CHAPTER 40 #3
If Mr. Darcy suspected inquiry, he did not accuse her directly. He only looked at her once over his teacup with an expression which suggested that he knew himself under examination and had not yet discovered the charge.
Elizabeth returned a look of perfect innocence.
This did not deceive him, but it pleased her.
They did not speak much of the rooms, because he did not know of them.
They did not speak much of yesterday, because Mrs. Doddridge existed.
Before he left, they settled Monday without ceremony.
Mr. Darcy would call after breakfast; they would go first to Mr. Hartwood, then to Mr. Beaker; and Elizabeth privately suspected that by noon her engagement would possess enough paper to satisfy every cautious man in London.
There was comfort in this.
There was also impatience.
Mr. Darcy had come to escort her to church.
He had taken tea. He had behaved with almost oppressive correctness.
He had sat in her drawing room, grave and watchful, answering ordinary questions while both of them were obliged to remember that ordinary questions were no longer the chief business between them.
By the time he rose to leave, Elizabeth was prepared to acknowledge that propriety had its uses, while privately doubting whether it had ever made anyone particularly happy.
Mrs. Doddridge had gone to speak to James about the carriage for Monday, or perhaps to give the room the precise amount of absence which proved her a genius of respectability.
Elizabeth did not inquire too closely. Mr. Darcy stood near the door, his hat and gloves in one hand, and looked for a moment as though he had left part of his self-command in the church pew and did not know how to retrieve it.
"You are very composed," Elizabeth said, "for a gentleman who is to be examined by my men of business tomorrow."
"I have faced worse tribunals."
The answer was lightly given, but not light enough.
Elizabeth's fingers tightened once around his.
"Then this one shall be kinder."
His eyes moved to her hand.
"That is not an inducement to composure."
"No," said Elizabeth. "I begin to see that very few things are."
She thought he meant to kiss her hand.
That was plainly the intention with which he took it. It was a proper intention, a grateful intention, an intention which would have done credit to any gentleman leaving his betrothed after Sunday tea.
Mr. Darcy's intentions, Elizabeth was beginning to learn, were not always equal to Mr. Darcy's permissions.
He bent over her hand, paused, and then, with a loss of restraint too brief to be called ruinous and too decided to be called accidental, kissed her mouth instead.
It was not long.
It was not improper enough to satisfy scandal, had scandal been present to take notes.
It was also not the act of a man who had forgotten yesterday.
When he drew back, Elizabeth found that she had no immediate wish to complain.
Mr. Darcy appeared to expect that she might. His hand still held hers, but with such care that she understood he was already preparing to release it if she gave the least sign of displeasure.
That, she found, she could not permit.
"Mr. Darcy," she said.
"Forgive me."
"I have not yet accused you."
His breath left him too quietly to be called a sigh.
"No."
"Though I begin to perceive that permission has a remarkable effect upon your restraint."
His eyes met hers.
"Yes," he said.
There was no jest in it.
Elizabeth, who had intended to answer lightly, found herself instead turning her hand beneath his and brushing her thumb once across his knuckles.
The change in him was slight. Anyone else might have missed it. Elizabeth did not. His shoulders lowered by the smallest degree; his hand settled around hers less like a question and more like a belief.
She lifted her free hand and touched, very lightly, the side of his face.
It was not a kiss. It was not even, perhaps, an answer.
But Mr. Darcy closed his eyes for the briefest instant, and she understood that he had received it as one.
There are comforts which a person may require before he knows how to ask for them. Elizabeth had spent much of her life discovering this in relation to fires, meals, rooms, and badly governed households. It was disconcerting to discover that the same principle might apply to a gentleman's cheek.
His eyes opened.
"Tomorrow," she said, because if she did not say something sensible, she was in some danger of doing something less so.
"Hartwood and Beaker."
"After breakfast."
"I shall call for you."
"Yes."
Her thumb moved once more over his hand before she released him.
"You see," she said, "we are still capable of order."
"Barely," said Mr. Darcy.
This was so nearly a confession that Elizabeth had the satisfaction of carrying it with her long after he had gone.
By Sunday evening, Mr. Darcy had no notion that his future rooms had already been measured, judged, condemned, improved, and nearly furnished in Elizabeth's mind.
Elizabeth had learned that he could behave with admirable propriety before witnesses and with much less reliable restraint when they were gone.
It was perhaps as well that each of them possessed a secret.
One of them must be permitted the advantage.