Chapter Eight #2
“I researched them extensively,” Darcy replied, pleased to explain his reasoning. “The noise cancellation is supposed to be exceptional. You’ll be able to work in complete silence, without any distractions whatsoever.”
“Complete silence,” Elizabeth repeated, holding the earphones in her hands. “Excellent.”
“I know how much the noise bothers you,” he pressed on, warming to his theme. “Just last week you mentioned having to escape to the library to find peace and quiet. With these, you could have that same tranquillity anywhere.”
Elizabeth put them over her ears for a moment and then removed them. She nodded slowly. Smiled. “Thank you.” She leaned over to place a kiss on his lips, and he felt a good deal of relief.
They spent the late morning walking through Pemberley’s grounds, with Waffles charging ahead to investigate every interesting smell while Athena trotted along beside them.
Elizabeth seemed cheerful, exclaiming over the frost-covered gardens and asking about the history of various buildings, making him laugh with stories about her family’s Christmas traditions.
“Darcy?” Elizabeth’s voice cut through his brooding. “You’ve gone very quiet. Is everything all right?”
They were sitting on a bench overlooking the lake, watching Waffles try to make friends with a wildly unimpressed family of ducks. Athena lay at their feet, occasionally lifting her head to watch Waffles.
“Just thinking.”
“Dangerous pastime,” Elizabeth said, her eyes searching his face with a perceptive attention that always made him feel a bit transparent.
There was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, a subtle shift in the atmosphere between them since the present exchange. Elizabeth was smiling, but there was a caution to her responses that hadn’t been there earlier.
“Tell me about your family’s Christmas traditions,” he said, watching Waffles, who had decided the ducks were beneath his notice and was now parading about with what he appeared to regard as the best stick he had ever found. He took it over to Athena, who was less impressed.
Elizabeth shrugged. “Oh, the usual. Mum starts planning Christmas dinner in October and then panics every year that she’s forgotten something crucial.
Dad disappears into his study with a bottle of whisky and appears only for meals and to offer unhelpful commentary.
Jane tries to mediate everyone’s various neuroses, Mary drags us all to midnight mass, and Lydia and Kitty have a tradition of wrapping their presents approximately ten minutes before they’re due to be opened. ”
“And you?” Darcy asked, genuinely curious. In all their conversations about family, Elizabeth rarely talked about her own role in the Bennet dynamics.
“I regularly end up as Mum’s errand girl and Dad’s audience,” Elizabeth smiled. “And I make the Christmas pudding, because I’m the only one other than my mother and Jane who can be trusted not to set the kitchen on fire.”
Darcy tried to picture Elizabeth in her parents’ kitchen, making a Christmas pudding. The image was domestic and warm, unlike the formal Christmas celebrations of his childhood.
“What about you?” Elizabeth asked. “What was Christmas like growing up here?”
Darcy glanced back toward the house, its elegant facade looking rather austere in the grey December light. “Quite different from yours, I suspect. Very proper. Very . . . organised.”
“Sounds a little lonely,” Elizabeth said, and something in her tone made him look at her closely.
She was watching him with that expression she sometimes wore, as though she was seeing something in him that he wasn’t sure he wanted seen. It wasn’t pity, but there was an understanding there that made him feel exposed.
“It wasn’t lonely,” though even as he said it, he wondered if that was true. “Just formal.”
“Hmm.”
That was a sound Elizabeth made when she had opinions she wasn’t sharing.
“Georgie’s been anticipating having you here with us. Christmas morning will certainly involve more of her activities.”
His sister was nearly twelve years younger, and her Christmas memories were quite different from his own.
Though he remained close with his Fitzwilliam cousins, the holidays spent with his mother’s titled relations had ceased after her death, and both he and his father had been determined that Georgiana should never feel the absence.
Creating new traditions for her had given them both something to focus on during those difficult years.
They sat in comfortable silence for several more minutes, watching Waffles’s continued investigations. Athena had decided the golden retriever was someone else’s responsibility and was sitting in a patch of winter sunlight.
They took the path that skirted the ha-ha and curved towards the dark yews.
When he was twelve, his father had brought him out early on mornings like this.
No fuss, coats fastened, a gloved hand light on his shoulder to turn him towards some small thing worth noticing.
Once, just here, two hares had boxed in the pale light, comically ceremonious.
His father’s laugh—never loud, always unguarded—seemed to live still in this corner of the grounds.
He told Elizabeth the hare story. She smiled as if he had handed her something worth keeping. Waffles pelted ahead, declaring every stick a triumph; Athena kept faithful pace at his side, as though she remembered the route with him.
Elizabeth’s scarf sat warm against his throat. He thought of the headphones tucked away, a neat promise of quiet for her small flat, and felt an uncomplicated steadiness about it all.
The house looked less austere from here, its long windows catching a wintry glint.
After his father died, Pemberley had been orderly but echoing.
With Elizabeth beside him, pointing out the feathering of frost on a leaf and asking about the folly as if the answer mattered, the place felt a little lighter, sort of .
. . shared. A memory, for once, that did not have to be shouldered alone.