CHAPTER 49 #2
His hand was steady when he took it out. This surprised him more than his voice had done.
The little band lay briefly against his fingers.
The diamond and emeralds caught the pale March light for one instant before he placed it on Elizabeth’s finger.
Her eyes dropped to it, and for the first time that morning her composure faltered.
Not greatly. Only enough that Darcy saw she had not expected it.
She did not know yet what was written inside.
For one moment longer, that knowledge was his alone.
The ring passed over her knuckle. Her hand closed in his.
When the service ended, she was Mrs. Darcy.
The church did not alter. The flowers remained where they had been placed. The guests did not vanish. Mrs. Bennet did not become silent by miracle. Bingley did not cease smiling. Mr. Beaker did not look less like a man who had arrived at the correct conclusion by arithmetic.
Yet everything was changed.
Elizabeth stood beside him, wearing his ring.
Darcy signed where he was required to sign. Elizabeth signed after him, with a hand steady enough to satisfy any lawyer and a mouth that nearly smiled when Hartwood, witnessing the paper, bowed with professional satisfaction poorly disguised as feeling.
“Very properly done,” Mr. Hartwood murmured.
“I am glad we have not disappointed you,” said Elizabeth.
“On the contrary, Mrs. Darcy. I have seldom seen affection arranged with better regard for documentation.”
Elizabeth’s eyes warmed at the new name, then darted to Darcy with such quick private mischief that he nearly forgot Mr. Beaker was within three feet of them.
Mr. Beaker offered his congratulations in a tone suggesting the matter had now been entered correctly.
Mrs. Hall kissed Elizabeth’s cheek. Mrs. Belwick said the gown would do.
Miss Hall declared the service mercifully short and therefore a credit to all persons concerned.
Jane embraced Elizabeth with tears that did not become an event.
Kitty stared at the ring. Lydia whispered something about emeralds until Mary touched her sleeve and said, “Later.”
Mrs. Bennet wept, but she wept in her assigned place, under the government of her bonnet, Mrs. Gardiner, and two pews of witnesses. Darcy considered this a triumph of order over nature.
They went to Portman Square as Mr. and Mrs. Darcy.
That sentence seemed to repeat itself with every turn of the carriage wheels.
At Portman Square, the door opened before the carriage had fully stopped.
Mrs. Albright stood in the hall, not smiling, because she would not have lowered the dignity of the occasion by appearing surprised at success.
Behind her, the house had admitted spring by command.
Hyacinths stood in bowls upon polished tables.
Narcissus brightened the hall. Violets appeared where no violet could have naturally found its way into London stone.
The air held flowers, beeswax, warm bread, coffee, and the faint discipline of servants who had been warned that no guest, however affectionate, was to wander.
“Mr. Darcy. Mrs. Darcy.”
Mrs. Albright said the names as if they had been entered in the household books some time ago and only now read aloud.
Elizabeth’s hand tightened on his arm.
“Thank you, Mrs. Albright.”
“The breakfast is ready, ma’am.”
Ma’am.
Darcy felt Elizabeth’s fingers move again. He did not look down at her, because if he did he might smile in the hall like a fool.
The rooms had been arranged to receive people without yielding to them. The breakfast table was handsome, abundant, and disciplined. Flowers stood low enough not to obstruct conversation. Silver gleamed; china waited; chairs had been placed with a logic that concealed strategy under hospitality.
Mrs. Albright did not appear to command. She merely stood in one place, and the house remembered its duty.
Guests entered in their appointed flow. Cloaks were removed.
No one went upstairs. No caller was admitted.
No chair was discovered wanting. Mrs. Bennet, who looked prepared to be overwhelmed by the house, the flowers, the title of mother, and the affront of not having arranged any of it, found herself seated before she could decide which feeling deserved precedence.
Pom-Pom had been left to Portman Square and Mrs. Albright’s authority, and had evidently suffered both. He appeared after breakfast began in a white wrapper edged with blue-grey ribbon, looking as if matrimony had been personally inconvenient to him.
He accepted Elizabeth’s married state by sneezing at Mr. Darcy’s boot and then permitting himself to be admired.
Darcy had expected the breakfast to separate him from Elizabeth by civil necessity. In practice, civil necessity proved more generous than expected.
There were hands to shake, thanks to return, congratulations to receive.
Uncle Edward embraced him with a restraint that did not hide feeling from Darcy, though it might have hidden it from anyone less starved of paternal tenderness.
Richard clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Well done,” in a tone which turned a jest into a blessing by refusing to lengthen it.
Bingley came forward with his usual open pleasure, checked it just in time into a proper bow, and offered his hand.
“Mr. Darcy, I wish you every happiness,” he said. “Jane and I both do.”
“Thank you,” said Darcy.
Bingley’s smile escaped all restraint. “It is a very happy day.”
Darcy glanced once toward Elizabeth. “Yes,” he said. “It is.”
Mr. Gardiner congratulated him warmly. Mrs. Gardiner did the same with a look that said she still intended to observe him, but now with approval if he continued to deserve it.
Hartwood wished him joy. Beaker wished him order, which Darcy understood to be a blessing of the highest sincerity.
Miss Hall looked him up and down. “You look much better married, Mr. Darcy.”
“I am relieved it has made so swift an improvement.”
“It remains to be seen whether it holds.”
Elizabeth, standing near enough to hear, said, “Miss Hall does not squander praise before luncheon.”
“A wise economy,” said Darcy.
Mrs. Belwick declared that married gentlemen who answered older ladies properly might yet be saved.
Mrs. Hall told Elizabeth she was very handsome and immediately added that Mrs. Marwood would have pretended not to notice and then found fault with a sleeve.
Elizabeth laughed softly at that, and Darcy, hearing it, found himself beside her again before he had formed any respectable reason for moving.
There were proper duties. Yet every duty seemed, by some agreeable accident, to return him to Elizabeth’s side.
He stood near her when Mrs. Hall spoke to her.
He crossed the room when Mrs. Bennet became too full of feeling.
He returned when Lydia wished to inspect the ring and Mary wished to prevent Lydia from doing so with her nose nearly upon Elizabeth’s hand.
He remained within reach when Miss Bingley offered congratulations in terms so polished they might have been used at court, and Elizabeth accepted them with equal smoothness and a warmer eye than Miss Bingley had perhaps expected.
Mrs. Albright, who had apparently decided that a bridegroom might be permitted certain inefficiencies, arranged the servants so that Mr. Darcy’s repeated returns to his wife caused no obstruction.
At last Elizabeth looked up at him as he came to stand beside her for the third time in ten minutes.
“Mr. Darcy,” she murmured, “have you misplaced Uncle Edward?”
“No.”
“Colonel Fitzwilliam?”
“No.”
“Mr. Bingley?”
“He is difficult to misplace.”
“Then what have you lost?”
His eyes lowered briefly to her gloved hand, where the ring sat beneath lace and sunlight.
“Nothing,” he said. “That is the novelty.”
Her expression changed. The teasing did not leave it, but something softer came beneath. For one unguarded second, they were not at a breakfast with thirty eyes available to observe them.
Then Mrs. Bennet said, “Lizzy, I am sure you might let your mother look at the ring if everyone else is to see it before me.”
Elizabeth turned with admirable calm. “I am not aware that everyone else has seen it, Mama.”
“Lydia has.”
“Lydia has attempted to.”
“I have only admired it,” said Lydia.
Mary said, “With undue proximity.”
Mrs. Gardiner, with perfect timing, observed that the coffee was excellent.
Mrs. Bennet accepted coffee as one accepts defeat temporarily, and the breakfast continued.
It lasted long enough.
That, Darcy realized, was the miracle Mrs. Albright and Elizabeth had contrived.
Not that the breakfast was brief, not that no one felt too much, not that Mrs. Bennet became someone else, or Mr. Bennet said everything that might have healed what lay behind them.
It lasted long enough for every necessary person to greet them, to see them, to congratulate them, and to be satisfied that the marriage existed in public.
It did not last long enough for any person to take possession of it.
Uncle Edward stood for a few minutes near Elizabeth, and Darcy watched his uncle bow over her hand with grave respect.
“My dear Mrs. Darcy,” said Uncle Edward, “I am very glad to welcome you.”
Elizabeth’s face softened. “Thank you, sir. I am very glad to be welcomed.”
It was nothing extravagant. It did not need to be. Darcy looked away before his uncle could see what the words had done to him.
Richard, naturally, saw it.
He came beside Darcy and said low, “Take care. If people discover you have feelings, there will be no end of inconvenience.”
“There already is no end of inconvenience.”
“Yes, but most of this one is wearing ivory silk, so you cannot complain.”
Darcy did not answer, which made Richard grin.
Mr. Bennet spoke to him only near the end, when Mrs. Albright’s servants had begun the silent alterations that suggested departure was not only expected but already in motion.
“She has managed the day well,” said Mr. Bennet.
“She has.”
“I daresay you have discovered that my Lizzy is very fond of management.”