CHAPTER 26
The Privilege of Being Expected
January met him at the door.
Darcy felt the cold through his winter coat as he descended the steps of Portman Square.
The square was dark already, the lamps burning dimly through damp air, the sound of carriage wheels reaching him before the carriage itself.
A horse tossed its head at the corner, breath pale in the blackness, and the iron railings shone faintly where the mist had settled upon them.
The taste of chocolate still lingered.
It ought not to have mattered. Miss Bennet had ordered fresh tea because he had arrived at a useful hour, sandwiches because Portman Square took its duties seriously, seed cake because the house was constitutionally incapable of offering tea without reinforcement, and chocolate biscuits because—
Darcy drew on his gloves more firmly.
Because he had, apparently, deserved them.
A gentleman in his circumstances ought to know the difference between preference and a biscuit.
He had been given no declaration, no promise, no partiality which could honourably be interpreted beyond its terms. Miss Bennet had been relieved to see him because Mrs. Westbrook and her nephew had been tiresome, because business was preferable to being arranged, and because he had behaved, as she had said, with admirable restraint.
It was household civility. Portman Square expressed distinctions in food, fire, chairs, timing, and a hundred small arrangements by which comfort became almost law.
A man might be placed nearer the hearth because he was damp, given a better cup because he was tired, fed because the house disapproved of hunger, and rewarded with chocolate because he had not made a fool of himself before unpleasant company.
None of this made the distinction personal.
Darcy knew that.
He walked on.
Behind him, Portman Square remained lit in measured squares of yellow, each window suggesting warmth, order, occupation.
He had been in that warmth not twenty minutes before.
Mrs. Doddridge had resumed her sewing by the window; Pom-Pom had sighed near the hearth with the air of a creature who had survived society and found it wanting; Miss Bennet, in her brown wool gown, had leaned over the papers as if a disputed awning were the natural restoration of her spirits.
Excellent, she had said. I am restored.
He had almost smiled then. Worse, he had wanted to.
He had wanted to remain exactly where he was, opposite her, with the chocolate biscuits between his hand and the papers, while the rest of London took care of itself.
He had wanted the absurd privilege of being expected, the still greater privilege of being useful, and the most dangerous privilege of all: being admitted after unwelcome company had gone and the room had returned to sense.
That was not a claim. It was not even a hope, properly examined.
It was only a place.
Darcy crossed to the quieter side of the street, where the lamps stood farther apart and the wheels of passing carriages threw up a damp shine from the road.
London pressed around him in its usual indifference: footmen hurrying with covered parcels, shopmen fastening shutters, a maid with a basket moving quickly under the protection of her shawl, two gentlemen laughing too loudly as they turned toward Oxford Street.
All of it was ordinary. All of it went on without regard for a man who had eaten three chocolate biscuits and found them perilous.
He should have been thinking of Wickham. Of Richard’s warning. Of the old stories still moving under polished roofs. Of every prudent reason why he must not allow Miss Bennet’s name to be bound too closely to his.
Instead he thought of her becoming happy.
Not happy in any careless, easy sense. Miss Bennet was not made for ease in the manner of women who received life as a well-cushioned chair and complained only when the upholstery displeased them.
Her happiness, if it came, would have work in it, and decision, and the rearranging of rooms, servants, papers, meals, relations, dogs, and every habit that had outlived its owner.
But it was coming.
He had seen the signs, though he knew very few particulars.
He did not know where she had been invited, who had lately called, or how many well-meaning people now thought themselves entitled to arrange her happiness.
He knew only what he had seen: rooms no longer shut against visitors, a household more alive than when he had first crossed its threshold, and a young man seated too complacently near her tea table.
He had seen Miss Bennet’s relief when business entered the room.
And he had seen, too, that relief could not be permitted to become imprisonment.
She was not meant to be hidden among leases because society was tedious.
She was young, clever, wealthy, handsome, affectionate where she chose to be, and capable of making even a room full of awkward civility feel charged with intelligence merely by refusing to be conquered by it.
Other people would see it.
Some had already begun.
Darcy was glad of it.
He was not so contemptible as to wish her world narrowed again merely because grief had once made room for him.
Every opened room, every call accepted, every note answered, every invitation endured, was proof that Miss Bennet was returning to herself.
If she laughed more often, if she played again, if she permitted old friends and new acquaintances to draw chairs near her, then the world was doing what it ought to do.
It was giving back what mourning had suspended.
He wanted to see it.
That was the intolerable part.
He did not resent her happiness. He wanted to be near enough to witness it; worse, to have some acknowledged place in it.
He wanted to hear the music she had begun to play again, to see whether a new arrangement of a room pleased her, to know whether absurd company amused or exhausted her, to be present when she laughed after the door had closed.
He wanted, in short, what he had no right to want: not to possess her solitude, but to be admitted to her joy.
And because honour, prudence, fear, and perhaps cowardice had all worn the same respectable coat, he had called restraint by every honourable name available to him.
Some of them might even be true.
By the time Darcy reached his rooms, the cold had entered his hands despite his gloves.
Mrs. Naylor’s maid admitted him with a curtsey and a glance at the clock which was too discreet to be reproachful.
A small fire had been kept in his sitting room; the coals glowed low, and the grate gave off that degree of heat which was respectable without being generous.
His rooms were clean, quiet, and properly arranged. Nothing in them invited complaint.
They were not Portman Square.
Darcy gave his hat and greatcoat into the maid’s hands, dismissed the offer of more coal, and entered the sitting room alone.
The papers lay open upon the table, dutiful, dry, and in no way deserving of his present irritation. Darcy looked at them with every intention of becoming useful.
The awning, mercifully, required nothing from his heart.
He sat, took up the uppermost sheet, and read the first line. Then he read it again. On the third attempt, he discovered that the tenant’s assertion of custom had somehow acquired Mr. Clark’s hair, Mrs. Westbrook’s satisfaction, and Miss Bennet’s voice saying, You are expected.
Darcy laid the paper down.
There was no sense in it. He had work enough to occupy any reasonable man. A man who had rebuilt his life upon usefulness had no business resenting the fact that usefulness remained available.
He reached for the paper again.
A knock sounded below.
Darcy’s hand stilled.
It was too late for business, too deliberate for accident, and too late in the evening for any man to come honestly who had not been invited.
A few moments passed before footsteps approached. The maid appeared, looking uncertain in the doorway.
“Mr. Wickham, sir.”
For one moment Darcy considered refusing him. There was no obligation upon him. There was certainly no friendship. But refusal would tell Wickham too plainly that the visit had found its mark.
“Show him in.”
He rose before Wickham entered.
Wickham came in smiling, well dressed, and at his ease, as if he had never been forbidden any house in which Darcy had a right to stand.
“Darcy,” he said. “You are difficult to find.”
“I did not know you were looking.”
“Only lately. I heard you were much occupied.”
Darcy said nothing.
Wickham glanced at the papers on the table. “So it is true. You have become industrious.”
“I was not aware idleness had ever been recommended to me.”
“No. But after everything—” Wickham let the words rest there, light and poisonous. “One is glad to see a man useful.”
Darcy did not answer at once. Wickham wanted anger. Anger would give him shape, perhaps even a name.
“What do you want?”
“To call upon an old acquaintance.”
“You have done so.”
Wickham smiled. “And to satisfy a little curiosity. London has begun to speak of you again.”
“London is easily bored.”
“Not when there is a lady involved.”
Darcy’s face did not change.
Wickham saw the effort it cost him and was pleased by it.
“I know very little,” he said, almost kindly. “A house. A fortune, perhaps. A young lady with more independence than is usual. You, admitted often enough to be noticed, and then suddenly all is business, papers, leases, propriety. It has a very respectable sound.”
Darcy’s hand closed behind his back.
“If you came for information, you have wasted your evening.”
“Not entirely. Silence is information, with old friends.”
“We are not old friends.”
“No,” said Wickham. “But we are old enough for one another.”
There it was: the old claim of Pemberley nearness, dragged in like evidence. Fields, stables, boyhood errands, the remembered generosity of a house that had made dependence look almost like intimacy whenever Wickham found intimacy useful.
Darcy moved toward the bell.