CHAPTER 50
Not As Strangers
The Laurels received them with fires already lit, curtains drawn against the late-March evening, and supper laid in a small dining parlour.
The table was set for two.
Elizabeth stopped on the threshold.
“Is anything wrong?” Mr. Darcy asked.
“No,” she said. “Only—two places.”
He looked at the table, then back at her.
There were no papers on the sideboard to justify him.
No Mrs. Doddridge in the corner, making propriety out of silence.
No clock by which he must remember to leave.
The servants had set two places because Mr. and Mrs. Darcy had arrived, and because supper, like the future, had sensibly adjusted itself.
In London, there would sometimes be others. Mrs. Doddridge might dine with them; Jane might come; Uncle Edward might be admitted; Lord Pomington would certainly insist upon presence if not invitation. But the table need not begin with absence.
There would be two places.
Elizabeth went in smiling.
It was not a large house. After Portman Square, little could be called large without becoming ridiculous; but The Laurels had an air of having been sensibly made for weather, books, and escape.
Its rooms were low enough for warmth, wide enough for comfort, and furnished without any object appearing to have been placed there merely to inform visitors of its own expense.
The hall smelled faintly of beeswax, rain-damp wool, and the wood smoke that had already begun to press cheerfully beneath every door.
They had come without the full machinery of their own households.
James had driven them. Their trunks had followed.
Uncle Edward’s housekeeper, cook, and two quiet maids would keep The Laurels from falling into savagery; but Mrs. Doddridge, Evans, Mr. Darcy’s man, and Lord Pomington had all been left in London to endure three days of independence as best they could.
Elizabeth had expected the arrangement to be sensible.
She had not expected it to be delightful.
There was something improper, not in the moral sense, but in the domestic one, about having no one of her own to anticipate her gloves, rescue her pins, judge her sleeves, or prevent Mr. Darcy from discovering what a lady looked like when she had been married, congratulated, driven out of London, and delivered to Surrey with only partial command of her hair.
The thought ought to have alarmed her.
Instead, it made her happier.
The dining parlour was lit by candles and fire. A round table had been laid with soup, rolls under a napkin, a small remove of chicken, ham, preserved fruit, and potatoes roasted to such excellence that Elizabeth first praised them from justice and then, unfortunately, from happiness.
“These potatoes are very good,” she said.
Mr. Darcy looked up from his plate. “Yes.”
“You agree?”
“I agreed the first time.”
She blinked. “Did I say it before?”
“With conviction.”
Elizabeth looked at the potatoes. They sat innocently in their dish, golden, crisp, and entirely unable to defend her.
“Then I am glad to be consistent.”
His mouth moved.
“You are laughing at me.”
“Not at you.”
“Beside me, then.”
“Very much beside you.”
She felt that answer quite unreasonably.
“It is only,” she said, with dignity, “that a well-roasted potato is not to be dismissed.”
“Certainly not.”
“A household may be judged by it.”
“A severe standard.”
“A just one.”
“Then The Laurels has acquitted itself?”
“With distinction.”
His smile deepened, and Elizabeth suddenly understood that he knew she was not talking of potatoes.
She applied herself to her plate.
“I must say,” he observed after a moment, “that potatoes are much improved by your company at dinner.”
Elizabeth looked up. “Mr. Darcy.”
“Mrs. Darcy.”
“You cannot possibly have formed a comparative judgment.”
“On the contrary. I have eaten potatoes in many inferior circumstances.”
“Without me?”
“Always, until tonight.”
“A melancholy history.”
“Greatly improved.”
She tried to meet this with proper composure, but his smile had become altogether too easy, and the potatoes, having begun as her defence, were now of no assistance whatever.
The rest of supper proceeded with somewhat less danger from vegetables.
Mr. Darcy served her as if the chicken had been entrusted to him under settlement, and Elizabeth allowed it because she was hungry, because the chicken was good, and because it pleased him in a manner not wholly concealed by his gravity.
He was not loud in happiness. He did not become less himself. But his attention no longer seemed to ask pardon for remaining.
The thought made Elizabeth attend very carefully to her glass.
After supper the housekeeper came once to ask whether they wished anything more. Mr. Darcy answered with admirable steadiness that they did not.
The dining parlour could not, Elizabeth supposed, be expected to carry the whole weight of matrimony. Even she, who had formed a high opinion of its potatoes, saw the justice of withdrawing.
There was a small pause in the hall while the housekeeper directed a maid to take up hot water. Then Mr. Darcy offered Elizabeth his arm.
They went upstairs together.
Their chamber was warm, candlelit, and strange in precisely the way a room becomes strange when it is not strange at all, but prepared.
A fire had been laid; the curtains were drawn; her trunk stood near one wall, his near the other.
The maids had done enough to make them comfortable and not so much as to rob the room of its newness.
Elizabeth saw her brush, a folded shawl, her nightgown laid with careful hands, and a little travelling case which Evans would have unpacked with ten silent opinions had Evans been present.
Evans was not present.
Elizabeth felt this fact with a flutter somewhere between amusement and alarm.
Mr. Darcy closed the door.
For a moment neither of them moved.
The rain touched lightly at the windows. The fire made a small fall of ash. Elizabeth discovered, with some indignation, that marriage had supplied the husband but no instructions.
Mr. Darcy solved the difficulty by coming to her.
Not hurriedly. Not violently. But without excuse.
That, Elizabeth thought, was new.
He did not ask after the journey, or mention the fire, or discover a sudden need to discuss whether James had been properly instructed about the horses. He came to her because he wished to stand near her, and the fact required no improvement.
His hand touched the back of the chair beside her. Then, after the briefest hesitation, her shoulder.
Elizabeth looked up.
Whatever jest she had prepared abandoned her.
“Elizabeth,” he said.
“Yes?”
His hand moved from her shoulder to her cheek. His thumb rested there as if even now he could hardly believe the liberty of it.
Then he kissed her.
Not as he had kissed her in the carriage, careful through astonishment and tender through restraint.
Not as he had kissed her before marriage, when every touch had been edged by farewell, by risk, by the knowledge that he had no right to let want speak too plainly.
This kiss was nearer, stronger, and less governed.
His arm came around her with sudden certainty; his hand pressed at her back; the warmth and size of him overwhelmed every clever thought she had prepared.
Elizabeth had known he wanted her.
She had not understood that knowledge and experience were such poor cousins.
For a few moments she had no wish to correct anything.
She had no wish to be moderate, or wise, or properly cautious on behalf of either of them.
She liked the force of him. She liked the loss of distance.
She liked the astonishing discovery that the man who had made a discipline of restraint could be so altered by permission.
Her hands went to his shoulders.
He made a sound very low in his throat, and the arm about her tightened.
Then he stopped.
Not slowly.
Not gently enough to disguise it.
He drew back, his breath checked, his hand falling from her waist as if he had discovered it there without leave.
“You must be tired,” he said.
Elizabeth, who had not been thinking of fatigue, looked at him.
“I beg your pardon?”
His expression had become almost formal. Almost. But his colour was high, his hand was closed at his side, and his eyes were not formal at all.
“You have had a long day.”
“I have,” said Elizabeth. “Though I had not supposed you meant to end it with a medical conclusion.”
His mouth tightened.
“I would not have you hurried.”
This, at least, deserved examination.
Elizabeth folded her hands before her, partly because she needed a moment and partly because his abrupt retreat had left her oddly cold.
“Hurried,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“Into what?”
He looked at her.
She lifted her brows.
“Fitzwilliam, I am a new wife and may require instruction, but even I begin to suspect that we are speaking around the subject.”
His eyes darkened at the use of his name. For one instant she thought he would come back to her. Then he turned slightly toward the fire.
That was worse.
Not because he moved far. He did not. He remained within reach, which made the retreat more visible. His body stayed near while some inward part of him had stepped back into old rooms, old discipline, old denial.
Elizabeth felt, briefly and sharply, the sting of being left on the wrong side of his restraint.
Then she saw his hand.
It was still closed hard at his side.
She had thought, for one offended second, that marriage had somehow returned him to old distances. But he had not retreated from her. He had retreated from the part of himself that wanted to stay.
The realization softened her before she had decided to be softened.
“Mr. Darcy.”
He turned at once. Even now, even braced against himself, he answered her.
“You are being very moderate,” she said.
“I am trying to be.”
“For my sake?”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth considered this. Several clever replies offered themselves. She dismissed them all.
She reached for his hand.
Not his sleeve. Not the cuff of his coat. His hand.