Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
HE WAS PRESENT THAT WEEK. Not in the way he had been before — present in the house, available when needed, showing up where required. This was different.
This was Darcy with nowhere else to be.
He had cleared his schedule completely, as promised, and the absence of everything else seemed to clarify him.
He was sharper and warmer at the same time, in the way people became when work was no longer taking up the part of them that other things needed.
He remembered things. He noticed things.
He was, for the first time since any of them had moved into the house on Hicks Street, entirely there.
Mia noticed within twenty-four hours and said nothing about it, which meant she was filing it away. Elizabeth noticed within twelve and said nothing about it either, for entirely different reasons.
***
The following Monday was for the Rockefeller tree like he promised.
Darcy had arranged it without telling either of them, which Elizabeth would normally have found irritating. Instead, she found that she could not quite produce the irritation.
He had a car waiting at ten in the morning and he stood at the bottom of the stairs calling up to Mia that they were leaving in five minutes and Mia came down in her good coat and a hat that had a pompom on it that she was wearing without any apparent self-consciousness, and they went.
The tree was enormous. Mia stood in front of it for a long time without saying anything. Elizabeth stood beside her. Darcy stood behind them both with his hands in his coat pockets and did not rush anyone.
After a while Mia took out her phone and took a photograph. Then she looked at it. Then she showed it to Elizabeth.
"Mum would have made us take a hundred of these," Mia said.
"At least," Elizabeth said. "And she would have insisted on being in all of them."
"She would have made a whole reel. With music."
"The most chaotic reel anyone has ever seen."
Mia laughed. It was a real one. Elizabeth felt happy seeing it on her face.
Darcy, standing behind them, said, "Should I take one of the two of you?"
They looked at each other. Then at him. Then Mia grabbed Elizabeth's arm and pulled her in and Darcy took the photograph and Mia looked at it and said, "One more. Your arm is weird."
He obliged and took another. She looked at it and said, "Better."
Afterward he took them to a place on 49th Street that Mia had read about online and that turned out to serve extremely good hot chocolate. They sat at a small table by the window and watched Fifth Avenue outside.
Mia held her cup in both hands and talked about her friends, her school and a book she was reading. Darcy listened with the full attention he gave things that mattered to him
Elizabeth watched him do it and thought about nothing in particular.
She was not going to examine it; she said to herself.
She examined it anyway, quietly, on the drive home, looking out of the window while Mia fell half asleep in the backseat.
She thought about a man who had been difficult to read for eight years.
However, when he was speaking to Mia in that hot chocolate place on 49th Street, Elizabeth thought of him as the most readable person she had ever sat across from.
She thought about Charlotte and James. She thought about their will and wondered if they had known that she would change her thoughts about Darcy if they lived together.
She had thought she knew how to handle the clause. How to handle living Fitzwilliam Darcy without getting emotional involved with him.
She looked back at the road and thought about how wrong she was.
***
Darcy took ice skating at Bryant Park on Tuesday.
Mia was better at it than either of them, which she established within ten minutes and made no effort to be modest about. She skated away from them just to prove that she had done this before and did not need supervision.
Elizabeth and Darcy were left at the boards, both of them holding the railing with the quiet dignity of people who had overestimated themselves.
"I thought you would be good at this," Elizabeth said. "You are precise about everything."
"Precision requires traction," Darcy said.
"That is an excuse."
"It is an accurate statement."
"You are holding the board with both hands."
"So are you."
Elizabeth looked down at her hands. Then at him. He was looking back at her with the expression that was supposed to be a smile, but was trying to be anything else, and she felt the laugh before it arrived.
They made jest of each other for a while before Darcy finally asked that they let go of their fears and try the skating thing.
They skated — slowly, badly, without letting go of the boards for longer than was necessary — and Mia lapped them twice and on the third pass came alongside Elizabeth and took her hand and pulled her into the middle of the rink. Elizabeth yelped and grabbed Mia's arm. Somehow, she did not fall.
From the boards, Darcy watched.
On the fourth pass Mia went for him too. He did not yelp. He did, however, lose his footing briefly and grab Elizabeth's arm on the other side.
For approximately fifteen seconds the three of them moved across the ice in a chain, Mia pulling them both, all three of them laughing.
At some point, Elizabeth found herself thinking, this is the thing.
She did not say it out loud.
She held onto it instead.
***
The new jolly trio stayed in on Wednesday.
Darcy cooked. Properly, this time — he had watched a cooking show just to master the recipe.
It was a chicken dish. Mia ate two portions and declared it significantly better than last time, which had not set a high bar but was still a victory. Elizabeth ate her portion and said nothing complimentary about it and then ate the rest of what was in the pot when she thought no one was looking.
Darcy did see her and he beamed with satisfaction.
That evening Mia made them watch a film she had been wanting to show them for weeks.
They watched it on the sofa with Mia between them and Darcy with one arm along the back of the sofa behind Mia's head, and at some point in the second act, Mia shifted and her head went to Elizabeth's shoulder and her feet went the other way toward Darcy.
She ended up sleeping before the ending, and neither adult moved.
The film finished. The credits rolled.
Elizabeth looked at Mia's face. Then she looked up and found Darcy already looking at her across the top of Mia's head, in the particular way he looked at her at the peak of their dating period.
Neither of them said anything, because Mia chose that moment to wake and remind them that they should not have allowed her to fall asleep in the first place.
***
The happiness in the home continued through Christmas Eve which was spent at Thai restaurant on Smith Street.
Elizabeth took them to the table Charlotte preferred. Even the order was identical to what she always got.
Elizabeth put her hand over Mia's briefly as they ate. Mia turned her palm up and squeezed back. They sat like that for a moment and then let go and the conversation moved on.
Darcy paid.
Obviously.
Walking back to the car, Mia was ahead of them slightly, hands in her pockets, looking at the lights strung along the street, and Elizabeth and Darcy walked behind her at the pace of two people who were not in a hurry and had not decided to be walking this close together but had ended up that way without discussing it.
"She is doing well," Darcy said quietly.
"She is," Elizabeth agreed. "Better than I expected. Better than I think she knows."
"She knows," he said. "She is just deciding how much to show."
Elizabeth looked at him.
"You sound like you understand that," she said.
He looked back at her. "I might."
They walked.
Ahead of them, Mia had stopped at a window display and was looking at something, her breath making small clouds in the cold air.
"Thank you," Elizabeth said. Not quietly. Not loud. Just at the right volume for two people walking close together at night.
"For what."
"For this week. For being here every day. For the hot chocolate and the ice skating and the film and the cooking that was actually edible this time."
"You cleared the pot.” he said.
"I couldn’t let food go to waste"
He looked at her, their smile mutual. Just when a sweet sensation began bubbling in his tummy, she looked away. Darcy smile widened. He had seen that before. It was what Elizabeth Bennet did when she was blushing.