Chapter Fourteen #2
His low voice drew her attention to him. They looked into each other’s eyes for a seeming eternity, before he looked away. “When would you wish—” his voice cracked, “for us to solemnize the marriage.”
Elizabeth blinked.
“We might marry from this house by common license before we leave Ramsgate. But I do not know…you wished to reconcile with your father, perhaps from your home county. Or…I do not know…”
“My father!” Elizabeth laughed. “I wonder what he shall think when he hears that instead of hiring out as a nurse, I shall marry again. And quite suddenly.”
She stood and paced. She kept a hold of the cup. Around and around and around. “No, no, no. No. I do not wish to see my father until the deed is done.”
Darcy sat up higher, and he studied her. “You fear his judgement. Why? Surely he could not object to me as a suitor?”
That tight thing twisted in her stomach.
She stared at the geometric patterns on the rug as she walked back and forth. Red and blue patterns, circles and squares within squares within squares. A set of ovals. Fine deep piling.
“Elizabeth, what is wrong?”
She looked at Darcy.
His face was anxious.
She shrugged. “I think…I simply…you know how difficult I found it to even write to him. I do not know. I don’t know.
The last time he advised me, I was confident that I was right, and yet he was.
But at the same time—why have I always been so determined to ask for nothing.
I received nothing from my mother’s fortune, and I would have sooner stuck my hand in a fire than have voluntarily mentioned that to him.
Why? His income is great enough. He could save.
He could make my mother save. I know that—yet I would not ever ask him for anything. ”
She sat next to Darcy. For some reason she wanted to be nearer to him. His presence made her feel better.
Darcy put his arm around her shoulders, and she carefully leaned her head against his side. “It does not hurt?”
“Not much.”
She listened to his breathing.
After a while Darcy said, “He is important to you.”
She nodded. “Very. But I can’t…I won’t…I don’t wish to know what he thinks.”
“You believe he would disapprove,” Darcy said.
His tone indicated surprise.
“I think he would believe that I am being impulsive and that I will regret my marriage to you, for wholly different reasons than why I regretted my marriage to Mr. Wickham, and he would attempt to convince me to give it up, simply because—oh, I do not know.”
“But would he not think that the practical advantages are sufficient? Especially if he worries about the well-being of your sisters, and—”
“Does he? The only time this ever was spoken of was when I wished to marry Mr. Wickham. I don’t believe it. Or maybe I do. I do not wish to talk about my father. And what I remember of him is so old. I hardly even know.”
Elizabeth picked the China cup up again and spun the blue piece around in her fingers. They were both quiet.
The curtains flapped in the sea breezes. She smelled the salt air. For the rest of her life, even if she lived to eighty, she was sure that she would think about this month every time she smelled the sea.
Darcy rubbed his hand absentmindedly on the part of his shirt near where his bandage stood.
“Stop that,” Elizabeth said. And she took his hand away from his chest.
He looked at her with that boyish grin. “But it itches.”
Elizabeth replied with her best ‘nurse’ glare.
He grinned sunnily back.
“What were you thinking about?” Eliabeth asked.
“My own father, and how much I loved him, how he loved me; but also how I think he often was too harsh with me, and the ways that he paid little attention to Georgiana, and all of the wrong attention to Wickham.”
Elizabeth squeezed his hand.
Darcy added calmly and seriously, “Elizabeth, you must inform your father that you plan to marry. From the contents of his letter to you, he holds you in a great affection, and I will not marry in secret.”
“You insist,” Elizabeth said, smiling and still holding his hand. “Not yet married, and you already are the brutish husband who continuously commands his wife.”
“I do not think it is only brutish husbands who command their wives,” Darcy replied with that twist of his mouth that showed that he liked being teased. “Unless you consider all husbands to be brutes.”
“Nearly all.” And then Elizabeth frowned.
“You speak jestingly,” Darcy said, “but is that a matter of anxiety to you? Did Mr. Wickham make unreasonable demands of you? Do you fear such—”
“Quite the opposite.” Elizabeth smiled into Darcy’s eyes.
She was already starting to trust him completely.
“But I like that you expect me to act as you would—you are right, I should not marry in secret, as much as I would like to.” She laughed a little.
“As much as I hate the necessity of the letter, I also must thank you for this. I want to be friends with him again. I dearly do. I do. I only…”
That hammering anxiety pulsed in her chest again.
Darcy kissed her hand and the fear faded away.
She looked into his eyes. They were so deep.
She nearly kissed him. Elizabeth trusted him.
It was simply the way it was now. She trusted Mr. Darcy.
That was stupid, and it frightened her, because while she was perfectly capable of judging friends, she knew that she could not trust her own judgements upon men.
Yet, despite her bone-deep conviction that any man would disappoint her, she knew at an even deeper level, deep in her soul, that Mr. Darcy never would. Not in a matter of essential character.
Elizabeth took his hand and kissed it.
It was not like the passionate kisses she shared with Wickham. “I’ll write the letter. I’ll inform my father—and I’ll ask him if we can stay for a time at Longbourn before we go north. But you must sit next to me to encourage me as I write it, for otherwise I will not be able to.”
“I wish nothing more than to see your family and come to know them as my own,” Darcy replied. From his smiling manner it was clear that her response had greatly pleased him.
“Oh, do not say that until you have met them all.” Elizabeth laughed. “I hardly know. I remember feeling frequently embarrassed by my mother, but like as not I will think nothing of the sort when I see her again. There was plenty in myself for embarrassment in the memory.”
The letter that Elizabeth sent was simple and almost short enough to match her father’s usual habit in correspondence:
Dear Papa,
After your receipt of my last letter, the contents of this one coming so soon after shall no doubt surprise you.
I have agreed to marry a gentleman of substantial fortune.
This will secure all that is necessary for our future.
We plan to marry from Ramsgate in a few weeks and then go to London.
I hope that we can stop in Longbourn, if you are amenable to this scheme, for a week or two while on our way to my new husband’s estate in the north.
Your daughter,
E Wickham
The next morning, a lawyer came to draft the settlement documents for the marriage.
Over breakfast Darcy asked, “Do you have any particular wishes or expectations with regards to what I settle on you?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, no. I trust you to do what is appropriate, and to know what is appropriate. I do not. I suppose—your estate is not entailed?”
“No,” Darcy replied. “Should we only have daughters, one of them might inherit it.”
“That shall be very nice for her on what I hope will be an extremely distant date, when she is, one hopes, far too sad to rejoice in her good fortune,” Elizabeth replied, “but it is not the chief point on which I am thinking. I have had one husband before. And his management of money matters was not as I expected.”
“Elizabeth, of course the money set aside for you and your children will be placed in such a way that, should I be struck on the head and become so dim-witted that I am convinced to sell the whole estate to some fool for a hundred guineas, your fortune would be secured.”
“Oh, no. I don’t want my fortune at all.
That would make me too much a fortune hunter.
I only wish to make sure that there are ample funds for the care of the children.
” Elizabeth sighed. “I suppose if I make a great pretense of not being a fortune hunter and of not caring anything for material matters, I would do more to convince others that I am than a proper attention to material concerns and my own interest will—but I know that I can care for myself. I suppose I would wish enough for a house, a servant or two—yes, let us say two—and some clothes and books to read. Leisure, rather than a requirement of work. Settle that on me, and I shall be happy.”
“Wouldn’t Lizzy get the dower house,” Georgiana offered. Then she hurriedly added, “not that you shall die, brother, any time soon.”
“I do not intend to do so,” Darcy agreed wryly.
“But yes, there is a dower house. It is a substantial cottage, some eight or nine rooms in total. With the staff paid by the main house, but the widow chooses her own servants. That is how I understand it was managed in my grandmother’s day.
My father was the survivor, so I saw nothing of how my mother would have managed. ”
“What happens,” Elizabeth asked, “if our son marries, and then dies. Would his widow then displace me?—I ask from curiosity, not worry.”
“Certainly not, since your life interest would be specified in our marriage articles and could not be superseded by those of our son,” Darcy smiled at saying that. “Not unless you voluntarily renounced the right.”
“Then I pronounce myself wholly satisfied, but we should sign all such documents before long familiarity with the ways of wealth give me expectations that I am certain I will be despised both for having and for not having.”