6. A Breakfast of Questions
CHAPTER SIX
A brEAKFAST OF QUESTIONS
Pemberley, it seemed, had overnight declared itself the theater of a grand romance, impervious to any inconvenient truths that might challenge its narrative.
While Clarice seemed immune to any speculations—romantic or otherwise—dressing Elizabeth with her usual staid efficiency, everyone else, from that round-faced housemaid who delivered the salve and bandages to the footmen’s furtive studying of their shoes to Mrs. Reynolds’s knowing smile, gave Elizabeth the distinct impression that she was a new bride too precious and recently loved to be gazed upon directly.
Her cheeks burned with the heat of their suppositions, though the only part of her that truly throbbed was her bandaged thumb.
Clarice alone knew she had passed the night in splendid isolation, the connecting door to her husband’s chamber firmly shut.
As Clarice was new to the household and as close-lipped as a locked jewel box, the romantic fervor below stairs had swelled to the ceaseless, maddening hum of a hive convinced it was time to swarm.
Unwilling to rob the household of its pleasurable belief in her wedded bliss, Elizabeth made her way to the breakfast room wearing a smile calculated to suggest mysteries she did not possess.
Darcy awaited her, rising immediately as she entered.
She hadn’t expected this small courtesy, especially since he cleared his throat and appeared uncertain of what to do with himself, having risen.
He wore his riding coat, and the table was set for three—the newlyweds and their sister, Georgiana, a picture of familial harmony for the benefit of any who might be watching.
“Good morning, Mr. Darcy.” She managed a small curtsy.
“Mrs. Darcy.” He pulled out her chair, which brought him close enough that she caught the scent of bay and fresh air—he had already been out riding—and his hands retreated to his sides the moment the chair was settled.
She seated herself, arranged her napkin with care, and privately relished the absurdity that, after four days of enforced proximity in a carriage, she and Darcy now required the full armor of breakfast ceremony to sit together—an elaborate performance for the benefit of the household’s preferred fictions.
A footman appeared to pour her chocolate, performing the task with the solemnity of a man decanting communion wine, and when a single drop landed on the saucer, the young man’s face achieved a shade of mortification so vivid that Elizabeth feared he might fling himself upon the rug and beg forgiveness.
“Thank you,” she said, kindly, and the footman bowed himself backward with the caution of a man retreating from a loaded cannon.
Darcy watched this small drama in silence, though Elizabeth caught the brief tap of his fingers against the table.
“You are dressed for riding,” she said, “have you much business this morning?”
“I had a letter this morning. The physician, Mr. Abernathy, has taken the commission and will call upon your father within the week.”
She had known this was part of the arrangement, but hearing it spoken as a settled fact was another matter altogether, and she found herself obliged to swallow past a sudden tightness in her throat.
“That is… thank you, Mr. Darcy. I shall write to my mother and sister today so they may expect him. Has the post come in this morning? I half suspect Jane will have written before I was out of the county.”
Darcy addressed the footman. “Jamison, has the post come?”
“It has, sir. There is a letter for Mrs. Darcy.” He produced it from the salver by the door, and Elizabeth’s heart seized at the familiar hand: Jane’s, unmistakably, the neat round script that had never once failed to arrive when promised.
She accepted the letter, turned it over in her hands, but left the seal unbroken. It would hardly do for a bride to appear weary of her husband’s company so soon as to seek solace in her correspondence before breakfast was done.
Darcy noticed, as was his custom, his attentiveness as habitual as the first disapproving glance he had ever bestowed upon her in Meryton.
Although since their marriage, Elizabeth had observed a certain softening in his scrutiny, and she could not help but feel the warmth of his care in the bandaging of her thumb—though, if the servants were to be believed, he extended equal solicitude to any horse with a limp.
“You may read it,” he said. “I do not require entertainment at breakfast.”
“You are very kind, but I shall save it. Anticipation improves even Jane’s letters, which are already so good-natured they read as though the entire world has been scrubbed clean and set in the sun to dry.
” She tucked it beside her plate, where she could see it and be tortured at her leisure.
“Besides, if I read it now, I shall cry, and Mrs. Reynolds will think you have said something dreadful.”
He looked as though he wished to say more, but the arrival of a boiled egg, presented by Jamison with the reverence due to a relic, intervened.
“How is your hand?” he asked, once the footman had achieved sufficient distance.
She held up the thumb, neatly wrapped in Clarice’s fresh linen. “Improved. The swelling has subsided, and I do not believe I shall require amputation before luncheon.”
“You might have sent word if it troubled you in the night.”
“By what means? A carrier pigeon through the connecting door? I assure you, Mr. Darcy, I slept quite soundly.” This was not true, but the lie was a kindness, and she dispensed it without any attendant nagging of guilt.
He accepted it with a nod that suggested he did not believe her but would not press the point.
They ate in a silence that was not, Elizabeth decided, uncomfortable—merely unfinished.
The toast was excellent; the chocolate was better than anything she had tasted outside of her Aunt Gardiner’s table, and a clock struck nine.
Whereupon, the door swung wide, and Georgiana entered at a velocity that suggested she had been running and had slowed to a walk only at the final threshold—a deception undermined by the flush on her cheeks and the strand of dark hair that had escaped her pins and hung over one ear.
Behind her, Elizabeth caught a glimpse of the housemaid, pink and breathless, peering around the doorframe.
She caught Elizabeth’s eye, gave a desperate little bob, and vanished.
“You are both here,” Georgiana announced, as though their presence at their own breakfast table were a stroke of astonishing good fortune.
She kissed Darcy’s cheek in passing and fixed Elizabeth with an assessing gaze surprisingly similar to Darcy’s perpetual accounting of her all through her stay at Netherfield.
“Mrs. Darcy. How is your poor hand? Hannah told me everything.”
“Did she,” said Darcy.
“She could hardly help it; she was there. She held the basin while you were on your knees, binding Elizabeth’s hand with your own handkerchief, and she says you were—her words, Brother—the most gentle she has ever seen you with anything that was not a horse.”
“I was applying salve, Georgiana. It merely required a steady hand.”
“But Hannah says—”
“I am beginning to form a policy regarding what Hannah says.”
Elizabeth decided to rescue both the conversation and Hannah’s employment before Darcy could formulate the policy in question.
“Your brother was very kind, Miss Darcy. The bite is healing nicely, and I bear Thomas no ill will. He was frightened, I was a stranger, and small creatures bite when they are frightened. I have a cat at Longbourn who does the same, though she has the grace to look sorry afterward.”
Georgiana accepted this with a nod and helped herself to a toast with the air of a young girl not at all ready to subside.
“I have been thinking,” she said.
“A dangerous occupation,” said Darcy.
“I have been thinking,” Georgiana repeated, undeterred, “about how very little I know of your courtship, and how very unfair it is that George should write me the most tantalizing account of Fitzwilliam’s secret love—those were his very words—and that I should then be expected to sit across from both of you and ask nothing. ”
“You were expected to do precisely that,” Darcy said. “You appear to have decided otherwise.”
“Tell me how it began. I must know, or I shall invent something far worse.”
Elizabeth looked across at Darcy. The tips of his ears had begun their treacherous ascent toward red, and she knew—because she had watched him in this state before at Hertfordshire, when her mother had been at her most effusive—that he would rather face a charging bull than answer his sister’s question.
She took pity on him. Or what looked like pity.
“You must not tease your brother for what he will not say,” Elizabeth said, reaching for her chocolate with her good hand. “You will embarrass him to no purpose. He is a man who does rather than speaks, and you must learn to read the former.”
“Then you tell me.”
“Very well. Your brother and I first met at an assembly in Hertfordshire. He stood against the wall for most of the evening and regarded everyone as though they had arrived uninvited to their own party. He was persuaded to dance with me—persuaded, Miss Darcy, I emphasize—and we managed two dances and perhaps eight sentences, four of which were mine, three about the weather, and one unaccounted for.”
It was, strictly speaking, a fabrication, for he had in fact refused to dance with her at all.
But she chose to count the dance he had later requested, which she had declined, as well as the actual, awkward, nearly speechless set at the Netherfield ball.
It was, she decided, a charitable embellishment for his sister’s sake, not the rank lie that it was.
“Two dances at the first meeting.” Georgiana’s mouth fell open wide. “But Brother knows that is highly improper. Two dances practically declared himself.”
Darcy set down his knife. “It was Hertfordshire, Georgiana. The customs are less formal.”