CHAPTER 49 #4
“A wise precaution.”
He opened it carefully.
Inside lay a seal, small, gold-mounted, and cut with a laurel. The stone was dark and polished; the work fine without display. He turned it once in his hand, and the little cut leaves caught the light.
“For The Laurels,” said Elizabeth, before he could ask.
“And for letters?”
“For your letters. For any papers you will insist upon making respectable.” She looked down, briefly, at his hand. “I mean you to have things here that are yours.”
He closed his fingers around the seal.
For a moment he could not answer.
It was not the value of the thing. It was not even the thought, though the thought itself would have been enough.
It was the quiet certainty with which she placed him into rooms, papers, journeys, letters, future days.
She had not waited for him to ask where he might belong.
She had made space and then given him the evidence in gold and stone.
“Then I shall use it,” he said.
“I hoped you might.”
He raised her hand and kissed it.
This, too, required no invention now. No explanation. No drawing back because a companion sat near, because a servant might enter, because the room had not given them permission. Marriage had not made him careless. It had only removed some of the cruellest absurdities from care.
Elizabeth watched him over their joined hands.
“Fitzwilliam.”
He looked up.
She smiled a little. “You may kiss me properly, if you like. I believe the paperwork is sufficient.”
A laugh escaped him before he could master it. “Mrs. Darcy, I am shocked by your confidence in legal instruments.”
“I have excellent advisers.”
“So I have discovered.”
He kissed her then, carefully at first, because months of restraint could not be dismissed merely because the law had altered in the space of a morning.
His hand held hers; her ring pressed lightly against his fingers; her shoulder was near enough that he could feel the warmth of her through silk and wool.
Then she answered him.
Not shyly. Not as farewell. As his wife.
The knowledge went through him with such force that he almost drew back from the shock of it. Instead he held still, let himself believe it, and kissed her again with all the tenderness he had been hoarding under the name of propriety.
When he drew back, the road had changed without his noticing. Fields opened beyond the window. The sunlight lay wider over them.
Elizabeth’s colour was high. One curl had escaped near her temple.
He looked at it with such helpless attention that she touched it herself.
“Already?”
“It has conducted itself with admirable restraint until now.”
“That is more than may be said for either of us.”
“I disagree,” said Darcy. “I have been a model of restraint.”
“Have you?”
“Under severe conditions.”
She laughed again and leaned, just a little, against his shoulder.
He became very still.
Then, because she did not move away, he permitted himself to settle beside her.
The road to Surrey proved better than expected in some places and familiarly English in others.
The carriage lurched twice; Elizabeth declared the second lurch personal; Darcy promised to have the road brought before Hartwood; she said Beaker would first require an account of its expenses.
He discovered that a journey with one’s wife beside one was shorter than geography allowed and longer than patience preferred, because every mile delayed arrival and yet every mile contained her hand in his.
By late afternoon, the sun had lowered but not failed. The light had gone gold along the hedges. Trees stood with the first green smoke of leaves about them. The air beyond the carriage window seemed cleaner, damp with fields rather than London stone.
At last the carriage turned between laurels.
The house stood back from the road, modest, warm-windowed, and without pretence.
It was not grand. It did not try to be. Its proportions were good, its garden beginning rather than finished, its gravel swept, its door open upon firelight and readiness.
No banner of family history hung over it.
No accusation waited in its windows. It was only a house, prepared by kindness, lent by affection, and far enough from London that no person could arrive there by accident.
Elizabeth sat forward.
Darcy watched her face.
The last of Portman Square’s vigilance seemed to loosen in her shoulders.
“Well,” she said, looking at the house, “this is excellent geography.”
Darcy looked from The Laurels to his wife.
“Yes,” he said. “I begin to think so.”
The carriage stopped. The door opened. A servant came down the steps to receive them.
Darcy stepped out first and turned back, offering his hand.
Elizabeth placed hers in it.
She wore his ring. He carried her seal. Behind them lay London, ordered, survived, and left before anyone could claim too much of it. Before them stood a house with laurel leaves at the drive and fire in the windows.
And because there was no one there to contradict them, Mr. and Mrs. Darcy went in.