Twenty
The Darcy carriage turned onto The Polygon at a quarter past ten on the morning of departure.
Lady Catherine had already left for Kent at dawn, declaring the London air injurious to her constitution and the wedding sufficiently endured.
The household would leave for Pemberley at noon. Elizabeth had been granted two hours.
She stepped down and smiled briefly at a plain jug on the windowsill, which held cut flowers from the square opposite the house—early roses and sweet william, their stems uneven, their arrangement artless but bright. Someone had tried.
She let herself in and inhaled deeply. The house smelled of tea and fresh bread.
From the parlour came the low murmur of voices and the rustle of pages.
Elizabeth paused in the narrow hallway, letting the sounds settle over her.
This was the last visit before Pemberley.
She wanted to remember it exactly as it was.
Lydia was in the parlour, curled in the corner of the settee with a book of poetry. She looked up when Elizabeth entered. The brittle smile that had once haunted her face was absent. Instead, she rose, crossed the room, and embraced her sister with arms that felt solid rather than fragile.
“You came,” Lydia said against her shoulder.
“I wanted to say farewell before leaving.”
Lydia stepped back and returned to her seat, drawing her legs up beneath her once more. She did not close the book. She simply rested it against her knees and continued reading, her finger tracing the line as though anchoring herself to the words.
Jane appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a cloth. She was thinner than Elizabeth would have liked, but not alarmingly so. Colour had returned to her cheeks, a soft rose that spoke of regular meals and fewer nights spent rationing candles. She smiled when she saw Elizabeth.
“Lizzy. Welcome.”
Elizabeth crossed to her and took both her hands. “You look well.”
“I feel better.” Jane’s fingers squeezed hers once, then released.
“The Colonel has been very attentive. He calls twice a week now. He brings small things—books, flowers, once a basket of oranges. He sits in the parlour and talks to us all as though we were his equals. I believe he is honest, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth searched her sister’s face. The hope there was tentative but real. “I believe he is. He is a good man, Jane. Honest.”
Jane’s smile deepened, just a fraction. “Honesty is what I need. I have had enough of falsehoods.”
In the parlour, Mary sat near the window with a book in Italian.
She was teaching herself, working through the grammar with the same fierce concentration she once applied to sermons and moral tracts.
She looked up when Elizabeth entered, offered a nod of acknowledgment, and returned to her page without comment.
Kitty was at the table trimming a bonnet with lengths of yellow ribbon, her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration. She waved the scissors in greeting.
Mrs Bennet stood in the kitchen doorway, a teapot in her hand. She looked sharper than she had in years, and she surveyed her second daughter with a critical eye.
“You are not eating enough,” she declared. “Even in a grand house they cannot force you if you will not open your mouth. Sit. I have made tea.”
Elizabeth obeyed. The table was laid with the good cups—the ones that had survived the exile from Longbourn—and a plate of bread and butter that spoke of the anonymous provisions that kept arriving with reassuring regularity.
She accepted the cup and drank. The tea was strong, the way her mother had always liked it.
For a time they simply existed together in the small room.
Kitty chattered about the bonnet, Mary offered the occasional dry remark in Italian that no one understood but herself, and Jane moved between kitchen and parlour, refilling cups and straightening cushions.
Lydia remained on the settee, turning pages with slow deliberation.
Elizabeth rose after a while and crossed to her youngest sister. She placed a hand on Lydia’s shoulder. The muscle beneath her palm was relaxed, not tensed against an expected blow.
Lydia looked up. “I do not understand half of it, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth laughed softly. “Sometimes I do not either. But the words sound nice, do they not?”
“They do.” Lydia’s finger traced a line of verse. “I shall write to you at Pemberley. I have not written anyone a letter in such a long time.”
“Then I shall answer every one of them.”
Lydia nodded once. The moment passed without being made into more than it was—no tears, no declarations, no dramatic vows of recovery. Simply a sister reading poetry and another promising to reply.
Elizabeth kissed her mother goodbye in the hallway. Mrs Bennet produced a small packet wrapped in brown paper and pressed it into her hand.
“For the child. Not for you. You will be fed in a grand house and need no biscuits.”
Her voice cracked, very slightly, on the words grand house. Elizabeth understood. Her mother would miss her. The admission lived in that tiny fracture, in the way Mrs Bennet’s fingers lingered on hers before releasing the packet.
“Thank you, Mamma.”
Elizabeth climbed into the carriage and settled against the seat. She did not look back as the wheels began to turn. The Polygon receded behind her—the narrow house, the jug of flowers in the window, the family that had learned to survive without her constant presence.
She held the packet of biscuits in her lap, very still.
Once she arrived at Grosvenor Street, the carriage was readied, and they left at noon, the second vehicle following with Alice, Mr Darcy’s valet, and the trunks.
Inside the first carriage sat three passengers: Anne, perched on the forward seat with her nose already pressed to the window, Elizabeth beside her, and Mr Darcy opposite, his long legs stretched, his posture composed but not relaxed.
Anne began narrating the journey before they had cleared the square.
“That is a church tower,” she announced, pointing. “And that is another. There are many churches in London. Do you think God minds having so many houses?”
Elizabeth smiled. “I suspect He is flattered by the attention.”
Anne considered this. “Then why do the bells ring at different times? It must be very confusing for Him.”
Mr Darcy’s mouth twitched. He did not speak, but his eyes rested on Elizabeth with quiet attention as she answered the child.
The first hours passed in this manner. Anne named everything they passed through, identified every spire, and posed increasingly philosophical questions about sheep.
Were they aware they were sheep? Did they mind being woolly?
If a sheep dreamed, did it dream of grass or of being a horse?
Elizabeth answered each one with patience and occasional amusement.
Mr Darcy contributed when directly addressed, but mostly he watched Elizabeth answer.
His gaze was unobtrusive and impossible to ignore.
They stopped for luncheon at a coaching inn.
A private room had been prepared for them.
Cold beef, fresh bread, a dish of pickles, and a glass of ale for Mr Darcy, tea for the ladies.
Anne declared the bread inferior to that of London and was informed, mildly, by her father that she was travelling through the kingdom and might refine her opinions as she went.
Anne accepted the correction with the gravity of a statesman.
Back in the carriage, the rhythm changed. The afternoon sun warmed the interior. Anne’s questions grew slower, her head heavier against Elizabeth’s shoulder. Within the first hour she was asleep, her small body curled trustingly in Elizabeth’s lap, one hand clutching the ribbon from her bonnet.
Mr Darcy sat opposite, one hand resting on the seat beside him, an inch from his knee. Elizabeth was acutely aware of it in the way one is aware of a lit candle one is not looking at. The space felt smaller now that Anne slept, the air thicker, the silence more intimate.
A bump in the road jolted the carriage. Anne shifted, and her ribbon slid from her hand to the floor.
Both reached for it at the same moment.
Their hands met on the wooden floor. The geometry of the moving vehicle placed them in the same small space at the same instant. His fingers closed briefly over hers, strong and deliberate. For one heartbeat neither moved. Then he retrieved the ribbon and handed it to her without a word.
Elizabeth took the ribbon, her pulse loud in her ears, and tucked it into her reticule. She did not look at him. The touch had been innocent in intent and anything but innocent in effect.
Neither had spoken in half an hour.
They stopped for the night at the White Hart, a respectable coaching inn on the Great North Road that Mr Darcy had used for twenty years.
The landlord bowed low, addressing him as “Mr Darcy, sir” with the familiarity of long custom.
Rooms had been arranged in advance: Anne and Alice in a small chamber, Elizabeth in the adjoining room, Mr Darcy at the far end of the corridor.
Propriety was observed with absolute precision.
Anne was put to bed and fell asleep within minutes, exhausted by her own narration. Elizabeth stood by the window for a time, watching the courtyard below as the ostlers moved among the horses.
A note arrived via the landlord.
A cold supper is laid in the private parlour. You are invited to join me there if you wish. If you wish. The choice is yours.
— D.
She wished.
She descended the staircase and found the private parlour at the back of the inn.
The room was warm, a fire burning low in the grate.
There were cold meats, cheese, bread, apples, a bottle of claret, two glasses.
Mr Darcy rose when she entered. He wore only his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, his coat discarded over the back of a chair. He had dismissed the servant.