Chapter 13 #2
He shook his head. “I cannot guarantee your safety, Lizzy. I understand that now. You are about to marry a man I have known for less than three days. While I am vastly relieved that he seems a decent sort, I cannot protect you from whatever comes of it. But I can make sure that Jane and Mary and Kitty and Lydia are protected, that they are never in the position you are in today, marrying because they must.”
They had reached the churchyard gate. Elizabeth could see the stone tower rising above the wall, and beyond it the shimmer of the sunlight breaking through the clouds and reflecting off the sea.
In a few minutes she would walk through those doors and become someone else.
But for this moment she was still Elizabeth Bennet, standing beside her father on a Wednesday morning in Ramsgate, and he was telling her, in the only way he knew how, that they would all be well.
It was a gift.
“Nursing was never your strength, Papa,” she said, and her voice was not entirely steady.
“No.”
“You would have been dreadful at it. You would have read to Mamma and my sisters from Gibbon, and they would have begged for the fever to take them.”
A sound escaped him—half laugh, half something else. “I would have read them the good parts.”
“There are no good parts of Gibbon, Papa. That is the point of Gibbon.”
He laughed properly then, and she along with him. They stood at the churchyard gate in the dappled morning sunshine, and what they shared was not happiness exactly, but it was something close enough to carry them through the door.
“Thank you,” she said as they stepped inside. “For the books. For Jane. For all of it.”
“Do not thank me for doing what I should have done years ago. It only makes the delay more shameful.” He straightened his cravat, which had gone slightly crooked. “Now. Shall we get you married?”
St. Mary’s was ancient and small and wind-worn, the light filtering green and gold through imperfect glass that had survived two centuries of changeable weather.
The stone floor was uneven, worn smooth in spots by generations of parishioners who had shuffled and knelt and risen and shuffled again, and the air smelled of damp hymn books and candle wax and something faintly briny that crept in through cracks in the walls no amount of pointing could prevent.
Georgiana rose from the front pew. She was to stand up with Elizabeth. It had been Mr. Darcy’s suggestion, offered quietly the evening before, that since Georgiana was soon to be a sister, she might stand as one. Elizabeth had agreed at once, and Georgiana, when approached, had been delighted.
Mr. Darcy stood at the front of the church with his cousin beside him.
Colonel Fitzwilliam, whom she had not seen in some days, caught Elizabeth’s eye as she entered and offered a slight bow that carried both encouragement and a hint of conspiracy, as though the two of them were in on a secret the world had not yet discovered.
His coat was blue, his valet’s doing, she was certain, for Mr. Darcy did not strike her as a man who gave much thought to the colour of his coats. His hands were clasped behind his back. When he heard the door, he turned to look at her.
It was not a glance. He gazed at her the way one might look at something unexpected, and for the space of a breath his expression was entirely unguarded.
Then he collected himself, as she had known he would, and his features arranged themselves into the solemn composure she was beginning to recognise.
His gaze dropped briefly to her gown, or perhaps to the hem, where Jane’s lilacs traced their delicate path along the white muslin. He looked away. His jaw tightened. He said nothing.
She wished, fleetingly, that he might have offered her a smile in this moment. But then, she chastised herself, she had not smiled either.
The vicar was elderly and kind, with a puff of white hair that reminded Elizabeth of the clouds outside. He set his spectacles on his nose, consulted his notes, and looked up at them.
“Dearly beloved,” he began, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony . . .”
Elizabeth had heard these words more than once, mouthed them, half-attentive, from the pews. She had never expected to hear them spoken over her own head in a church by the sea with a man she hardly knew.
The vicar moved through the preamble and the inquiry into impediments. When no one spoke, the vicar cleared his throat and turned to Mr. Darcy to ask him the most important question of all.
Mr. Darcy looked at her. Just for a moment, just a flicker, as though he were checking that she was still there and still willing, and then he said, “I will.” His voice was quiet and rough and entirely without hesitation, and Elizabeth felt her composure waver slightly.
The vicar turned to her.
“Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honour, and keep him, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
Obey him and serve him. The words sat in the air. She had known they were coming, had rehearsed her acceptance in the glass this morning, and yet the weight of the vow she was about to make sat heavily upon her.
Mr. Darcy met her gaze, and she felt that he knew what this promise would cost her. He seemed to be waiting to see what she would say.
She thought of her sisters at home, her mother, even Mrs. Morgan, dry-eyed and upright in the front pew. Her father, who wanted to do better.
“I will,” Elizabeth said. Her voice did not waver, which she considered a significant achievement.
Mr. Darcy exhaled. She glanced at him. He had been holding his breath, and this struck her as rather amusing. She raised her eyebrows a fraction as if to ask, Did you think I would refuse?
Something moved at the corner of his mouth, and she could almost hear him reply, The possibility had occurred to me.
Papa came forward and placed her hand in the vicar’s with a gentleness that made her throat ache. The vicar’s hand was dry and warm, and then he placed hers into Mr. Darcy’s, and the transfer was done.
Mr. Darcy took her hand. His grip was firm and careful.
He spoke his vows looking at her, not at the vicar. Each word was deliberate, given its full weight, and she had the unsettling sense that he meant every one of them, not as form, not as ceremony, but as plain fact.
Elizabeth repeated her own vows then.
They loosed their hands. Mr. Darcy placed the ring on her finger, a simple, elegant gold band warm from his pocket, and spoke the words the Prayer Book required.
“With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”
With my body I thee worship. His voice had dropped on those words, almost imperceptibly. His thumb had brushed across her knuckle as he slid the ring into place, and Elizabeth felt the heat rise in her face.
The vicar moved into the prayers. Elizabeth bowed her head. And then it was done and he pronounced them man and wife.
The vicar was beaming, but Elizabeth was suddenly aware that she had absolutely no idea what one did next. Mr. Darcy, beside her, appeared to be just as confused.
They looked at each other.
Well, said his expression.
Indeed, she tried to reply with hers.
“The register,” the vicar said, making a shooing motion with his hands.
Her father came to stand beside the table while she signed as Miss Elizabeth Bennet for the last time. The pen needed trimming and the ink was slightly too thick. She looked at the page for a moment, the signature still wet, still hers.
Papa looked at her signature. Then he looked away.
Mr. Darcy took her place. They were very close, closer than they had been even during the ceremony. His sleeve brushed hers as he reached for the pen, and neither of them moved away. He signed: Fitzwilliam Gresley Darcy. Precise, angular, not a flourish in sight.
Three surnames. If they ever argued, she would need a full breath just to address him properly.
The colonel signed with careless speed. Georgiana wrote her name in small perfect script and then looked up at Elizabeth with shining eyes. She embraced Elizabeth so tightly it hurt.
“I am so glad you are my sister,” she whispered.
Elizabeth held Georgiana close and then released her. “As am I,” she whispered back.
“Mrs. Darcy, in marrying you, I can say without qualification that Darcy has made the best decision of his life.” The colonel smiled mischievously. “And that includes the choice of his horse, his tailor, and not to pursue a career in diplomacy.”
“I shall endeavour to live up to that commendation.”
The colonel bowed over her hand and as he rose, said quietly, “He is worth the effort, Mrs. Darcy. I promise you that.”
Her father shook Mr. Darcy’s hand. “My Lizzy is opinionated, occasionally ungovernable, and worth ten of the rest of us put together,” he said. “I trust you to remember that.”
“Papa,” she said with fond exasperation.
Mr. Darcy looked startled, then said, very seriously, “Yes, sir. I will.”
Papa held Mr. Darcy’s gaze, read whatever he found there, and nodded once.
Together, they all walked out into the churchyard. The clouds had resolved their argument in favour of the sunshine, and as always, the gulls screamed overhead.
Her father kissed her forehead quickly, before either of them could think about it too much, and stepped back.
Elizabeth took her husband’s arm. At the gate, Mr. Darcy stopped. She looked up at him, uncertain.
“The lilacs,” he said. “On your gown.” His voice carried the same rough edge that had marked his vows. “They are very fine.”
“My sister Jane embroidered them,” she said.
“She is very talented.”
“It is too late to marry Jane, Mr. Darcy,” she said teasingly. “And when you meet her, you will perhaps discover that you have made a poor choice after all.”
Mr. Darcy studied her and then shook his head. “I doubt that, Mrs. Darcy.”
A gull landed on the churchyard wall and regarded them with a baleful yellow eye.
“Shall we?” Mr. Darcy said, offering his arm. Elizabeth took it, and they walked together towards his carriage and whatever came next.