Chapter 14
S ome minutes passed in silence as I accustomed myself to the peculiarities of a strange gig and a truly dull horse. We manoeuvred through what was, in truth, a backwater town, the likes of which I was most commonly spared by travelling in a coach-and-four on principal roads.
By the time we came to the sputtering end of the place where sat the gin palaces and shacks of the forsaken, I spoke with great irony.
“I suppose I now look like a tin-pot gentleman driving his lady to the fair.”
“What, pray tell, is a tin-pot gentleman?”
“He is a man who considers himself rich and fashionable because he has one hundred pounds a year.”
“And what sort of lady consorts with him?”
“Precisely the sort you imagine.”
“She is an opera dancer?”
“Hardly. She travels from town to town with a theatre company and sings very badly.”
“Well, I do sing very badly,” she mused, “and you consider yourself rich and fashionable…”
“Allow me to correct you. You do not sing so very badly, and having left all my worldly goods behind me, save for this filthy coat, I cannot claim to be either rich or fashionable at the moment.”
“That was a perfectly tepid compliment for which I thank you,” she said with delightful archness.
“You are welcome. Questionable praise is my speciality.”
“Hmm. Your standards are, indeed, very high.”
“I wonder that you would say so, given that we are bumping along in this stupid basket.”
“I do not believe I have ever seen a smaller one. Is it made of wicker, do you think?”
“Wicker would be an overstatement of its construction, I believe. Woven grass or willow fronds, perhaps.”
“You are very tired if you cannot find it hilarious.”
“I own, I am tired. And you? You cannot be other than exhausted. How can you still laugh?”
“It is perhaps a fault, but I become truly silly when I am tired.”
By the time we reached the main road, however, even her vast stores of humour had been depleted.
We had fallen into something like sullen resentment, a dullness common to cattle driven to market.
Yet even this benighted state was better than what came next, for as we came closer to London, we were beset and harassed by all manner of drays and coaches impatient with our little gig that should not have been on such a road in the first place.
To say my nerves were frayed would have been an understatement, and only Miss Elizabeth’s venturing to speak relieved the tension, albeit only by a little.
“I did not expect travelling this way to be such an anxious business,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the noise of the road.
“I am sorry to have subjected you to it.”
“If you recall, this was not your choice but mine. It is I who am sorry you are forced to?—”
She was interrupted by a hail of curses thrown at us by a passing coachman. We were splattered yet again by droplets of mud, and I closed my mouth firmly, having tasted dirt twice already that day.
“If it gives you any comfort, I am stopping at the first posting house in our way,” I said grimly.
“I would lie if I did not say I am glad to hear you say so.”
By the time I relinquished the gig, which was two or three miles from the London Bridge, we were too famished and I was too muddled to make further arrangements just yet, and so we found ourselves seated in a snug in Sutcliffe, staring numbly at a cold collation.
Miss Elizabeth, who had briefly retreated with a maid and had changed out of her filthy dress, took tea with milk and sugar with her bread and butter.
I, who had stupidly worn my clean shirt and had to reconcile myself to being unfit to be seen, drank two tankards of ale and chewed a strip of cold beef.
We had been silent many times throughout our ordeal, but this spell of private rumination was entirely different.
I cleared my throat but could not speak. She sipped her tea and seemed to struggle for words while I waited helplessly for her to say something . We were at the very edge of London and should have been rejoicing, but we were neither of us joyful.
She pressed her napkin to her lips, and at last, she broke the spell that had bewitched us. “I suppose we should consider what is next, Mr Darcy.”
“As soon as we have finished eating, I shall hire a coach and we shall proceed to your uncle’s house,” I said, wondering vaguely why she did not assume this to be my plan. And then looking more closely at her face, I asked, “Why? What is amiss here?”
“Do you not think our arrival will be a truly awkward one, sir?”
“Of course it will be, but it must be done.”
“Only I wish you would not go with me,” she said quietly, looking down at her tea.
“What on earth are you suggesting? Am I to leave you to fend for yourself—here? Now? I will never do it, and I do not like that you could even think I would!”
“And I would rather you not have to stand patiently before such questions as must be asked of you, sir!” By degrees, our voices were rising to something a little too close to shouting in a public place.
“Do you think I am unequal to bearing the consequences of my own actions?” I demanded. “My word, I know you do not hold me in high esteem, but I did not think you thought so poorly of me.”
“I do not! Only you should not be subjected to a single question as to what you have done for me!”
“You are protecting me?” I gasped. “I do not need it, ma’am,” I said coldly.
I then fought against a torrent of words so honest, so violent of feeling, I held them back.
Perhaps I shifted in my seat in agitation—in frustration—for she said, “Whatever it is you wish to say, you should tell me, Mr Darcy. What better time than at the end of those last horrible miles? What better place than over this questionable collation?”
My resolve broke. “Very well,” I cried. “If you must have plain-speaking, you wish to point out to me that your family will rightfully believe that I have damaged your reputation, and they would force me to act because of it. I am not afraid of what they would require of me to protect your honour. I am only afraid of how little you would care for the prospect of being my wife!”
I was angrier than I wished to be, but she had pressed upon this nerve too hard, and I continued with an ungentlemanly ferocity. “What you are suggesting is impossible. I cannot scurry into the shadows and deny my responsibility to you!”
“Not even if I asked you? Begged you? Please— please , Mr Darcy, let the particulars of our adventure remain private,” she pleaded.
“Do you think I relish the prospect of being interrogated as to any nonsense I might have endured by a man who has done nothing but help me? Do you imagine I will not be upbraided for the many choices I made which put me in your power? The outcome of such disclosures is a certainty, and be it a man or a woman, no thinking person would consider a forced union other than cursed from the beginning.” She put her hand to her eyes and rubbed them before she again spoke almost despondently. “Oh, I am so very tired.”
I could not speak. Seconds passed slowly and bitterly between us. At last, I said, “I shall secure a coach for hire similar to what you would have had coming directly from Hunsford. As to what you will say about spending one night on the road and your missing trunk, I leave that to you, ma’am.”
The coldness of my tone caused her eyes to water, and I regretted how ungracious I had been in my defeat.
She spoke quietly, but with a clarity that suggested she had thoroughly thought the matter through.
“I shall say I had to wait a day to leave because there was no coach available, and perhaps Mrs Collins’s maid failed to take my note of explanation to my relations to the post. I shall then explain I came to a stand in Sevenoaks because of a bent wheel, and that well-met and against all odds, you were also there, and you found me another coach but that my trunk was left behind in the confusion.
“When my luggage reaches you, and is then sent to me, I shall only remark that you must have discovered my trunk set by the door to be loaded, and taken it up with you as a kindness.”
“Gentleman that I am,” I said bitterly.
“You are a gentleman, Mr Darcy,” she said with rising passion. “I know this to be true, and that is why I am certain you will, in this unfortunate instance, do as I wish for my sake.”
I stood abruptly and made for the desk in the hall.
And though my reception was at first indifferent because I looked like an itinerant gypsy, a gold coin placed irritably between us earned me the ostler’s earnest attention.
I was so out of all patience, I did not care that what I had given him could hire ten coaches-and-four.
I would have thrown it in his face if my temper had been given full rein.
“I assume I shall not have to wait overlong,” I said at my very coldest.
I wish I could report that I returned to the snug in a more proper state of mind. But I was too angry to do other than sit down heavily and say, “We are to wait a quarter of an hour. You should not arrive much past nine o’clock.”
“So late? I thought we were much closer.”
“At this hour, five miles in London is like ten elsewhere.”
“Oh. I have no experience of travelling at night, sir. I suppose you are right.”
After another moment of high tension between us, she said, “You have every right to be angry with me. I have asked a great deal of you.”
“I am not angry at you,” I said, though my voice was not the least bit conciliating. “I am angry that convention has overridden good sense. I should be free to help a lady in such circumstances as we found ourselves, and she should be free to comfortably allow it.”
“Let us make it so, Mr Darcy,” she said gently. And with that my temper abruptly died.
“Forgive me. I should not have raised my voice to you.”