CHAPTER 48 #3
Mr. Hartwood had the common licence laid upon his desk before they sat down, weighted at one corner by an inkstand and at the other by a small stack of folded correspondence.
He did not present it romantically. Mr. Hartwood had a way of making a common licence sound less like marriage than like a gate with three locks, all of which, happily, possessed keys.
“No impediment remains in this direction,” he said, tapping the paper with one finger.
Mr. Darcy, seated beside Elizabeth with his gloves laid neatly across his knee, listened with a manner of sober satisfaction. He signed where he must sign, asked one quiet question where clarification was required, and looked once at Elizabeth when Mr. Hartwood repeated, “No impediment.”
That direction.
There remained, of course, mothers, fathers, breakfast chairs, servants, carriages, relations, possible tears, possible objections, and the unpredictable constitution of Lydia Bennet when wearing coral earrings. But no impediment in law.
Elizabeth found this comforting.
“There is another matter,” said Mr. Hartwood, closing one paper and opening another with a pleasure too small to be called triumph and too visible to be called modesty. “I will not say Mr. Wickham is safely disposed of.”
Mr. Darcy’s attention sharpened at once.
Mr. Hartwood glanced at him. “But I am tolerably confident that he has been distracted until after Thursday.”
Elizabeth looked up. “Distracted?”
“By Derbyshire, among other things. I understand he has left London.”
Mr. Darcy’s face did not ease.
“Derbyshire is not safety,” he said.
“No,” said Mr. Hartwood. “But it is distance. For the purposes of Thursday, I shall take distance.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened once upon her glove. Derbyshire meant Pemberley; it meant Mr. Wickham’s father, his mother, old favour, borrowed consequence, and all the machinery which had made Mr. Wickham dangerous before London ever gave him rooms.
“It is not Portman Square before Thursday,” said Elizabeth.
Mr. Darcy looked at her, still grave.
“No,” he said. “That is something.”
“It is what we require this week.”
Mr. Hartwood’s mouth twitched. “A lawyer delights in limited success, Miss Bennet. It is so much more reliable than grand victory.”
“Then I congratulate you on a limited success.”
“I accept with great satisfaction.”
They also agreed, firmly and finally, that no notice should be placed in any newspaper before the wedding.
“Afterward,” Elizabeth said, folding the instruction, “the world may read what it likes. It shall not be invited to assist.”
Mr. Darcy’s eyes warmed. “A sound rule.”
“Mrs. Bennet will not think so.”
“Then it is fortunate she is not the world entire.”
“Do not say that in her hearing. It may distress her more than anything else.”
Mrs. Doddridge, seated near the office window with her hands folded over her reticule, said, “Most ladies dislike being reduced geographically.”
Mr. Darcy bowed his head as if accepting instruction.
They returned to Portman Square through streets washed bright by rain and sunlight, the sort of morning in which every wet stone shone and every draught found the wrist between glove and sleeve.
With Mr. Wickham removed from London, at least for the present, the most immediate danger to the wedding was not scandal, debt, or law.
It was breakfast.
The licence made the marriage legally possible. The rooms upstairs made it domestic.
Mrs. Albright met Elizabeth in the hall before her bonnet had been untied.
“Mr. Darcy’s rooms are ready, miss.”
Elizabeth looked once toward the staircase.
Then she went upstairs alone first.
The bedchamber had been aired, warmed, cleaned of old heaviness, and made grave without gloom.
The darker blue hangings had been fitted.
The linen was laid in quiet abundance; the presses stood open; the bell-pulls had been tested; the hearth was clean; the dressing room beyond held space for clothes, shaving water, boots, brushes, and all the smaller daily facts by which a gentleman ceased to be a visitor and became part of a house.
The work room moved her most.
Shelves stood ready for law books and papers. The writing table had been placed for the best light. A chair neither too soft nor too punitive had been chosen. The inkstand was simple, the fire laid, the curtains drawn back. Nothing in the room asked gratitude. Everything in it answered expectation.
It was no longer Mr. Marwood’s room, and not yet Mr. Darcy’s. It stood in that delicate interval in which welcome had been arranged but not received.
Elizabeth put her hand briefly on the back of the chair.
Then she went down before she could become foolish over furniture.
Mrs. Albright was waiting below with a pencil and a face that suggested several servants had already been improved against their will.
“Mrs. Albright, Mr. Darcy’s man should see the rooms before Thursday,” said Elizabeth. “While we are in Surrey, I want everything transferred and settled without troubling Mr. Darcy the moment we return.”
“Yes, miss. I shall send to him directly.”
“Not as an invitation to alter anything.”
Mrs. Albright looked faintly offended. “No, miss. As information.”
“Excellent.”
When Elizabeth came down again, the dinner table was already being laid for the people who must be told that Portman Square was a household, not a field of conquest.
The Portman Square dinner took place that evening.
It was not a celebration. It was too near the wedding for that and too full of purpose. It was a small, carefully arranged dinner for those persons most likely either to assist the wedding or endanger it by believing assistance unnecessary.
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner came with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Kitty, and Lydia.
Jane, Bingley, Miss Bingley, and Mary came from Brook Street.
Mr. Darcy arrived from chambers. Mrs. Doddridge was present, Pom-Pom wore his least insulting wrapper, and Mrs. Albright had arranged the dining room in a manner that made contradiction seem physically difficult.
It was Mrs. Bennet’s first entrance into Portman Square.
This was visible before she spoke. She stood in the hall and looked at the staircase, the servants, the lamps, the width of the passage, the polished depth of the house, and the calm with which Elizabeth’s footman received cloaks as if receiving cloaks from Mrs. Bennet had always been one possible event among many and not the overturning of nature.
“Well!” cried Mrs. Bennet. “I had no notion it was so large. Mr. Bennet, did you remember it so very large?”
Mr. Bennet glanced about him. “I remember being forbidden to touch a clock, but little beyond that.”
“You were here as a boy?” asked Lydia.
“Once, I believe. My aunt then had a talent for making chairs appear more upright than other chairs. I see the family gift has not wholly expired.”
Elizabeth heard the compliment and the evasion in equal measure.
Mrs. Bennet continued to stare. “And all this is Lizzy’s?”
“All this,” said Elizabeth, “is Portman Square.”
Mrs. Bennet did not like the answer, because it refused to be measured as either boast or apology.
Dinner was good, because Mrs. Albright and Cook had decided that if a family must be governed, it might as well be fed into temporary obedience.
Bingley admired everything; Jane looked relieved when he did not attempt to admire the soup too long; Mary wore her new necklace and sat a little straighter because of it; Kitty touched her brooch more than once; Lydia announced that her earrings were small but lively, which Mr. Gardiner said was a happy ambition for all young persons.
Mrs. Bennet watched the jewels with mingled satisfaction and grievance.
“I am sure,” she said, “my daughters look very well. Though I did not see anything chosen, of course.”
“You did not see the mementos chosen,” said Elizabeth. “Those were for my sisters.”
Mrs. Bennet’s eyes sharpened.
“Your bonnet and gloves were chosen with the others, Mama. They are very suitable.”
“Suitable,” repeated Mrs. Bennet, as if suitability were a poor substitute for obedience.
Jane looked into her glass.
Mr. Darcy said nothing. He did not need to. His silence had the form of standing beside her.
When the dinner had been cleared and everyone had returned to the drawing room, Elizabeth did not wait for Mrs. Bennet to discover the subject herself.
“There is one matter I must make plain before Thursday,” she said.
Several heads turned.
Mrs. Bennet stiffened at once, prepared to be injured.
Elizabeth stood near the mantel. Mr. Darcy stood not beside her, but near enough that she knew he was there.
Mrs. Doddridge sat with Pom-Pom in her lap.
Mrs. Albright stood by the door with the final breakfast list in her hand, because Elizabeth had asked her to be present and because Mrs. Albright’s presence made the point before it was spoken.