Chapter 3
Thursday morning brought no change to Darcy’s mind, save that Richard was determined to see him packed and shut into the carriage before he could fashion another excuse.
The colonel had rallied Darcy’s own servants since dawn; trunks were strapped, cloaks shaken out, and the carriage brought round to the steps at Pemberley’s front.
Darcy paused in the great hall with his gloves in hand, looking back toward the quiet sweep of stair.
The house was orderly, fires lit, the steward prepared to oversee all matters in his master’s absence.
Still, he felt the reluctance of a man tearing himself from familiar ground.
Pemberley never judged him. It required only his constancy.
The silence within those walls asked no questions about Hertfordshire, Kent, or Ramsgate, about choices he had made and lost.
That mercy would not follow him south.
Richard, already cloaked and booted, clapped a hand to his shoulder. “If you mean to change your mind, you had best do it quickly. The horses will take insult if they are kept waiting longer.”
Darcy managed a faint smile that carried no mirth. “They will not be alone in their resentment.”
“Good,” said his cousin, steering him toward the door. “Then we shall all be equally sour, and no one the wiser.”
The cold struck sharply as they emerged, breath turning white in the air.
Darcy settled into the carriage with a heaviness that no cushion could soften.
He told himself this was no more than a brief journey—a se’nnight, perhaps, and then home again.
It would mean nothing. Yet he had told himself the same once before, on another journey that ended with Elizabeth Bennet’s eyes turned against him.
Distance, he had learned, never meant forgetfulness.
The first hours carried them southward along the turnpike.
Richard occupied himself with a military journal, though he looked up often enough to remark on the countryside.
Darcy kept his gaze upon the window. The landscape lay bare under a washed-out sky: hedges stripped to bone, fields pale with frost, the occasional cottage sending up a wisp of smoke.
At every hearth he imagined faces bent together in easy cheer, families whole, nothing like the ruin gossip carried of,,, well, that which could not be.
He told himself he looked only from habit, yet he found he was searching for her silhouette where none could be.
At noon, they changed horses at a busy inn. Darcy remained within the carriage while Richard stretched his legs and exchanged a few words with the ostler. Children darted about the yard, shrieking with laughter as they pelted one another with clods of frozen mud. Darcy turned his eyes away.
By afternoon, the road had grown rougher.
Softening ruts devoured the wheels, jolting the carriage so that even Richard abandoned his journal.
A thin snow began to fall, more like dust than flakes, but enough to settle on the shoulders of their cloaks when they stopped again for fresh horses.
Darcy brushed it away with a quick hand and told himself it was nothing.
Still, the innkeeper at their evening halt shook his head as he took their order for supper. “More of it coming, gentlemen. You’ll find the roads less obliging tomorrow.”
Richard only laughed, claiming that soldiers had marched through worse.
Darcy ate in silence, every bite an effort.
He could not even taste the mutton; it might have been leather for all it mattered.
The common room was crowded with merchants and travellers, their voices rising in easy fellowship.
Darcy felt himself the odd piece in a set—too heavy, ill-fitted, and certain never to belong.
When they were shown to their chamber, he set aside his coat and stood by the window.
The glass was rimed with frost, obscuring the view, but beyond it he could see the flakes drifting steadily in the lamplight.
His cousin spoke cheerfully of the morrow, of how many miles they might cover if the horses were willing, but Darcy scarcely heard him.
He thought only of the days stretching before him, each one drawing him farther from Pemberley, nearer to a house where he had no wish to be. He had given his word, and that bound him. Yet he felt no ease in the prospect, only the tightening of a snare.
The snow thickened as the night wore on.
Darcy turned from the window, extinguished the candle, and lay awake long after Richard’s even breathing filled the room.
If this was to be his Christmas—cold, reluctant, and empty—he would endure it.
He had endured worse. But the thought came, unbidden, that somewhere beyond the storm Elizabeth too must be watching the snow, and that knowledge made the night feel longer still.
The Gardiners’ house stirred early on the morning of departure. A maid went clattering down the stair with a carpetbag nearly as large as herself; another wrestled with a trunk at the door while the coachman shouted to the postilion as if sheer volume might harness the horses.
Elizabeth, cloak already fastened, stood by the parlour window and watched the pale rim of daylight struggle against a lid of cloud. It reminded her of Netherfield mornings, when she had stood at another window and longed for a sister’s recovery. She shut the memory away as quickly as it came.
She had always loved the moments before a journey, when the household sat in disorder and every chair seemed piled with something that ought to be in the coach.
It was untidy, inconvenient, and, in its own way, delightful.
This morning, she found her pleasure subdued but not extinguished.
She tucked a small parcel of books into her satchel—two volumes of Cowper and a thin copy of Fordyce’s Sermons that she had borrowed to tease her aunt—and then turned to help settle Mrs. Gardiner into her cloak.
“You must not let me be a bother to you,” her aunt said for the fourth time, though she tilted her chin obligingly for Elizabeth to tie the ribbons.
“You are nothing of the sort,” Elizabeth replied, tightening the bow briskly. “And if you begin with apologies, Aunt, the journey will be lost before the first mile.”
Mrs. Gardiner gave a soft huff of laughter and lifted a hand as if to wave her off. “You are too sharp by half, Lizzy. And if your uncle had his way, we should travel half a day and rest like dowagers the other half. I am quite equal to a longer stint in the carriage.”
“Sharpness is the only cure for needless scruples,” Elizabeth countered, reaching for her aunt’s gloves before she could protest further. “Now, smile for me—yes, like that. Much better. A cheerful face is worth more than the stoutest carriage horse.”
That coaxed another smile, reluctant but genuine, and Elizabeth counted it a victory.
Mr. Gardiner entered then, carrying the last of his business papers in a leather folio.
He glanced at his wife, then at Elizabeth, and gave a short nod as if satisfied with the arrangement.
“The roads are clear for now. We had best be off before London changes its mind and keeps us here. And mind, my dear, we shall stop early each evening—no racing the sun, no arriving at an inn when the best rooms are gone.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Gardiner protested. “I would rather endure the road and reach Louisa’s hearth all the sooner.”
He bent to kiss her cheek. “And I would rather see you comfortable all the way there. Better a slow road with good rooms and hot suppers than a hurried one that leaves you worn thin. You will thank me when you are not overtired at the journey’s end.”
Elizabeth slipped the gloves onto her aunt’s hands and fastened them firmly. “There, you see? Uncle has the better of it. You must let us spoil you a little, Aunt, or I shall begin to think my books wasted.”
The first miles carried them through the outer streets of London.
Apprentices hurried with baskets balanced on their shoulders, a milk cart sent its thin bells clanging, and chimney sweeps called to one another from rooftops blackened against the grey sky.
Elizabeth leaned toward the window, catching it all as if she could hoard impressions to unpack later.
They passed a baker’s shop where a line of boys waited with coins clutched in cold fists.
The sight made her smile, though her heart pinched a little when the thought of her sisters rose—Lydia, who would have mocked such patience and demanded the first loaf for herself.
Elizabeth pressed her glove against the windowpane until the image was gone.
How easily one sister could undo the patience of many.
By midmorning, the road opened wide, and the coach jolted into its accustomed rhythm.
Mr. Gardiner had produced a newspaper from his pocket and buried himself in its columns.
Mrs. Gardiner dozed with her cheek against the cushions.
Elizabeth, too restless to read, turned her gaze outward.
A line of geese picked their way across a field, bills fixed toward the ground with solemn purpose.
A thatcher, balanced precariously on a roof, called down to his boy for another bundle of straw, and the boy answered as if the work were as noble as any soldier’s.
She thought she might have enjoyed being raised in such a cottage—so long as it had a good stack of books beside the hearth.
The coach lurched violently as it struck a rut, sending Mr. Gardiner’s newspaper into his lap.
Mrs. Gardiner stirred with a little gasp.
Elizabeth steadied her aunt’s hand until the jolting eased.
“There, it was only the road,” she said lightly, though she felt the jar in her teeth.
“We may thank it for waking us in time for dinner.”