Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The lilacs had undone him.
He had been coping well enough until that point.
He had dressed with Franks’s assistance, arrived at the church before the arranged time, stood at the front with his hands clasped behind his back and his expression under control, and waited patiently for the woman he was about to marry to arrive with her father.
Fitz had stationed himself beside Darcy, and Georgiana was sitting in the first pew.
And then the door had opened and the sun had framed Miss Bennet—Elizabeth—as she walked in on her father’s arm. The lilacs on her hem had caught the green-gold light from the old glass windows, and for a moment he could not breathe.
They had been his mother’s favourite flower. She had grown them along the south wall at Pemberley, a ribbon of purplish pink that appeared every spring and vanished every autumn, and when he was very small, she had told him they were called lilacs. He had not forgotten.
His father had let the beds go to seed after she died.
Not from grief. His father was not a man who grieved, or pondered, or felt deeply about much of anything beyond the business of the estate.
He had been a fair landlord and a competent master, the sort of man who ran his holdings honestly and treated those who worked for him with decency.
But he was not a man who looked much beneath the surface of things.
He liked what was pleasant and easy and entertaining, and he had no great appetite for what was not.
This was why he had indulged Wickham. Wickham was charming and lively and could make the elder Darcy laugh, and a man who valued being entertained more than engaging in deep conversations about the world would naturally prefer the company of a boy who amused him to the company of the son who did not.
Darcy was not a charming man, and he had not been a charming child.
He had been a serious one, his mother’s son in temperament if not appearance, and his father had regarded this seriousness with a kind of baffled tolerance, the way one might regard a dog that refused to fetch.
The spring after his mother died, Darcy had replanted the lilacs himself.
He was fourteen, on his knees in the dirt with a trowel and seeds and a host of feelings he had no other way to express, and his father had walked past him and then come back to ask whether he had seen George that morning.
Not unkindly. Simply without noticing what his son was doing, or why.
And now Elizabeth Bennet—Elizabeth Darcy—had walked into a church wearing lilacs she could not possibly have known the significance of, and he had looked at her and thought, quite clearly, My mother would have liked you.
He had said something about the embroidery at the churchyard gate, but not what he felt, which was that the sight of those small pink flowers on white muslin had made him feel, for the first time in years, that someone was watching over him.
He understood it was coincidence, but at the same time he did not entirely believe it was coincidence.
He was not a man given to superstition, but he had lost his mother young, and he had never really stopped searching for her.
Now they were in the carriage on the way to a cottage near Margate for a few days, to make more of a show that this was a planned marriage, even if the wedding had been pushed forward. Mrs. Morgan had claimed this was a love match, and that was how they would proceed.
The church was behind them, his wife was sitting across from him in the dress with the lilacs, and Darcy was confronting a problem he had been refusing to acknowledge since the moment he had first seen her.
She was beautiful.
Not in the way he had been taught to appraise beauty.
Not the fashionable plumpness, the studied grace, the careful arrangement of features that society declared handsome.
But in the lithe lines of her light and pleasing figure.
The dark amber eyes that missed nothing.
The mouth that could not quite decide whether to smile or debate.
The way she held herself even now, straight-backed and steady.
She was small, compared to him, and yet so brave.
He had not allowed himself to think of her attractions before.
Not when she was compromised and he was honour-bound to offer for her.
Not during the courtship display, when every gesture between them was calculated for an audience.
To notice her then, as a man notices a woman, would have been a liberty he had no right to take.
She had not chosen him. He had made a terrible error in judgement and she had been required to pay the price of it.
She had accepted him because the alternative was ruin, and to find her attractive under those circumstances felt uncomfortably close to taking pleasure in her misfortune.
But they were married now. The vows had been spoken, the register signed, the ring placed on her finger.
And in the privacy of their carriage as it rolled towards Margate, Darcy permitted himself to look at his wife and acknowledge what he had known since their first meeting; Elizabeth Darcy was not only lovely, she was the most compelling woman he had ever met.
Darcy was afraid that what they did together in the next few days would determine the way they got on for the rest of their lives. And he wanted her to feel the same sort of love for him that he was beginning to feel for her.
“Mr. Darcy.”
He startled. “Mrs. Darcy.”
The names hung between them, ill-fitting, borrowed.
“We can sit here in silence and arrive at the cottage as strangers, or we can attempt conversation and arrive as two people who have at least established whether we prefer coffee or tea.”
She was brisk and direct and not even slightly intimidated by the silence, and Darcy, who had been fortifying himself for an excruciatingly idle conversation—or worse—nodded.
“I prefer coffee in the mornings,” he said.
“I prefer tea at every time of day. There. We have discovered our first incompatibility. The marriage may not survive.”
He smiled. “I drink tea in the evenings.”
“Then you are only half wrong. That is encouraging,” she replied with a challenging half-smile and tilted her head beguilingly to one side. “What else?”
“What else what?”
“What else should I know about you? The small things. The things one learns about a person by living alongside them rather than being introduced to them.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I already know you walk too quickly and cannot produce a compliment under pressure. What else?”
He considered. “I rise early. Before six, generally.”
She nodded. “Since I have been ill, I have been sleeping later. I am not at my best before eight, so we shall have to establish separate breakfast times. Either you must wait and be hungry or we eat earlier and you shall form an ill opinion of me.”
“I doubt that.”
“You have not attempted to converse with me before eight o’clock.” She said it with such certainty that he almost smiled. “Your turn. Ask me something.”
“Do you always talk this much in carriages?”
“Yes,” she said directly. “I find silence in enclosed spaces oppressive. You must inform me when you have had enough, or I shall simply continue indefinitely.”
A brief, companionable silence followed, which she allowed to last approximately fifteen seconds.
“Do you snore?”
He stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“If you do not have any questions for me, I shall ask more of you. It is a practical question, for we are to be neighbours. I ask only because I am a light sleeper and it would be useful to know in advance.”
She was an innocent, his young wife. She was being playful, not cruel. He would do well to remember that. “I do not snore.”
“That is exactly what someone who snores would say.” She appeared to consider this. “I shall take it on faith for now.”
“I thank you for your trust.” He turned to look out the window. They had passed Margate now, and ahead he could see the cottage Mrs. Morgan had arranged for them, a small stone house set back from the lane, with a walled garden and smoke rising from the chimney.
“Is that it?” Elizabeth asked.
“I believe so.”
“It is smaller than I expected.”
“I confirmed with Mrs. Morgan that it would be modest. I admit I was hoping for some privacy, and here the servants could not sleep in even if they wished.”
“You spoke with Mrs. Morgan.” She turned to look at him, and there was amusement in her face, real amusement. “You arranged for our privacy with Mrs. Morgan?”
“She does live in Ramsgate. It was prudent to ask whether this would be a suitable place for our . . . particular requirements. I thought if it was not, she might guide me to something that was.”
“Mr. Darcy, you continue to surprise me.”
The carriage rolled to a stop. Darcy descended first and offered his hand to help his wife down. She took it. Her fingers were warm through her glove, and neither of them let go immediately.
The cottage sat at the end of a short lane, sheltered from the sea wind by a flint wall that had been there longer than anyone living could account for.
It was built of the local stone, with a slate roof gone silver with lichen and a chimney from which a thread of smoke rose straight into the air.
The garden was small and well-tended. Someone had planted hollyhocks along the south wall, and they leaned against the warm stone in shades of pink and cream, taller than the windowsills.
A climbing rose, past its best bloom but still holding a few late flowers, framed the front door.
Beyond the garden wall, the land dropped away to a sandy beach.
The sea was very close, its sound a low steady wash that would be the last thing they heard at night and the first thing in the morning.
Mrs. Morgan had done very well indeed.
“Well,” Elizabeth said, looking at the cottage. “Shall we?”