Chapter 24 #2
He also had opinions about Venetian glass, which was something he had not previously known about himself.
By the time the company was directed towards the music room, Darcy had not heard a word that required defending against. No whispers that fell silent as they approached, no careful looks, no conversations redirected at their entrance.
Either Mrs. Younge’s reach had not extended to the Sandersons’ particular circle, or it had and been discounted, or the assembled company was simply occupied with other things.
Whatever the cause, the tightness between his shoulders began, by degrees, to ease.
They were seated in the third row. The musicians assembled at the front in the full blaze of the room’s candles, and the company gathered in the chairs around them with a rustling, expectant air.
“Haydn,” Elizabeth said, as the first notes were played.
He looked at her.
Darcy required an additional four bars to arrive at the same conclusion.
“My sister Mary has the set of quartets,” she whispered. “I have heard it a great many times, though I suspect not as beautifully as we will tonight.”
Her breath stirred the air near his ear; her voice, low and confidential, seemed somehow more intimate than if she had taken his hand. He turned slightly towards her, enough to catch the brightness in her eyes before she faced forward once more, her attention already reclaimed by the players.
There was animation in her whole countenance when she listened in earnest, an alert pleasure that made him wonder how he could ever have thought any room complete without her in it. This was not, he was forced to admit, the sort of observation that improved a man’s attention to music.
He ought perhaps to have attended more scrupulously to the performance.
It was plainly very fine. Bingley, no doubt, would have given himself up to the enjoyment of the music, and Fitz, had he been present, would certainly have found some lively observation to offer on the execution.
Darcy, however, found himself occupied by a subject still more affecting, the near-miss with Georgiana and the resulting unexpected, extraordinarily good fortune that had brought him here, to London, to this elegant drawing room in Wimpole Street with Elizabeth beside him, speaking to him as if there were no other companion she preferred.
Darcy had once imagined his future marital happiness in dignified, general terms. Estate, family, esteem, domestic peace.
He had not understood, until his marriage taught him better, how much felicity might consist in smaller things—a look across a room, a shared book, a murmured remark meant for him alone, sitting beside his wife while she recognised a Haydn quartet before he did, and feeling that this was exactly where he was supposed to be.
The piece ended, and the audience applauded.
Elizabeth clapped politely. In company she was careful with that warmth; he had watched her contain it at Lady Drummond’s, where it did not serve to show too readily how much one felt anything.
She looked pleased, simply and directly pleased, in the bright candlelight of the Sandersons’ music room.
He could not look away.
“You are not applauding,” she said, still facing forward.
He watched her still. “I am occupied.”
She turned her head, and found him already looking at her, which was the sort of thing one was supposed to arrange so the other person did not notice. She held his gaze for a moment. He held it back.
In the interval they stood near the windows with glasses of negus that neither of them particularly wanted, and Darcy found that the evening had become, without any specific decision on his part, an uncommonly good one.
Mrs. Chelwick appeared again and introduced her husband.
A young lady attached to the Sanderson household drew Elizabeth into conversation about a novel she was attempting to read in French.
A matron who knew Lady Matlock tapped him on the arm with her fan and told him she was impressed with his wife.
So was he.
The first evening, they had simply been in the same room together and neither of them had acknowledged it. He thought about Rasselas and Johnson and Edgeworth and Self-Control. He thought about a shawl on a beam, a grey stone on the windowsill, Elizabeth in his arms as he carried her to bed.
“Mr. Darcy,” Mrs. Chelwick said, drawing his attention back to the room, “Your wife is charming.”
“Thank you.” he said. He looked at Elizabeth, who had moved to make room for another person and was now engaged with three people simultaneously, her hands moving in a small emphatic gesture that caused the Sanderson girl to laugh and her neighbour to look gratifyingly envious of the conversation.
She caught his eye and smiled, a small, private acknowledgment, just for him before she returned to the conversation.
The second half of the concert was Mozart.
The candles burned as steadily as they had burned all evening, the room as bright and full as it had been from the start, and yet something was different.
He was aware of her beside him in a way that had little to do with the music.
Her profile in the candlelight. The way her attention moved between the performers and whatever she was privately thinking.
At one point, the second violinist made an error in the third movement and Elizabeth’s chin tilted very slightly, just enough to tell him she had heard it too, and he felt the shared recognition pass between them without a word.
The carriage home was quiet.
“You were watching the room,” she said.
“I was.”
“And then you were not.”
He looked at her. “I did not hear anything distressing.”
She was quiet a moment. The streets moved past the window. “I heard nothing like that either,” she said. “Not a word.” She reclined against the squab. “It was a good evening.”
“It was.”
She was looking at the street outside, but her mouth had the sweet curve it sometimes took when she was thinking of something she had not yet decided to share. He had developed, he realised, a list of Elizabeth’s expressions, and this one was among his favourites.
“The Mozart,” she said. “Did you know it?”
“I recognised it.”
“Which is not the same as knowing it.”
“No,” he agreed. “I have not listened to a great deal of Mozart.”
She turned from the window, genuinely surprised. “Truly?”
“Georgiana is not fond of him, so she does not often perform those pieces.” He paused. “And when Georgiana practices I generally fail to attend, because Georgiana practising is a different matter from Georgiana performing.”
“She bangs the pianoforte when she forgets to think about her wrists.”
“She does.”
“Your sister is actually rather good.”
“She has improved a great deal over the last year.”
Elizabeth smiled at him as their carriage turned into Upper Brook Street.
The house was quiet. Georgiana had retired early; Fitz was at his club.
They went upstairs together and entered their private sitting room. A single candle burned on the side table. The curtains were drawn. Everything was still.
Darcy turned to face her.
Elizabeth stood a few feet away, her eyes on him with that clear, unhurried attention that he adored.
He crossed to her. She did not step back.
“Elizabeth,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, answering the question he had not posed.
He kissed her.
She kissed him back immediately, wholly, without qualification, her hands at his chest, and she was warm and she smelled of jasmine and the evening air, her lips soft against his.
He took her face gently in his hands and leaned down to her again.
It was a very long time before either of them attended to anything else.
When they separated it was by the smallest possible increment.
Her eyes were bright. “I did not . . . I had not expected . . .”
Even in the dim light he could see the colour in her cheeks. He watched her search in vain for the words that always came so easily to her.
He thought of every evening in the library and choosing books for her and the bee book he had bought because she told him to, and all of it had been waiting for this, for her face tipped up towards his in the candlelight of their sitting room.
“It was even better,” he said, “than I had anticipated.”
She laughed, the sound he now liked best in the world. He kissed her once more because he could, because she let him, because the evening had been very good and he did not wish it to end before it was finished.
When at last they drew apart, she glanced towards her door, and then back at him, and there was an openness in her expression, an invitation, that made his pulse race.
But beneath it he caught something else, not reluctance, nothing so discouraging as that, more the look of a woman who was still finding her footing, who had come a great distance this evening and was not yet certain how much further she needed to go.
He wanted her certainty more than he wanted his own gratification. That, too, marriage had taught him. “Goodnight, Elizabeth,” he said.
Something flickered in her eyes—surprise, perhaps. She understood him. She generally did.
“Goodnight, Fitzwilliam,” she said softly. She went through her door and it closed with a quiet click behind her. He did not hear the bolt slide closed.
Darcy stood for a moment in the sitting room.
He had decided correctly. She had kissed him tonight without reservation, without anything that resembled duty or politeness.
That was enough. More than enough. The rest would come in its own time, and he found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he was content to wait for it.
Then he glanced at the dwindling candle and reflected that if he remained standing in the middle of the sitting room smirking at nothing, he would deserve whatever comments Franks chose to make in the morning.