Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The cottage smelled of salt and woodsmoke, and Elizabeth woke to both on her first morning as a married woman.
She lay still for a moment. The ceiling was high for a cottage and whitewashed, with a thin crack that ran from one corner to the other like a river on an old map. The bedclothes were heavy and soft, the mattress surprisingly good, and the pillow smelled of lavender.
Through the window, which someone had left cracked open, she could hear the sea, a steady, rhythmic wash. The cottage had been built with its back against the water and its face turned stubbornly towards land.
As they had agreed, the small connecting door between her little chamber and Mr. Darcy’s was closed.
She had locked it when she retired last night, and the silence beyond it told her nothing.
He might be sleeping. He might be lying awake, staring at his own ceiling, listening to the same waves crashing upon the shore.
Eventually, Elizabeth rose, washed her face, dressed in a simple morning gown that required no assistance, and went downstairs.
The cottage was larger than it had appeared from the lane.
The stairs were generous, but still clearly built for people who were shorter than Mr. Darcy, and she could not imagine how he had navigated them without concussing himself on the beam at the top.
The kitchen was warm. The servants must have arranged it all already, Elizabeth supposed, for a kettle already hung above the kitchen fire.
Tea things had been set out on the scrubbed oak table including a pot, two cups, a small jug of milk, and a plate of bread and butter.
There was also a pot of coffee, which was still hot, and which had already been poured from, if the ring on the saucer was anything to judge by.
It was only just gone seven. Her husband had not been exaggerating when he said he was an early riser.
Husband. How strange that sounded.
She poured herself a cup of tea and carried it to the front room, where the windows looked out over the garden wall to the beach beyond.
The morning was grey and soft, the sea a murmur rather than a roar even with the window open, and Elizabeth sat in the chair nearest the window, pulled a blanket over her lap, and breathed.
It was very quiet. Not the uneasy quiet of a sickroom or the loaded quiet of a dinner where no one knew what to say to one another. This was the quiet of a small house in the early morning, with the fire crackling and the gulls calling and nothing at all required of her.
She drank her tea and wondered when she had last been well and able to sit still without feeling guilty for it.
The front door opened and Mr. Darcy appeared, slightly wind-blown, his boots damp, his head uncovered.
He had been walking. He stopped when he saw her, clearly not having expected to find her awake, and for a moment they regarded each other across the small room with the mutual wariness of two people who have negotiated terms but have not yet tested them.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning. It is not yet eight. Is it quite safe to speak with you?”
She looked at him askance, and said lightly, “Yes, Mr. Darcy, quite safe. I am a light sleeper, and this is a strange house, that is all. I was awake earlier than my custom.”
He stood in the doorway, one hand still on the frame, and she noticed a faint mark above his left eyebrow.
“The beam?” she asked, nodding at it.
His hand went to his forehead. “Yes.”
“You will want to remember it is there. I am short enough that it is no trouble to me.”
He grimaced. “I have made a note.” He disappeared into the kitchen, returning with another cup of coffee, and the ordinariness of the gesture made the whole situation feel marginally less impossible.
“Did you walk far?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, sipping his drink. “I walk or ride in the mornings. It clears my head.”
“What does your head require clearing of?” She hoped it was something they could address.
He paused, the cup halfway to his mouth. She watched him consider the question, weigh whether to answer honestly, and then decide. “At present? A great deal.”
Elizabeth did not sigh or roll her eyes. She congratulated herself on her restraint. “I would ask you to be more specific, Mr. Darcy.”
He studied her for a moment and then sat in the chair opposite hers. The chairs were close together; the room did not permit much distance. His knee was perhaps a foot from hers.
“I was thinking,” he said carefully, “about our remaining time in Ramsgate. We ought to call on Mrs. Morgan before we leave. There is a harp concert at the assembly rooms that Georgiana mentioned. And I believe we ought to return to London after a week or so more here by the sea, so that it does not appear hurried.” He caught himself, and his forehead furrowed.
“I was making plans without consulting you.”
“You were.”
“I apologise.”
She smiled. “You need not apologise for thinking about the week. I only ask that before you make any final decisions, you tell me what you were considering and inquire whether I agree.” She took a sip of her tea.
“I should very much like to call on Mrs. Morgan, thank you. The concert sounds pleasant, though I warn you I shall expect you to sit through the entire thing without looking as though you are being tortured.”
A smile pulled at his lips. “I enjoy music, but an entire evening with only the harp? I make no promises.”
They sat for a while after that, drinking their respective cups. The fire crackled. The waves crashed somewhere distant. Roses brushed against the lower part of the window.
“The bookshop,” he said suddenly.
She looked at him.
“You asked what else I had been thinking about. I would like to visit Hatchards when we return to London. There is a volume I wished to find. We might browse together, if that is agreeable.”
“That is agreeable to me,” she said. “Though I warn you, I was not jesting when we visited the lending library. My taste in novels is appalling. You will judge me.”
He glanced at her over the rim of his cup, and Elizabeth was sure she saw a glint of humour there. “I am endeavouring not to judge anyone before breakfast. It is a new resolution.”
She raised her cup a little. “To new resolutions, then.”
He raised his. They did not touch their teacups together; the moment did not call for it. But something changed, ever so slightly, like a door easing open a few inches on its hinges.
When they had eaten, they walked together along the shoreline where the sand was firm and the tide was out.
At one point Elizabeth stopped to examine something the tide had left behind. He stopped too, and looked down at the small spiral shell she had picked up.
“That is a whelk shell. A fine one.”
She turned it over, examining it with great seriousness. “How do you know it is a whelk?”
“The spiral. The ridging.” He paused. “Georgiana’s conchology. One absorbs these things.”
“Conchology. Of course you know the word for the study of shells.”
“It is the correct word.”
“It is a very useful word.” She pocketed the shell. “I shall deploy it at the first available opportunity.”
He looked at her, his eyes narrowing. “You are going to use it against me somehow.”
“Not against you, what a notion.” She smiled brightly up at him. “Only . . . often. And with a great deal of authority.” She turned to face the water. “Georgiana must have a very fine collection.”
“She does.”
“Then I shall give her this one.” She patted her pocket. “She can tell me what it is called.”
He frowned. “I just told you what it is called.”
“Yes, but she will tell me its Latin name, and then I shall have two words to deploy with authority instead of one.”
“The Latin name is two words on its own, but now I shall not tell you what they are.”
They walked back to the cottage, and Elizabeth was pleased with how things had transpired. They had drunk tea and eaten breakfast and walked on the beach and argued playfully about whelk shells. They had contrived, against all reasonable expectation, to be easy with one another.
The difficulty, she suspected, was not going to be in these little things.
The easy things they were on their way to mastering.
It was the deeper things—understanding, trust, affection—that would take considerably longer.
She glanced at the man walking beside her with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes on the middle distance. Those things could not be rushed.
Back at the cottage, she excused herself and lay down in her bedchamber for the better part of an hour. Not two hours, as she had required only a month ago, and that was certainly a relief. She was back downstairs around two, and found Mr. Darcy in the small garden with a book he was not reading.
“I thought,” he said, closing it, “that we might have a small meal outside, if you like.”
She looked at the walled garden, the late afternoon sun pooling warmly against the stone, the climbing rose dropping the last of its petals onto the flagstones. “I would like that,” she said.
They ate early, the two of them, at the small table the housekeeper had arranged near the south wall where the warmth lingered longest. It was a simple meal of cold meats, bread, and the last of the season’s plums. They talked a little and were quiet a little, and it was, on the whole, a very tolerable beginning.
The next morning, Elizabeth came downstairs to find the window in the front room closed.
She was certain she had left it cracked open the night before, because she liked the sound of the sea, but now it was latched, and the room was warmer than it had been yesterday at this hour. The fire, too, had been built up higher than the servants usually left it.
Mr. Darcy was already in the kitchen with his coffee. She poured her tea and carried it through.
“You closed the window,” she said.
He did not look up from his paper. “The temperature dropped in the night.”