Chapter 15 Family
FAMILY
Mrs. Bennet had calculated the value of ten thousand a year against the scandal of two nights spent unchaperoned before Elizabeth had crossed the threshold.
The mathematics had clearly come out in favor of celebration.
“My dear, Lizzy!” She swept forward in a rustle of skirts and nervous energy, pulling Elizabeth into an embrace that smelled of lavender water and barely contained triumph. “We have been so worried! But here you are, safe and sound, and with Mr. Darcy himself to thank for your rescue!”
She released Elizabeth and turned to Mr. Darcy with a curtsey so deep it threatened to unbalance her. “Sir, we are forever in your debt. Forever! Hill! Hill, bring tea. Mr. Darcy must be famished after his ordeal.”
Elizabeth caught Mr. Darcy's eye over her mother's head and saw the corner of his mouth twitch.
That shared glance carried the weight of everything they could not say in this room.
Two nights. The fire. The conservatory glass.
His mouth on her skin and her hands in his hair, and the promises they had made in the gray light of a winter morning.
She looked away before her face betrayed her.
By luncheon, her mother had told the story four times, each retelling more flattering to Mr. Darcy and more dramatic in its particulars. Elizabeth suspected that by evening, Darcy would have wrestled wolves and carried her across a frozen river.
Mr. Collins, who had followed the party back with the persistence of a man who refused to accept his own irrelevance, attempted once to insert himself into the conversation with a speech about the proper conduct of young ladies.
Mrs. Bennet silenced him with a look that would have frozen the Thames in July.
He retreated to a corner of the parlor and sat there, radiating resentment like a stove.
Mr. Darcy navigated it all with a patience that surprised her.
He answered Mrs. Bennet's intrusive questions without encouraging them.
He met Mary's philosophy with gravity that managed to be kind rather than dismissive.
And his hand found Elizabeth's beneath the table whenever her mother's effusions grew too overwhelming, a secret touch, a silent reassurance that they were still the people they had been in the cottage, even here.
He was trying to become part of a family so different from everything he had known. The effort touched her more than any declaration of love could have done.
It was early afternoon when her father summoned her to the library.
The room smelled of old books and pipe tobacco. He was seated in his usual chair by the window, and he did not rise when she entered. He gestured to the chair opposite and waited.
“Well, Lizzy.” His voice was mild, but his eyes were sharp behind his spectacles. “It seems you have had quite an adventure.”
She had rehearsed this conversation. Had prepared justifications and arguments. But now that the moment had arrived, she could only offer him the truth.
“I love him, Papa.”
The words came out simpler than she had intended. Stripped of qualification.
“I know how it must appear. But what I feel for him is not the product of a single night or a compromising situation. It has been growing since before I understood what it was, and I cannot pretend otherwise.”
Mr. Bennet was quiet for a long moment. He turned his spectacles over in his hands, a habit she recognized from childhood.
“Are you happy with this?” he asked. “Not resigned. Not dutiful. Are you happy?”
“Yes.”
He studied her face. Searching for the flicker of doubt. The shadow of obligation. The resigned practicality of a woman settling for the best option available.
He did not find it.
“I failed your mother,” he said.
Elizabeth had never heard him speak of his marriage so directly.
“We failed each other, in truth. I married for beauty and liveliness, and when those qualities proved an insufficient foundation for lasting respect, I retreated rather than fight for something better. I have spent twenty years paying for a choice made in haste.”
His grip tightened on the spectacles. Elizabeth saw moisture in his eyes that she had never witnessed before.
“If you tell me this is different, Lizzy. If you believe that what you feel for this man is built on something more substantial than attraction and circumstance.” He looked at her.
“Then I will trust you. You have always been the wisest of my children. I will not insult that wisdom by doubting it now.”
Elizabeth crossed the small space between them and wrapped her arms around him.
He was stiff at first. Physical affection was Jane's domain, not his. Then he softened, and he held on with a fierceness that told her he had been frightened. Not of the scandal. Not of the match. Of losing her.
“I love you, Papa,” she whispered against his shoulder.
“Yes, well.” His voice was thick. “I suppose I had better learn to tolerate Mr. Darcy, in that case.”
She laughed. He blinked rather more than necessary and adjusted his spectacles with hands that were not entirely steady.
“He is a good man,” she said. “Better than he knows how to show.”
“He had better be. I shall reserve the right to be quietly terrifying at regular intervals. It is a father's prerogative.”
When she returned to the parlor, Mr. Darcy was standing by the window.
He turned the moment she entered, his dark eyes searching her face. She smiled. It was enough. The tension drained from him, and he crossed the room to meet her, his hand finding hers.
“All is well?” he asked, low enough that only she could hear.
“Yes. But Papa reserves the right to terrify you if needs must.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
They stood together by the window for a moment, and she said, “What happens now?”
"Now I go to London. Tomorrow morning." His thumb traced a slow circle against the back of her hand. "I intend to obtain a special licence from the Faculty Office."
"A common license would serve."
"It would. But I would prefer to do this properly." He looked at her steadily. "A special license is what a man of my standing obtains when he wishes to make it clear that his marriage is a matter of choice, not necessity."
"And if the Faculty Office is not accommodating?"
"My uncle, the Earl, has some acquaintance with the Archbishop. I do not anticipate difficulty."
"How long?"
"Four days. Five at most."
Mrs. Bennet, who had been hovering at the edge of the room with the poorly concealed desperation of a woman trying not to eavesdrop, chose this moment to abandon all pretense.
“A special license!” she cried, clasping her hands together.
“Oh, Mr. Darcy! A special license from the Archbishop of Canterbury himself! I knew it! I told Mrs. Long not two months ago that you were a man of the very first consequence. Oh, my nerves, my poor nerves, I can scarcely bear the joy of it!”
Elizabeth caught Mr. Darcy's eye and saw the look of a man who was reconsidering the speed of his departure.
Mr. Darcy left at dawn.
Elizabeth saw Charlotte the following day.
She came on the pretence of returning a borrowed book, picking her way up the lane in pattens with her skirts held clear of the slush.
They settled in the window seat of the upstairs sitting room while Collins held forth in the parlor below about the superior shrubberies at Rosings, and Charlotte listened to the entire story with the quiet attentiveness that had always made her the best of confidantes.
When Elizabeth finished, Charlotte was silent for a long time.
“You are happy,” Charlotte said at last, and it was not a question.
“I am.”
“I am glad.” Charlotte tucked her arm through Elizabeth's, and they walked a few steps in silence.
“Mr. Collins has been most attentive since yesterday evening.
He called at Lucas Lodge to express his condolences on the unfortunate end of his attachment to you and stayed for two hours to enumerate the qualities he now finds most admirable in a clergyman's wife. Apparently, a sensible disposition and an appreciation for the domestic arts rank considerably higher than he had previously supposed.”
Elizabeth looked at her friend. Charlotte's face was calm. Practical.
“Charlotte.”
“Do not.” Charlotte's voice was gentle but firm.
“Do not pity me, Lizzy. We are not all made for grand passion. I am twenty-seven. If Mr. Collins offers security and a home of my own, I will not refuse him on the grounds that he is ridiculous, because the alternative to a ridiculous husband is no husband at all, and I find I prefer ridiculousness to dependence.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to argue. But she could see in Charlotte's eyes the same clear-sighted pragmatism she had always admired, and she understood that Charlotte was not settling out of despair.
“Will you be all right?” she asked instead.
“I will have a house. A garden. Rooms of my own. And Mr. Collins is easily managed, Lizzy. He wants someone to approve of him, and I am very good at approving.”
The house had been quiet for an hour before Jane spoke.
She sat on her bed, knees drawn to her chest, her candle still burning on the nightstand between them. Elizabeth had known she was waiting. Jane always waited until the house settled, until the last creak of floorboards announced their mother's retirement, before she said the things that mattered.
“Tell me everything,” Jane said.
So Elizabeth told her. Not the intimate details.
Not the things that belonged to the cottage and the firelight and the private geography of Fitzwilliam's body.
But the rest of it. The storm. The glass conservatory.
And the conversation about the painter. The blankets and the cold and the careful distance that narrowed by inches until it was no distance at all.
The kiss. The panic. And then the rescue.
The truth about his parents and hers, the mirror wounds, the recognition that they wanted the same thing and had been running from it for opposite reasons.
Jane listened with her hands pressed to her mouth and her eyes wide and bright in the candlelight. When Elizabeth finished, the silence held for a long moment.
“You love him,” Jane said.
“Yes. I love him.”
“Then I am happy for you.” Jane's face broke into the radiant smile that was her most beautiful quality. “I am so happy for you, Lizzy.”
She reached for Elizabeth's hands, and they sat together on the bed the way they had since they were children.
“He looked at you today,” Jane said. “When you came back from the library. As though you were the only person in the room.” She paused.
“Mr. Bingley has been different these past two days. Since the search. Since he watched Mr. Darcy step forward and claim you. I think it gave him courage, Lizzy. Watching your Mr. Darcy refuse to be afraid.”
“He is not my Mr. Darcy yet. Not officially.”
“He has been your Mr. Darcy since the moment he rode into a storm for you.” Jane leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Elizabeth's forehead. “Sleep well, Lizzy. You have earned it.”
Jane slipped from the room, taking the candle with her. Elizabeth lay in the darkness and listened to the old house settle around her.
She pressed her face into the coat she had not returned.
Four days. Five at most.
She closed her eyes and did not sleep for a very long time.