CHAPTER 73 #2
Jane came to sit beside her. “Oh, Lizzy.”
“It was not an affliction. You need not look as if I have been struck by Providence in the music room.”
Jane laughed, but her eyes remained damp. “I hope you are happy.”
Elizabeth looked at her.
The question was not, Are you well? nor Are you careful? nor Has Mr. Darcy been pleased? nor Does Pemberley rejoice? It was Jane’s gentlest question, and therefore not one Elizabeth could easily turn aside.
“I am,” Elizabeth said. “More than I know what to do with. And sooner than I had learned what to do with being married.”
Jane’s fingers tightened.
“It is very soon,” she said.
“Yes. Though I cannot find it in myself to resent the child for punctuality.”
Jane smiled, but anxiously. “I do not think you could resent your own child.”
“No,” said Elizabeth, touched despite herself. “But I may resent the speed at which happiness expects me to become equal to it.”
Jane looked at her with anxious tenderness. “I am sure you will.”
“I wish I were equally sure of myself.”
“I am sure enough for both of us,” Jane said, and then seemed to doubt whether she had presumed too much. “At least, I hope I may be.”
Elizabeth smiled. “You may. But only because you look so alarmed by your own boldness.”
Jane laughed a little. “You have had no quiet since your marriage. Not truly.”
“No. We had three days.”
“Three days,” Jane repeated, with sisterly disapproval made gentle by blushes.
“They were very well used.”
Jane looked down, laughing despite herself. “Lizzy.”
“I am only defending efficiency.”
“You are very happy with him,” Jane said.
It was not wisdom. It was observation, offered with love.
Elizabeth looked back toward the window. “Yes.”
“And he with you.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said more softly. “I believe so.”
Jane’s hand remained over hers. “Then I am glad.”
There was no great counsel in it. No correction, no doctrine, no arrangement. Jane was not made for hard judgment, and perhaps never would be. But her gladness was real, and Elizabeth found, to her own surprise, that it steadied something in her which argument would only have made defensive.
After a moment, Jane added, “Charles says Mr. Darcy looks happier when he has forgotten to remember he is grave.”
Elizabeth’s throat tightened unexpectedly.
“Does he?”
“Yes. Often with you. Sometimes with Mr. Darcy Senior. Once, Charles says, with a horse.”
“That must have been a very superior horse.”
“I believe it was Cato.”
Elizabeth laughed, and Jane sat with her until the silence grew companionable rather than careful.
That evening, Fitzwilliam learned the truth not by announcement but by being watched.
He had been in the billiard room with Bingley after dinner, a habit which had come into being during the visit because Bingley found billiards an excellent aid to conversation and Fitzwilliam found them an excellent disguise for it.
Elizabeth had passed the open door once and heard Bingley say, with the cheerful earnestness that made his more serious observations easy to underestimate, “Jane is easier for having seen her here.”
Fitzwilliam’s answer had been low. “I am glad of it.”
“She was anxious. Not because of you — that is, not exactly — but because no one knew how matters stood here. A wife may be very happy, I suppose, and still be uneasy among people who have not yet decided how to be kind to her.”
“That is just,” said Fitzwilliam.
“This house seems to be trying.”
There had been a pause. Then the clean strike of a ball.
“It is being assisted,” Fitzwilliam said.
Bingley, perhaps understanding more than he was given credit for, only said, “Very good. I am in favour of assisting houses when they have the sense to improve.”
By the time Fitzwilliam came upstairs, Elizabeth was standing at the window of their still-imperfect sitting room, watching the moon make a pale line of the terrace.
The proper rooms were advancing, but they had not yet been surrendered to them; these chambers remained too much his old rooms and not enough theirs.
Yet even here, in rooms not built for a married life, the habit of nearness had done some of the work that plaster and paper had not.
He saw her face and stopped.
“What is it?”
“Nothing bad.”
That did not reassure him. He came to her at once.
“Elizabeth.”
She took his hand before he could say more and placed it where hers had rested that morning.
His breath altered.
“Today,” she said. “During Mary and Georgiana’s duet. The child was very decided.”
His hand stilled over hers.
“Again?”
“Yes. But stronger.”
She guided his hand lower. “Here.”
He grew still at once, with that grave obedience he gave to any instruction he was afraid to value too much.
Nothing happened.
Elizabeth looked up at him. “The child may object to witnesses.”
“Already particular?”
“It would be unreasonable to expect otherwise from a Darcy.”
His mouth softened, but he did not move his hand.
Then the child moved.
Small. Certain. There.
Fitzwilliam shut his eyes.
Elizabeth had seen him startled, wounded, angry, hungry, weary, and happy. She had not often seen him entirely defeated. This was gentler than defeat and deeper than triumph. His hand remained beneath hers, and for once he did not seem to know what to do with feeling except let it pass through him.
“Well?” Elizabeth asked, because if she did not say something she might cry, and crying had lately become an activity too easily entered into.
His eyes opened. “I have no sensible remark.”
“That is disappointing. I married you partly for judgment.”
“I will attempt judgment tomorrow.”
“Very good. Tonight we shall accept astonishment.”
His other hand rose to her face, not quite touching at first, then brushing her cheek with such care that she leaned into it before he could ask permission for tenderness already given.
“I felt it,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I had believed you.”
“How generous.”
“This is different.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, and covered his hand with hers.
“Your children,” he said, “will be encouraged to contradict me only when correct.”
“That is exactly the sort of rule which invites rebellion.”
“Then I shall rely on you to make rebellion elegant.”
Elizabeth laughed softly, and his hand remained there beneath hers until the moon had moved beyond the terrace edge.
The next morning brought Richard’s letter.
It arrived with the rest of the post, but Fitzwilliam knew the hand before the salver reached him.
Elizabeth saw it in the set of his shoulder.
A month at Pemberley had taught the household to notice letters as weather: some brought ordinary rain, some promised storm, and some were opened in silence because no one wished to be the first to name the cloud.
They were in the breakfast parlour. George Darcy had come down, had eaten enough toast to make Mrs. Reynolds look briefly victorious, and was engaged in telling Mr. Bingley that a gentleman who admired every prospect equally could not be trusted to judge land.
“I assure you, sir,” Bingley said, “I have degrees of admiration.”
“Do you?”
“Certainly. That turn beyond the west copse is admiration of the first order. The lake from the upper rise is admiration of a very high second. The view from the old beech is perhaps—”
“Universal rapture,” said Elizabeth.
“Very nearly,” Bingley admitted.
George Darcy looked as if universal rapture confirmed every suspicion he had ever held of cheerful men, but Georgiana was smiling, and he did not pursue the matter.
Fitzwilliam did not open Richard’s letter at the table.
He set it beside his plate, finished the civil necessities of breakfast, and only after George Darcy had been taken back to his rooms and Bingley had been lured toward the stables by the promise of Cato’s superior intelligence did he ask Elizabeth to come with him.
They read it in the library.
Richard wrote with less of his usual careless flourish than Elizabeth liked. That alone made the words feel colder.
My dear Darcy,
The Earl and Countess have returned to town.
I remain near enough to Rosings for the present to be useful and far enough from Lady Catherine to preserve what little charity I still possess.
The settlement papers are signed. My father has done what may be done after a marriage which ought never to have taken place before any such paper existed.
Rosings cannot be sold, its principal holdings are secured, and Anne’s residence and provision are fixed.
Lady Catherine is established in the dower house with every comfort except authority, and therefore with no comfort she is prepared to acknowledge.
Elizabeth paused there.
“The dower house,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Does she see Anne?”
Fitzwilliam read ahead, then nodded once.
Lady Catherine sees Anne often enough to make complaint unreasonable, and not often enough to make command possible. This, you will understand, she considers persecution.
Elizabeth could almost hear Richard’s voice in it, dry from exhaustion rather than amusement.
Fitzwilliam continued.
Do not imagine Sir Edmund defeated. He yielded where resistance would cost him more than it gained. That is not submission. It is arithmetic.
Elizabeth looked up at that.
“That sounds like Richard.”
“It sounds like Sir Edmund.”
Fitzwilliam returned to the letter.
Sir Edmund has done at Rosings what I am told he had already done upon his own property.
He has sold what could be sold, let what could be let, dismissed what could be spared, and reduced every expense that existed chiefly to make rank audible.
His own estate is rented, his town house let, his unentailed luxuries converted into capital, and his creditors, I gather, pacified by discipline where they could not be satisfied by abundance.
He cannot sell Rosings, and has signed away any such attempt with admirable prudence; but Rosings has fewer servants, fewer fires, fewer horses, fewer bills paid merely because Lady Catherine liked obedience to arrive in the shape of accounts.
The house is not diminished exactly. It is disciplined.