CHAPTER THREE #2
His words were so abrupt that she felt the ground give way beneath her. In that moment, the full weight of her new reality descended. She was leaving her home, her family, and all she had ever known for a life with a man who was little more than a powerful, forbidding stranger.
A sudden tide of fear rose up to engulf her as she realised she knew nothing of her new home. Desperate for some small detail to cling to, to ground herself with, she grasped for the first question that came to mind.
“Pemberley,” she said, “Pray, tell me something of Pemberley.”
He gave no immediate answer. Instead, though he did not move, he seemed to recede from her, drawing into himself until all that remained was a figure of impenetrable formality. When he finally spoke, his voice was as detached as his posture.
“It is considered a fine estate. The house is of stone, quite large, set in a park of some ten miles circumference. What more, specifically, do you wish to know?”
Her mouth filled with a metallic taste. Of course.
After a day spent listening to her mother’s raptures about his income, he heard her question as just another grasping enquiry.
He had mistaken her genuine fear for a mercenary curiosity, for a desire to learn about the quantity of rooms or the value of the chimney-pieces!
“That is quite sufficient, I thank you,” she said, a quiet challenge glinting in her eyes as she met his gaze.
Her words drew from him only a minute, deliberate movement as he reached up to give his cravat an unnecessary adjustment. The gesture was a calculated beat in which he composed his reply.
“I regret if my description failed to meet your expectations. However, the imperativeness of our situation allows little time for more descriptive flourishes. The carriage is being prepared for our departure.”
Elizabeth, who had been steeling herself for this pronouncement, felt a fresh surge of rebellion. It was the norm for a newly married couple to depart after the wedding breakfast, and yet…this was scarcely a normal marriage.
“You intend for us to depart now?” she said, “I would like some time to bid farewell to my family and my home.”
Mr Darcy made a small, irritable gesture with his hand, as if to sweep away the emotional atmosphere of their farewell. “I would have hoped the Lord Magister’s words would have impressed upon you the urgency of our mission.”
“They have impressed upon me a great many things, yes,” she answered, with a smile she did not feel. Impressed upon, indeed! They had quite literally impressed upon her a husband.
“Then you understand that every day wasted here in frivolous sentimentality is a day the Blight strengthens its hold.”
“One day for ‘frivolous sentimentality.’ A single day for a daughter, for a sister, to say her goodbyes to a family she may not see again. You will have all the days that follow.”
She aimed for a tone of a gentle jab, but the words emerged hollow and strained.
He stared at her, a long, appraising look, as if she were a particularly recalcitrant, unexpectedly vocal magical artefact he was forced to deal with. The air between them crackled with the uncomfortable thrum of their newly linked magic.
Elizabeth met his gaze defiantly, refusing to be intimidated by his disapproval. She might be bound to him by magical decree, but she would not be cowed into submission.
Finally, with a resigned sigh, he conceded. “Very well. As I see you are not to be moved on the point, we will depart tomorrow morning. I trust this will be sufficient, for it is all we can spare.”
He did not wait for a reply, for any acknowledgement of his begrudging concession, but turned sharply on his heel with a stiff bow and stalked from the room.
The moment the door slammed shut behind him, a sound that reverberated through the suddenly quiet house, Elizabeth sagged against the mantelpiece, her strength deserting her in a rush, leaving her trembling and weak-kneed.
So this was to be the nature of their union. Their first private exchange had been a brief and acrimonious skirmish. A fortuitous beginning, she thought, for two souls magically bound to save the realm when they could not even navigate a single conversation without incivility.
Jane, having no doubt sensed the argument, hurried into the drawing room, her face etched with concern.
“Oh, Lizzy,” Jane said, rushing to her side, “He is truly formidable. And so very stern.”
“He is the most determinedly disagreeable man I have ever had the misfortune to meet!” Elizabeth said, the tears of frustration she had been holding back finally pricking at her eyelids.
“He speaks to me as if I am an inconvenient piece of baggage he is forced to transport from one place to another!”
Jane gently smoothed her sister’s dishevelled hair. “Perhaps, Lizzy,” she ventured hopefully, “when you are working together against this terrible Blight, in time a true understanding, and perhaps even respect, may grow between you.”
“Understanding? Respect?” Elizabeth gave a pained laugh. “The only understanding we are ever likely to reach is a mutual agreement to occupy separate wings of Pemberley, communicating only through missives, if, indeed, we are forced to communicate at all!”
She sighed, a shuddering breath that seemed to draw all the remaining energy from her. Her spirit was giving way to despair. “One day. And then I am to be whisked away to his reassuringly quite large stone house!”
The afternoon was a flurry of heartfelt farewells. Elizabeth tried to memorise the soothing scent of Longbourn, the way the sunlight fell through the library window, the comforting presence of her family, knowing that everything was about to change.
The morning arrived all too soon. Mr Darcy’s travelling carriage, a massive, gleaming vehicle drawn by four matched horses, stood before Longbourn like an omen.
The farewells at the carriage door were predictably tearful on the part of Mrs Bennet (who, between sobs, was already enthusiastically planning her first extended visit to Pemberley, complete with detailed lists of what she intended to inspect and “improve”) and Lydia (who did her very best to extract promises for an invitation to London for the Season).
Jane hugged Elizabeth tightly, her eyes swimming with unshed tears, whispering words of love and encouragement.
Mr Bennet simply held his daughter’s hand for a long moment, his gaze conveying a wealth of love.
Mr Darcy stood by the open carriage door, his impatient figure an unwelcome intrusion on the family’s private grief.
He assisted Elizabeth into the opulent interior with an impersonal gloved touch.
The moment she was inside, the sounds of her family’s poignant farewells were muffled, replaced by the suffocating, luxurious quiet of her gilded cage.
As the carriage pulled away from Longbourn with a powerful surge of motion, Elizabeth did not look back. She could not bear to. She stared out of the window at the familiar Hertfordshire landscape blurring past, a hard, painful lump in her throat.
The journey to Pemberley, and to whatever unknown trials and tribulations lay ahead, had begun. And it promised to be a very long and very frosty ride.