Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
MELTING FORTRESSES
Elizabeth
The morning of this particular Thursday weighed tedious on me. Mr. Bingley had requested leave to call upon Jane, and Uncle Gardiner had obliged. It was a simple matter of preparation and endless waiting. It was not a matter of changing my outfit three times before breakfast.
The weather, of course, was to blame—March in London is a fickle creature, and a woman of sense must be prepared for any fluctuation. The yellow was too bright; the gray, too drab. The white muslin with the light-green sash was entirely appropriate: spring-like, without being bold.
I sat at the dressing-table, subjecting my reflection to the critical scrutiny I usually reserved for others.
My hair refused to lie flat. My complexion—that feature I considered my best by default—looked blotchy, as if it knew a secret I refused to acknowledge.
I pinched my cheeks, decided the effect was disastrous, and left my hair to its own devices.
I was not the sort of woman to fuss over her appearance for a sister’s courtship call, particularly when Mrs. Gardiner stood ready to act as chaperone.
Whether Mr. Darcy would accompany his friend was a different matter entirely.
He had promised to step back at Burlington House.
It was the proper course; a gentleman does not hover like a governess over another man’s courtship.
I told myself he would have business elsewhere, or that he would have no reason to visit a Cheapside drawing room, even if his father’s tortoise did reside there.
I went downstairs to find Jane already seated at the breakfast table, composure smooth as cream, buttering her toast as if this Thursday were just another ordinary day at Gracechurch Street.
She wore a peach muslin that brought out her complexion, and her hair was pinned with the pearl combs Mamma had given her on her twentieth birthday, and the light definitely played favorites with her.
“Do you suppose,” Jane asked, her knife hovering mid-swipe, “that Mr. Darcy shall find it necessary to inquire after Sir Bertram this morning?”
I picked up my tea, determined to betray nothing. “He is a man of singular duty. If he deems the tortoise in need of supervision, he shall appear. I suppose nothing else.”
“He is coming,” Samuel announced, having successfully crawled under the table to inspect my slippers. “He told Alice he would bring a treat that is not a strawberry. Maybe beetles.”
“He is not,” Alice corrected from the sideboard, where she was currently engaged in a heated dispute with a bowl of porridge. “He is coming to see if Sir Bertram has learned to jump. I told him tortoises are physically incapable, but he insisted a proper inspection was required.”
“I want strawberries,” Thomas lisped, his face already smeared with jam.
“Thomas ate everything,” Rose complained. “Sir Bertram is quite hungry. I’m telling Mr. Darcy.”
I picked up the two-year-old and wiped his face. “Don’t tell me you ate Sir Bertram’s rations. I wonder, are you growing a shell?”
And then I tickled him until he giggled and squealed with joy.
“But I want some of the turtle’s food too,” Samuel complained. “Cousin Lizzy, can you drop some ham for Sir Bertram?”
“I’m afraid tortoises do not eat ham. He is a creature of refined, leafy sensibilities.”
“How about marmalade and toast?” Alice piped up. “I read in a book about a marmalade-eating tortoise.”
Mrs. Gardiner swept into the room, her gaze taking in the porridge-streaked children crawling underneath the table to gather food for the tortoise.
“Nurse, the children require air. And perhaps a lesson in the difference between a reptile’s breakfast and a boy’s.
Take them to the garden—and keep Sir Bertram away from Thomas until his hunger is more appropriately directed. ”
As the children were whisked away in a flurry of protests and half-eaten crusts, Jane turned to me, her eyes dancing.
“You look very pretty, Lizzy. It seems that the tortoise is not the only one in this house waiting for Mr. Darcy.”
“I know not what you refer to.” I attempted to smear an appropriate amount of marmalade without destroying the crust. “He promised to step back. Mr. Bingley is perfectly capable of calling on you without his friend’s hovering.”
“True, but I suspect he might wish to hover over a more fitting sister?”
I was saved by Sarah appearing in the doorway. “Ma’am? Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy have called.”
“Already?” Mrs. Gardiner checked the mantel clock. “Well, we’d better repair to the drawing room. Sarah, please fetch tea.”
“I am certain Mr. Darcy was unable to restrain his friend any further,” I said to Jane as we took our positions in the drawing room, as if gentlemen interrupting our breakfast was a common occurrence.
Both gentlemen entered, bowing to Mrs. Gardiner, Jane, and me. While Darcy’s bow was formal and smooth, Bingley resembled a hen fluttering over her chicks.
He greeted Jane especially fervently, looking over at Darcy as if waiting for permission to speak.
Jane, for her part, blushed becomingly and waited for the tea service before inquiring about the health of Charles’s two sisters.
I wasn’t sure where to look, whether at Darcy who stood stiffly like a sentinel or at my sister, until my aunt said, “It is such a fine morning, and the children have been desperate to show off their latest… archaeological discoveries in the garden. Elizabeth, perhaps you and Mr. Darcy would be so kind as to oversee them? I believe the drawing room might be better served by a bit of quiet.”
She took up her embroidery and arranged herself next to the window, an iron-clad chaperone, while Darcy offered his arm so we could escape the drawing room.
The air outside was crisp, smelling of damp earth and coming spring. I felt strange, as if he had purposely come to escort me into the garden and I knew I had to converse or he would feel awkward.
“Mr. Darcy,” I began, stopping a distance from the corner where the children had built Sir Bertram a fort. “I have not properly thanked you for repairing the breach. It meant a lot to me that you stepped beyond a gentleman’s duty to consider whether there had been a misunderstanding.”
He stopped, his profile sharp against the grey stone of the wall.
“I am afraid you credit me with too much. I merely noticed and took action. It was as I suspected. Bingley’s sisters had not conveyed Jane’s presence in London to him, and they had professed themselves friends of your sister, so it was not improper of her to call on them. ”
“Yes, they had expressed great sadness that their brother had wished to repair to London. Business, they had said, and…” I shook my head. “It no longer signifies. You were kind to Jane and to our family. I recognize it as such.”
He looked down at his boots, then back at me. “I do not consider it kindness to correct a wrong. It is simply… duty.”
I led him toward the children. “Was it also duty to bring Sir Bertram to this humble home?”
“No, it was a pleasure.”
“Quite,” I agreed with a smile I could not hold back.
“Mr. Darcy! Mr. Darcy!” Samuel gasped, waving a trowel. “Bertram found a worm! Does a knight eat worms, or is it beneath his station?”
Darcy, never breaking eye contact with me, knelt onto the wet grass with a natural grace that made my breath catch. “A knight,” he said gravely, accepting the wriggling earthworm from Samuel’s dirty palm, “must be a man of the people. I suspect he finds it a delicacy.”
Meanwhile, four-year-old Rose hugged his knees. “I love Sir Bertram the mostest of all. Mr. Darcy, can I marry him?”
“Ewww… you can’t marry a tortoise,” Samuel jeered. “Knights don’t get married so they can fight.”
And Darcy petted Rose with one hand and mocked a sword fight with Samuel with his other arm.
And I stood there, staring at him and thought, He belongs here.
“Cousin Lizzy, I need a handkerchief,” Alice shouted after Samuel put the worm on her sketchpad. “He dirtied my picture of Sir Bertram jumping over a molehill.”
“Mr. Darcy, Thomas got marmalade on Sir Bertram’s belly, and he is dirtying his cape,” Rose cried. “I want to marry a clean tortoise.”
“Well, then, I suppose we must get you cleaned up, good man.” Mr. Darcy bent down and picked up the tortoise, and the children followed him like a pied piper back to the drawing room while I went to fetch a handkerchief.
I caught a fragment of Jane’s conversation as I walked by. Bingley was explaining his leave-taking last November.
“I would have called to say farewell, but I allowed myself to be persuaded that my call would not be welcome.”
“But, Charles, why would you believe that?” Jane asked. “Our family has always been most welcoming.”
I could not linger, and hence I did not hear his response, or perhaps he did not make one, because Darcy had entered the drawing room with Sir Bertram wrapped in a towel.
He set the tortoise down on the carpet and Bingley, seeing him, exclaimed, “Bertram! Good Lord, is that old Bertram? Darcy, you gave away Bertram? You absolutely did. This was your father’s tortoise.
You loved this creature. I remember you lecturing me for a quarter of an hour at Pemberley because I fed him a piece of my biscuit. ”
“The biscuit was a custard cream, and Bertram has no constitution for custard.”
“He survived it perfectly well.”
“He was ill for three days. My housekeeper sent me a written complaint.”
Rose went straight up to Bingley and asked, “Did you know Sir Bertram before he was a knight?”
“I most certainly did,” Bingley said happily. “When he was a mere squire living at Mr. Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire, and he was a very distinguished resident.”
“Why did Mr. Darcy give him to us?” Alice asked, taking the handkerchief I fetched to wipe the stain off her drawing.