Chapter Twelve #2
She looked at them—at Fiona first, and then at James, and then at the small, particular distance between them, which was entirely correct and yet somehow different from the distance at which two people stand when they have nothing to say to each other—and her expression settled into something that was not quite satisfaction and not quite relief, but was clearly related to both.
“You have been walking,” she said.
“We have,” James said. “The south walk is very fine at this hour, as you recommended.”
“I am glad you found it so.” She set down her pen with the deliberate care of a woman who is giving her full attention to what comes next. “I take it you have something to tell me.”
James glanced at Fiona—a brief, sideways glance, the kind that passes between two people who have recently arrived at an understanding and are still learning the grammar of it—and Fiona gave the smallest possible nod, which was both permission and encouragement.
“Miss Eliot has done me the honour of accepting my proposal,” James said. “I hope, Lady Catherine, that you will give us your blessing.”
The room was quiet for a moment.
Lady Catherine rose from the writing table.
She was not a woman given to demonstrations of feeling—she considered them, in general, a form of imprecision—but she crossed the room with a directness that was itself a kind of warmth.
She took Fiona’s hand in both of hers and held it for a moment without speaking, which was, from Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the equivalent of an embrace.
“My dear,” she said. It was two words, and they were enough.
Fiona’s composure held, but only just. She pressed Lady Catherine’s hands briefly in return, and then released them, and stood very straight, and said nothing, which was the right thing to do.
Lady Caroline had set down her embroidery frame and risen from the sofa.
She came forward now with the warmth and directness that were characteristic of her—none of Lady Catherine’s measured restraint, but the open, unguarded pleasure of a mother who has been afraid for a very long time and has been given, at last, a reason to stop.
“Mr. Bennet,” she said, and took his hand and pressed it with both of hers, much as Lady Catherine had taken Fiona’s. “I am very glad. I am overwhelmed and—” she stopped, and collected herself with a small, decisive breath. “I am very glad indeed.”
“As am I,” James said, and meant it with a simplicity that required no elaboration.
Lady Caroline turned to her daughter and kissed her cheek, and Fiona received it with a steadiness that cost her something, and the two of them stood together for a moment in the way that mothers and daughters stand when they are saying something that cannot be said in words.
Lady Catherine, who had observed all of this with the composed attention of a woman who has arranged the scene and is now watching it unfold, moved to the bell pull near the fireplace and rang it with the authority of a woman accustomed to having her signals answered promptly.
“We shall have champagne,” she said. “It is not yet noon, but I consider the occasion sufficient justification.” She looked at James with the expression that he had come to recognise as her version of approval—direct, unqualified, and entirely without sentimentality.
“Sit down, Mr. Bennet. There are practical matters to discuss, and I prefer to discuss them while everyone is still in good humour.”
James sat. Fiona sat beside him—not close, but closer than she had sat at dinner the previous evening, and he noticed this, and thought she probably intended him to.
The champagne arrived with a speed that suggested it had been anticipated, brought by a footman who managed to convey, through the medium of his perfectly expressionless face, that he was not in the least surprised by the occasion.
Lady Catherine poured herself, which was unusual, and handed the glasses with a precision that suggested she had been thinking about this moment for some time.
“To the future Mr. and Mrs. Bennet,” she said. She raised her glass with the gravity of a woman making a toast she has composed in advance and is delivering exactly as intended.
“To the future Mr. and Mrs. Bennet,” Lady Caroline repeated, and her voice was entirely steady, which was a considerable achievement.
James looked at Fiona. She was absently looking at her glass.
When she looked up and found him looking at her, she smiled like an angel of light.
The colour came to her cheeks again—that honest, unconcealed colour that he had decided, somewhere between the sundial and the end of the south walk, was one of his favourite things about her—and she raised her glass and met his eyes and said nothing.
He said nothing, and the silence between them was the most eloquent thing that had been said in the room all morning.
Lady Catherine inclined her head with quiet satisfaction, and the future—having been properly acknowledged—was allowed, at last, to begin.
***
The practical matters, as Lady Catherine had promised, followed directly.
The Special Licence had already been applied for—she mentioned this with the brisk efficiency of a woman who had not waited for the engagement to be formally declared before setting the machinery in motion, and who saw no reason to apologise for the fact.
She expected it to arrive the following morning by private messenger.
The ceremony would take place at Hunsford church, where Mr. Collins would officiate, on the morning after tomorrow.
The party would be small: herself, Lady Caroline, Mr. and Mrs. Collins, and some members of the household as propriety required.
“I have written to Lord Eliot,” Lady Caroline said, “to inform him that the matter is resolved. He will join us as soon as he is able, though I do not expect him before the ceremony itself.” She paused. “He will be very glad.”
“And my family,” James said. “I should write to my father.”
“Of course,” Lady Catherine said. “You may use the library. I would suggest—” a brief pause, the pause of a woman choosing her words with care—“that you convey the essential facts, and leave the particulars for a later occasion. There will be time enough for a full account once the marriage is settled.”
James understood what she meant, agreed with the reasoning, and said so.
“There is one further matter,” Lady Catherine said.
She set down her glass and looked at him with the directness that was her habitual mode when she considered something important.
“Miss Eliot—Mrs. Bennet will require some time after the marriage before she is ready to be presented to your family and society. I would ask that you allow her that time, and that you do not press her for more than she is ready to give. She is—” she paused, and the pause was not for want of words but for the weight of them—“she has been very brave, and she is very tired, and she deserves to be allowed to find her footing before she is required to perform for anyone.”
James looked at Fiona. She was looking at her hands, and she did not look up, but the line of her shoulders told him she had heard every word, was grateful for them, and would not say so.
“I understand, your ladyship,” James Bennet said. “She will have whatever time she needs.”
Lady Catherine looked at him steadily for a moment, and then gave a single, decisive nod, the nod of a woman who has said what needed to be said and is satisfied with the result.
“Good,” she said. “Then I believe we understand each other.”
She rose, which was the signal that the formal part of the morning was concluded, and the room shifted—Lady Caroline moving to the window, Fiona rising from her chair, the footman appearing at the door with some instinct for the moment that James found slightly uncanny.
James stood and found Fiona beside him.
“Thank you,” she said, quietly, so that only he could hear.
It was not entirely clear what she was thanking him for—the morning, the walk, the answer he had given Lady Catherine, the answer he had given her, or simply the fact of being there at all.
He thought, on reflection, that it was probably all of those things at once.
“There is nothing to thank me for,” he said. “Not yet.”
She looked at him—the direct, careful look, the look he was beginning to know—and then she said, very quietly: “There is rather more than you think.”
And she moved away to join her mother at the window.
James stood for a moment in the middle of the morning room at Rosings Park, with the champagne still faintly present on his tongue and the light coming in from the south, and thought that he had arrived in Kent three days ago expecting a negotiation and had found something considerably more interesting than that, and that he was, on the whole, not sorry.
***
The church at Hunsford was small and very old, its stones the colour of the surrounding fields in autumn—a pale, weathered grey that absorbed the morning light without reflecting it, as though the building had long since made its peace with the landscape and asked nothing more of it.
The yew in the churchyard was older than the church itself, or so Mr. Collins had once informed a visitor, though he had been unable to produce the evidence for this claim and had moved on to a description of the east window before the point could be pressed.
The party from Rosings arrived in two carriages a little before half past ten.