Chapter Thirteen #3
“Sir, you are welcome. We are humble here, but we shall do what we can. A parlour, to be sure, and a fire. We had a message from the post that there was trouble upon the road behind. Highwaymen, they say. I hope you have not—”
“We came that way,” Mr. Darcy said. His tone did not invite conjecture.
“The matter has been dealt with.” He produced a card and a sovereign.
“If the magistrate wishes for particulars, he may write to me in London. For now, you will oblige me by seeing that no tales are told in your yard that will encourage any further attempts. The ladies have had excitement enough for one day.”
“Indeed, sir, indeed.” The landlord took the card and bowed again, more deeply. “No tales from my house, you may depend upon it. This way.”
Mrs. Hobart drew herself up at the mention of highwaymen. Her mouth opened. Elizabeth could almost see the word forming upon her tongue.
Mr. Darcy looked at her.
“Miss Bennet,” he said, with the same quiet emphasis he had used in the carriage.
Mrs. Hobart closed her mouth.
“The parlour?” Mr. Darcy asked, though it was not truly a question.
The landlord led them through a narrow passage that smelt of smoke and cabbage into a small room. It contained a table, three mismatched but serviceable chairs, a fireplace in which a sluggish fire burned, and a single small window filmed with frost.
Mr. Darcy set Mrs. Hobart into one the chairs and drew another forward for Elizabeth.
“Pray be seated, Miss Bennet,” he said. “I shall speak to the landlord about refreshment.”
Elizabeth felt she ought to be seeing to their comfort, with Mr. Darcy injured. But she could see he did not mean to relinquish any control at this moment, and she would not repay his service to them by fretting over him. It would only embarrass him.
Mrs. Hobart began at once to revive with the greatest energy. She turned up her nose at the sight of the fire, which she pronounced paltry, and informed Elizabeth that no princess had ever been so shamefully treated upon the English highways.
“If Sir Reginald had any notion that such things occurred,” she declared, “he would never have permitted us to be separated. To imagine that you should be forced to alight before a common thief. It is insupportable.”
Elizabeth took off her gloves one finger at a time. Her hands looked quite ordinary, only a little reddened by cold. Only the faint smell of the spirits reminded her of what they had done.
Mr. Darcy returned with the landlord at his heels. Arrangements seemed to have multiplied. There was to be tea and stew. While they waited, something hot arrived from the kitchen that might charitably be called broth. The landlord seemed impressed, confused, and flattered by Mr. Darcy’s patronage.
“Pen and paper,” Mr Darcy added, as if it were a natural part of a bill of fare. “For myself, and for Miss Bennet, if you please.”
“Certainly, sir, certainly.” The landlord backed out, promising all things at once.
Mrs. Hobart made a great business of declaring that she must compose herself. She said enough that Elizabeth understood she required the necessary, and Elizabeth nodded her off.
The door closed behind her.
Mr. Darcy went to the small writing desk nearer the fire, drew the single rickety chair near it, and sat.
When the paper came, he took it up with a hand that, Elizabeth could not help noticing, was a little unsteady.
He set the sheet upon the table, uncapped the ink, and dipped the pen.
He was not long, and when he had finished, he made room for her.
Elizabeth sat for a moment with the pen poised above the paper, feeling singularly unequal to the task of being cheerful.
Her father would be in his library at Longbourn, she knew, with the windows fogged by the contrast between fire and frost, his book upon his knee, his mind distracted by nothing more alarming than the thinness of the newest volume’s argument.
He would see her handwriting, smile, and expect to be entertained.
She began with the weather and its consequences.
That was safe enough. The storm, the snow upon the roads, the necessary prudence of a change of route.
She told him that their journey proceeded tolerably though their equipage, timeline, and party had been altered, and that they had met with an incident upon the road that was already concluded to the satisfaction of all concerned.
She did not relate particulars—she was not certain what would be safe to write.
She glanced to where Mr. Darcy sat. He had declared, not half an hour ago, that he wished no more talk of princesses while she travelled under his protection.
He had stated the thing as a condition, a duty, almost a law.
He had not been unkind, but he had spoken in an absolute tone that allowed for no exceptions.
Elizabeth looked back at her page.
When at last she had filled the sheet with such cheerful reassurances as she could contrive, along with a separate note to Jane and a promise to write again when they reached London, she sprinkled sand upon the ink, then raised her head.
The words she owed Mr. Darcy—the simple ones, the obvious ones, the ones any lady might offer any gentleman who had stood between her and death—lay unspoken still.
Outside, in the yard, she heard the muffled bustle of men changing horses. Within, the small fire struggled on the hearth, sending up occasional sparks.
Elizabeth looked at Mr. Darcy’s sleeve, at his now-sealed letter on the table, at the doorway through which Mrs. Hobart would shortly come bustling with fresh complaints. She did not know how she was to thank him, or when, or what words might suffice. She knew only that silence would not do.
For the present, however, she sat and waited, her letter ready in her hand, her gratitude burning in her chest like a secret she could not yet bring herself to speak.