CHAPTER 53 #3
“No,” said Georgiana at once, though she did not move.
Elizabeth made her decision.
She drew one of the old cards from her reticule, glanced at it, and gave a small look of annoyance.
“I am sorry,” she said. “You must make do with the old card for the present. I discovered this morning, to my disgrace, that I have been married long enough to require new ones and have not yet seen to it. But the direction is perfectly right.”
Georgiana looked at the card, then at Elizabeth.
“If ever you wish to write to me,” Elizabeth went on, “or to call, you may do so.”
Georgiana took it with fingers not quite steady.
“Thank you.”
“There is no obligation in it,” said Elizabeth more gently. “Only the permission.”
Georgiana’s eyes dropped once more to the card.
“Yes.”
“And by the time you use it,” said Elizabeth, with a faint smile, “I hope to have become properly Mrs. Darcy on paper as well as in law.”
That seemed to do more good than a graver reassurance would have done.
Mrs. Younge intervened then, very properly and very much in the right moment to be resented by anybody with eyes.
“We must indeed not trespass farther, Miss Darcy.”
“No,” said Georgiana, and this time she did move. “Good morning, Mrs. Darcy.”
“Good morning.”
Elizabeth watched them go — Georgiana with the card in her hand, Mrs. Younge a little too smooth and a little too conscious of every eye on the way out — and remained quite still for some moments after they had left the shop.
The stationer, who had the discretion proper to his profession and had probably already decided that all families of condition were mad, cleared his throat softly and asked whether Mrs. Darcy preferred the thicker paper for the larger notes.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth absently. Then, returning to herself: “No. The other. This is not a day for thickness.”
The matter of the cards was concluded at last. Pom-Pom was reclaimed from the chair, Mrs. Doddridge gathered the receipt and the order, and they went back into the street.
Only when they had turned the corner and the stationer’s was behind them did Mrs. Doddridge say, “The companion was very ready with Miss Darcy’s time.”
“Yes.”
“And not very generous with her speech.”
“No.”
Mrs. Doddridge adjusted Lord Pomington’s wrapper where it had slipped beneath his chin. “A companion may be careful without making cheerfulness look like an offence.”
Elizabeth glanced at her. “You did not like her.”
“No, madam.”
“Neither did I.”
By the time they reached Portman Square, the books and papers of the day had already begun to arrange themselves in Elizabeth’s mind into something larger than a rumour and a stationer’s errand.
She had gone out meaning to correct one account of her marriage and one social impropriety.
She had returned with a card missing from her case and the first opening, however narrow, into Georgiana Darcy’s life.
Not a confidence.
Not yet even an intimacy.
Only a card taken, a permission granted, and a girl’s guarded face when told simply that her brother was well.
It was enough to be acted upon, and not enough to be trusted.
Mr. Darcy did not return until evening.
By then Elizabeth had arranged the day into an order suitable for communication and entirely unsuitable for feeling. First, Miss Hall. Second, the rumour. Third, the cards. Fourth, Georgiana. Fifth, Mrs. Younge.
It was an excellent order.
It lasted until he entered the room and looked first, as he always did now, not at the fire, nor at the table, but at her.
The lamps had been lit; Pom-Pom had retired from public duty and was recovering beneath a shawl; Mrs. Doddridge had taken her sewing into the corner by the fire with that air of principled invisibility which meant she heard everything and would repeat nothing.
Mr. Darcy was grave already.
“You have news,” she said.
“So have you, I think.”
“Yes. But yours has arrived first.”
He crossed to the fire, took the folded note from his pocket, and held it without immediately opening it.
“Richard has answered. He will call at Darcy House with Lady Matlock tomorrow, if my aunt can be persuaded to move so quickly. He will send word afterward.”
“That is good.”
“Yes.”
But his face did not ease.
Elizabeth waited.
“He is ordered away soon,” Mr. Darcy said. “Not immediately, but soon enough that he cannot be relied upon after this week. Army business. He does not yet know how long.”
That changed the size of the room.
“Then tomorrow matters more than it did,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes.”
She looked at the note in his hand, then at the table where her old card-case lay open beside the stationer’s receipt.
There were times, she had learned, when bad news must be given in order. There were other times when order was merely cowardice in a better gown.
She crossed the room and took his hand.
“I saw your sister today.”
The colour left his face.
“Where?”
“At the stationer’s. With Mrs. Younge.”
His fingers closed hard around hers, then loosened at once, as if even in alarm he feared hurting her.
“Did she speak to you?”
“Yes. A little.”
“Was she distressed?”
“She was constrained. Startled. Not easy. But she was not unwilling.”