcy had gone, that she had made every provision for the wedding to be survived, and very few for it to be enjoyed.
That would not do.
A wedding, even one endangered by mothers, creditors, fathers, nerves, rank, and breakfast, ought still to contain something better than defence.
She wrote to Jane at Brook Street before she could talk herself back into prudence, and then to Mrs. Gardiner in Gracechurch Street.
By eleven the next morning, Jane and Mary had arrived from Brook Street, Kitty and Lydia were already in possession of the Gardiners’ front parlour, and Mrs. Bennet had discovered that the expedition was real, immediate, and not arranged for her benefit.
Elizabeth had expected displeasure. She had not expected Mrs. Bennet to make such a complete proof of the wisdom of excluding her, but Mama had never been ungenerous in that respect.
Mrs. Bennet did not accompany them to the modiste.
She had meant to, in the sense that she had assumed no daughter of hers could order a wedding gown without first submitting the occasion to maternal occupation. She had not, however, been invited.
The discovery produced a quarter of an hour of injured astonishment, during which Mrs. Bennet lamented the unnatural state of modern daughters, the cruelty of London relations, the hardness of Elizabeth’s heart, the treachery of sisters, the coldness of nieces, the dreadful independence of young ladies with fortunes, and the likelihood that any gown chosen without her would disgrace the family by being either too plain, too fine, or insufficiently expressive of what a mother had suffered.
Elizabeth stood through it with her gloves already buttoned and her answer held so tightly behind her teeth that her jaw ached.
Jane looked distressed, but not uncertain. Mary looked thoughtful. Kitty looked at her own boots. Lydia, who had been forbidden to touch the bonnet strings laid out upon the side table, touched them twice and then tried to look innocent.
“Invited!” cried Mrs. Bennet. “Invited to my own daughter’s fitting!”
“To my fitting,” said Elizabeth.
Mrs. Bennet gasped.
Jane murmured, “Lizzy—”
“No, Jane.” Elizabeth kept her voice level, though every word had to be governed before it could be trusted. “Mama has not yet proved that she understands what is expected of her if she wishes to be invited.”
Mrs. Bennet pressed a handkerchief to her breast. “Expected! Invited! I, who have had five daughters and suffered everything—”
Mrs. Gardiner moved then, calm and decisive, and took Mrs. Bennet’s arm. “Fanny, you will be much better for a quiet morning.”
“I shall not be better!”
“Then we shall begin with quiet,” said Mrs. Gardiner, “and see what improvement follows.”
It was not guilt that rose in Elizabeth as Mrs. Bennet was guided toward the back parlour. Guilt would have been kinder. What rose instead was the familiar tightening of resentment: even the choosing of her gown must first be dragged toward Mrs. Bennet’s chair and asked to kneel there.
She looked away before her face could say it.
The carriage left eight minutes later.
For half a street, nobody spoke. The anger did not leave Elizabeth when the carriage began to move. It sat beside her as plainly as any passenger, buttoned, bonneted, and determined to be heard.
Jane looked once through the carriage window, then turned back with visible effort.
“I am glad Aunt Gardiner kept her,” she said quietly.
Elizabeth looked at her.
“I am,” Jane repeated. “Only I wish Mama had not made such keeping necessary.”
That softened something in Elizabeth without requiring her to soften her judgment.
“So do I,” she said.
Lydia leaned toward Kitty. “I think she would have chosen feathers.”
“For Lizzy?” said Kitty.
“For herself,” said Lydia.
Kitty laughed, then covered her mouth, which made Lydia laugh more. Even Jane’s smile escaped before she could discipline it.
Mrs. Doddridge, with Pom-Pom settled in his travelling wrapper beside her, said, “Feathers are seldom restful.”
That was the moment the anger loosened enough for Elizabeth to breathe.
They went first to the modiste.
Bond Street had been washed clean by the previous night’s rain and was pretending to be spring.
Shop windows brightened under thin sunshine; hems brushed damp pavements; carriage wheels found every remaining puddle with malice.
Lydia admired three bonnets from the carriage before they had stopped, Kitty saw a painted fan she could not help leaning toward, and Mary said nothing, but looked at the shops with the solemnity of a person discovering that London contained more methods of being expensive than she had previously supposed.