CHAPTER 51
A Place for Everything
Spring had entered London cautiously that year.
The wind still found its way beneath collars; rain collected in the hollows of the street; fires were not yet dismissed from respectable rooms. But the air had altered.
The smoke seemed thinner. The light, when it came, came earlier and with more confidence.
In Portman Square, the trees showed the first green insistence of leaves, and the pavements, washed by morning rain, reflected a sky that had remembered blue.
Darcy noticed all this from the carriage window and thought, with some private surprise, that he was glad to be returning.
Not to London. He had returned to London often enough, and seldom with any feeling worth naming.
To Portman Square.
Beside him, Elizabeth watched the square with an expression he could not entirely read. She had been quiet for the last quarter hour, though not unhappily. One gloved hand lay beneath his, because he had taken it somewhere past Kensington and had not yet discovered a sufficient reason to return it.
“You are very solemn,” she said.
“I am considering whether Lord Pomington will forgive us.”
“He will not.”
“That was my conclusion.”
“He may forgive me by dinner. You will require longer.”
“I shall endeavour to deserve clemency.”
“You may begin with chicken.”
“A practical penitence.”
“It is the only kind he respects.”
The carriage turned, drew up before the house, and stopped.
Portman Square opened to them at once.
At The Laurels, doors had opened because servants had been instructed.
At Portman Square, the house seemed to have been waiting with knowledge.
The steps were clean despite the damp. The knocker shone.
The door was drawn back before James had completed his descent.
A footman appeared, another behind him; the luggage was already being approached as if the trunks had opinions that required firm management.
Mrs. Albright stood within the hall, correct, severe, and not in the least surprised by matrimony.
Behind her, Mrs. Doddridge waited with equal composure.
At her feet stood Lord Pomington in a blue wrapper, looking not so much bereaved as judicial.
“Mr. Darcy,” said Mrs. Albright. “Mrs. Darcy.”
It was the first time the house had said it.
Darcy bowed before he could think not to do so. “Mrs. Albright.”
Elizabeth smiled. “We are returned.”
“So I see, ma’am.”
Lord Pomington made a sound of suffering.
Elizabeth looked down. “Yes, I know.”
The dog sneezed.
“Deeply felt,” said Mrs. Doddridge.
Darcy offered his hand to help Elizabeth from the threshold, though no step required it. She accepted as if this were both unnecessary and entirely expected. Pomington watched the exchange, then turned his head away in pointed disappointment.
“He is punishing us,” Elizabeth said.
“I had understood so.”
Mrs. Albright’s gaze moved once to Elizabeth’s bonnet ribbons, once to Darcy’s travelling coat, and once toward the staircase where the trunks were being carried.
“Luncheon is ready in the breakfast room, ma’am,” she said. “Hot water has been sent up. Mr. Darcy’s man arrived yesterday as arranged and has been shown his places.”
His places.
Darcy heard the phrase and had the absurd sensation that the floor had shifted beneath him.
Elizabeth only untied her bonnet. “Thank you, Mrs. Albright. We shall come in directly.”
Mrs. Doddridge looked at Darcy with no alteration of expression. “I hope The Laurels behaved well, sir.”
“It behaved very well.”
“Good. Houses should.”
Elizabeth laughed softly, and the sound loosened something in him.
The hall was larger than the hall at The Laurels, more polished, more inhabited, more disciplined. It admitted servants, umbrellas, footmen, parcels, dogs, callers, duties, and every form of domestic observation. It did not permit the agreeable fiction that they were the only two people in England.
But when Elizabeth turned toward him and smiled, Darcy understood that Portman Square offered something The Laurels could not.
The Laurels had given them privacy.
Portman Square gave them place.
Luncheon waited in the breakfast room. The room, which he remembered from its first reform, looked brighter now in the spring light.
The pale paper caught what sun the day offered; the sage-green chairs stood warm rather than new; the fire burned with a smaller flame than winter had required.
The table was not set as if for company. It was set as if for return.
There was cold chicken, bread, ham, pickled walnuts, a dish of stewed apples, and a small covered plate which, when uncovered, revealed roasted potatoes.
Elizabeth looked at it.
Darcy looked at Elizabeth.
Mrs. Albright, who had entered behind them to see that all was in order, looked at neither of them.
“Cook has remembered The Laurels too well,” Elizabeth said.
“Cook has not been to The Laurels.”
“Then Cook is alarming.”
“She has always been alarming,” said Mrs. Doddridge, settling herself with Pomington’s basket near her chair. “But seldom wrong.”
Darcy took the chair beside Elizabeth’s. No one moved it. No one suggested the opposite side of the table. No one appeared to find his choice remarkable.
That, too, was new.
A folded newspaper lay beside the coffee pot. Elizabeth noticed it first.
“What is that?”
Mrs. Albright inclined her head. “It was kept for you, ma’am. The notice appeared yesterday.”
Elizabeth unfolded the paper.
Darcy saw the words before he had prepared himself to read them.
On Thursday last, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Esq., to Elizabeth Bennet, of Portman Square.
The notice did not explain him. It did not defend her. It simply placed their names together and let the town do what towns did.
Elizabeth’s hand rested beside the paper. He covered it before he had decided to move.
She did not look at him. Her fingers turned beneath his and held.
Mrs. Doddridge, with admirable blindness, observed that the potatoes were cooling.
The afternoon took him upstairs.
Elizabeth did not announce a tour. She did not make ceremony out of it.
After luncheon, after Pomington had accepted chicken from Elizabeth and rejected Darcy’s apology as insufficiently seasoned, after Mrs. Albright had removed the newspaper to be kept, Elizabeth said only, “You should see where your things are.”
His things.
He followed her up the staircase with the strange sensation that he was both guest and not guest, husband and still not sufficiently accustomed to the word. The trunks had disappeared. No servant crossed their path. The house seemed to have arranged privacy without making a display of it.
Elizabeth opened the door.
“Your bedchamber,” she said.
Darcy stepped in.
He had expected elegance. He had expected expense, because Portman Square could not help being expensive even when it attempted restraint. He had expected good linen, sound furniture, a fire laid, curtains neither too heavy nor too light, and all the competence of Mrs. Albright’s reign.
He had not expected recognition.
The room was not the room he would have chosen for himself, because he had not imagined himself choosing.
It was larger than any bedchamber he had used in years, but not grand in the manner that commanded gratitude.
The paper was a quiet blue-grey, darker than Elizabeth’s breakfast room and lighter than winter.
The bed hangings were sober but not mournful.
The chairs had been placed for use, not display.
A small table stood near the bed with a candle, a bell-pull, and space for a book.
The fire was ready without being excessive.
At first he saw all this as a gentleman saw a well-prepared room.
Then he saw the hooks by the door: one for his coat, one for his hat, a stand below for his cane, and a tray set ready for gloves.
A man might come in tired, wet, and holding too many things. The room had thought of it.
Darcy stood still.
Elizabeth, perhaps mistaking the reason, said, “If anything is wrong, you must say so. Mrs. Albright can alter what is not fixed. The curtains are new, but not sacred.”
“Nothing is wrong.”
She looked relieved and not relieved at once. “The dressing room is through here.”
The dressing room held his trunk, already opened and partly emptied; his brushes; his razors; his folded linen; space enough for what he possessed and what he did not.
A press stood open. His boots had been placed properly.
His man’s working things were arranged with the unobtrusive logic of service.
There was a chair set in the right place for shaving, a glass with good light, a narrow shelf for small items which in his old rooms had migrated over surfaces because no surface had ever quite consented to belong to them.
Elizabeth spoke because she was Elizabeth and silence, in practical matters, could not be allowed to take command.
“Your man has a proper place belowstairs as well. Mrs. Albright says he is sensible, which from Mrs. Albright is nearly affection. She has given him space for his work and access to the linen room, though not, I understand, without conditions.”
Darcy imagined his man under Mrs. Albright’s jurisdiction and nearly smiled.
“He will survive.”
“I hope so. Mrs. Albright dislikes waste, confusion, and people who stand in doorways.”
“He dislikes being told he has stood in one.”
“Then they shall improve one another.”
She moved to the next door. “And this is the work room.”
The room undid him more quietly.