Chapter 6
SIX
The ladies were made comfortable above stairs, where they washed away their road dust, and Maria, her tears.
Miss Darcy’s maid finished rearranging their hair just in time for them to all be summoned below stairs.
The maid followed them down in some confusion at these instructions until Miss Darcy gave her a few quiet words in an aside.
As they arranged their bonnets and pelisses in the vestibule, Elizabeth struggled with the awkwardness of this attempt at propriety, even as the maid’s bemusement transformed into overtly curious glances.
For his part, Mr Darcy was the picture of proper decorum. He gave instructions to his driver, handed the ladies into his gleaming coach, and stepped into the cabin with great care for all their skirts.
Elizabeth saw Miss Darcy hide a smile as she took in her brother’s reaction to their seating arrangements, and suddenly understood his surprise at how neatly Miss Darcy had managed to place herself in the seat between Maria and her lady’s maid, leaving Mr Darcy to join Elizabeth where she sat, alone, on the facing seat.
Torn between consternation and admiration for her hostess’s slyness, Elizabeth gave herself the gift of space and time by shifting unobtrusively towards the window. Mr Darcy’s considerable frame settled onto the far end of their shared seat with similar care.
With a tap on the roof from Mr Darcy, the team surged forward.
Maria, seemingly emboldened by the lavish comfort of the carriage, leant a little out the window to better take in the grand sights near Grosvenor Square and quizzed Miss Darcy on her knowledge of the families in residence along the edges of the green.
“I know that one well,” said Miss Darcy, her dainty gloves pointing rather emphatically, if impolitely, at one of the grandest of the houses. “That one belongs to the Earl of Derby, built for his father, Sir Edward Stanley. My brother told me Sir Edward fought the Jacobites in the rebellion.”
Elizabeth turned to look. “He sounds quite fearsome,” she commented. “I imagine there are many great personages’ homes here, each with stories representing valuable history.”
“My father told me a great many stories,” agreed Mr Darcy, his voice carrying with that tender, soft tone that made Elizabeth think fondly of the Darcy she had spoken to less than an hour ago in the study.
“I have often wished for more Sunday drives with my sister so that I may tell her all the tales I know. I have been sadly neglectful.”
“But you have already told me so many!” Miss Darcy protested warmly. “You must not fault yourself. I simply cannot remember them all.”
As they made their way towards Charing Cross, the coach slowed.
Miss Lucas sat forward to exclaim over the Mews, enjoining Miss Darcy to look out the window and admire the guards and the horses as they slowly drove through the busy streets.
This was not a side of London that Elizabeth often saw, so she took in her view as well.
They did not linger. The carriage jostled steadily along towards the Thames as their driver navigated through throngs of workmen and merchants towards the heart of the old City.
As the carriage rocked over the rutted streets, Elizabeth’s attention, once so fixed outside the carriage by the sights and doings without, now withdrew into the cabin.
Mr Darcy had begun their journey situated rigidly on his own side of the seat.
But now the solid weight of him had naturally pulled towards the centre as the road roughened, closer now to Elizabeth than before.
Close enough that the air between them seemed suddenly a shared space, filtered through the straw of her bonnet into her own breath, tasting to her senses somehow redolent of him.
She could feel the downward drag of the cushion whenever his body adjusted to some new obstacle under their wheels, could even feel the way her own figure jostled in time to the same.
With all her senses bound to this narrow world of the carriage seat, she found ample opportunity for the reflection the day’s events had made so necessary.
She had not entered his home that day expecting to see him again; she had even less expectation of his sudden defence of her in the face of his aunt’s ire.
Nor had she anticipated his apology, or such a fervency of feeling in response.
Try as she might to remind herself of all the reasons she had once cherished to maintain her dislike of him, she found that in the face of his earnestness with her, they all seemed very feeble.
And when her natural sense of justice asserted itself to demand she extend charity to him, those reasons lost all influence completely.
Once she gave herself leave to absolve him where she could, and to endeavour to understand him where she could not, she found it easy to grant herself further liberties: To appreciate his good qualities.
To even admire him. As she turned her eyes beyond the rim of her bonnet to glance at him, only to find him regarding her in that same spirit of fascination, she realised her danger.
“You seem unsettled, Miss Elizabeth,” he said cautiously, his tone guarded so as not to raise notice among the young ladies cheerfully chatting away in the seat facing them.
She could prevaricate, but such disguise seemed in every way abhorrent after the quarter-hour’s honesty they had shared in his study.
She was endeavouring to master her own feelings, and until they were ordered again and properly understood, she feared others detecting them, feared what they meant, feared whether they were untrustworthy.
She did not yet know how to put them into words.
But she realised that he at least, proved in his circumspection and loyal defence of her, was as trustworthy a confessor as any.
She turned towards him bodily, closing enough distance that when they were next jostled by the carriage as it rolled up from the dirt onto cobbled streets, her angled knees brushed his. She decided to confront the most pressing concern facing her arrival at Gracechurch Street.
“My aunt is a shrewd woman,” Elizabeth said softly. “I wonder, what she will make of Maria and me coming back in a gentleman’s carriage, with nothing but our hats to stand up in, with your servants coming after us with our trunks? She will undoubtedly begin to speculate.”
“Are we to meet with yet another officious aunt? I had not imagined yours would be so fearsome as mine, or that you should be made afraid of any other creature today,” he answered with amused concern.
“Oh, no! I must not have you think my aunt overbearing. Mrs Gardiner is the soul of discretion, and rather than an object of dread, she is one of my admiration and regard. I should hate to cause her disappointment or doubt. That is all I fear.”
He nodded, and the tension left his face.
He was relieved—relieved for her sake. “Let us hope then, that her own affection for you will protect her from her worst assumptions. If she is as shrewd as you say, then she knows well your character. She will come to the right conclusion, and your arrival will look exactly as it ought.”
Elizabeth suppressed a smile. “I am glad to see your faith in aunts so restored, sir. But there is no way to represent today’s events to her without relating too much of our history in the misunderstandings that have led us here.
I am hesitant to divulge it all, for it is not entirely my story to tell. ”
This was a new consideration: she feared the loss of his own privacy as much as hers, evincing a value for him and his cares that she had not recognised in herself before, but perhaps, had held closely ever since receiving his letter in secret.
He was looking at her with a keen interest, as if he recognised it too.
“Tell her what you feel you must. I see nothing to cast shame on you in any part, nor do I feel the need to conceal what has already earned your forgiveness. As for our present circumstance, it will all look as it ought, as I have said.”
“As it ‘ought’?” she repeated. “I do not know how that can be rightly represented.”
“It will look as if you were protected on your journey home by a gentleman,” he said plainly.
“As if your safe return were important to me—important enough that I see you comfortably situated again. As if my attachment to you and your well-being weighed more in my consideration than any other appearance of decorum.”
“Oh.” She did not know where to look, but she felt him looking at her as openly as he had in the study, where such a gaze had worked on her heart to build trust between them both.
Now, that look held more than just sincerity.
It held a tenderness that was almost too much to bear.
Feeling more shaken than she wished to reveal, she looked down at her left hand where her gloved fingers pressed fretfully into the seat cushion between them.
His hand came down over hers, covering her knuckles warmly, then threading between her digits softly, calming her. “It will look as though I loved you, Elizabeth. And that is the reality.”
The first time he had claimed to admire and love her, such avowals had given her nothing but doubt and disgust. Now, as she sat next to him in silent surprise, she examined her feelings for any resemblance to that suspicion and distaste, or to anything of her former, ill-formed dislike.
She found nothing of the old remnants. But there were new feelings aplenty, rushing onto her, over her, gaining speed like her heart, rolling like the carriage wheels under the floorboards, like thunder before a storm, sweeping her heedlessly, helplessly along.
Their progression came so quickly that she had no names to give such sensations, and could only submit to the fullness of the exhilaration they gave.
She turned her palm upward under his, latching on tightly, mindlessly seeking that stillness so particular to him as her anchor. She took a quick breath and exhaled as soon as she felt him respond, clasping her grip with warm encouragement.
It felt like coming inside out of the wind.
And quite naturally following this sensation came a beckoning craving for closeness and warmth, as would draw a weary traveller to the fireplace.
In her body as much as in her mind, this strange, acute longing grew, this need to be wrapped up in him for comfort, for relief.
Situated as they were in the company of the young girls and Miss Darcy’s maid, there was no possible way to act upon this impulse. But as she let her fingers linger and twine with his, it grew ever more impossible to ignore.
She raised her gaze from their joined hands, no doubt giving him the wonder and wildness in her look. He read her expression at first with his own wide-eyed astonishment, then he smiled—such a smile—as if what he saw in her, as if she herself, were all his happiness.
“So soon?” he asked, in incredulous delight.
“It is sudden,” she admitted in a small voice. “It is like all the decisions of my life were all wrapped into one moment. I did not trust myself to answer you at first—forgive me. Now I feel it so acutely—but—but we cannot speak of it here—”
It was painful, so painful to let go of his hand, but her doing so as a precaution against the awareness of their companions was almost immediately proved correct. The carriage slowed, and Maria turned to them with an enquiry as to their approach to their destination.