CHAPTER 62 #3
But the first shape of the machinery had been built. Bell was being sent for. Latham had his authority. The clerks would be watched and rewarded by rule rather than trusted by sentiment. The house could be made to show what had been done without Elizabeth standing in every doorway.
Pemberley could be repaired with money, clerks, authority, and time. A compromised office could be divided. A rent book could be checked. A steward could be replaced. A message could be copied. A house could be made, by arrangements, to reveal the truth even when no one yet knew whom to accuse.
Elizabeth could not be made such an arrangement.
He would build the machinery Pemberley required precisely so that she need not become the machinery.
Darcy left the papers where they were.
It was a small act of rebellion, but a necessary one.
He did not find Elizabeth in the breakfast room. She was not with Georgiana, nor in conference with Mrs. Reynolds, nor in the small parlour where schedules seemed now to breed almost as vigorously as paper. For one uncomfortable minute, he wondered whether the house had already claimed her again.
Then Evans, appearing from the passage with a folded shawl over one arm, saw him and stopped.
“Mrs. Darcy?” he asked.
“In her sitting room, sir.” Evans hesitated. “She is asleep.”
Darcy’s chest tightened.
“Thank you.”
The sitting room adjoining their chambers was shaded against the afternoon light.
The curtains had been drawn halfway, leaving the room in a greenish dimness.
A household paper lay on the carpet where it had slipped from Elizabeth’s hand.
Another was half-crushed beneath her elbow.
She was asleep upon the settee, one arm folded beneath her cheek, her shoes still on, her face turned slightly away from the door.
For a moment Darcy did not move.
She looked very young.
Not girlish. Never that. But young in the way exhaustion revealed what competence concealed: twenty years old, married barely two months, and already carrying keys, sickrooms, dangerous connexions, frightened sisters, corrupted papers, and his own heart with a steadiness that made everyone forget she ought not to have been asked to carry so much.
His throat tightened.
He crossed the room quietly, picked up the fallen paper, and set it upon the table. The visible words concerned invalid trays and the locking of a side passage. Even asleep, she had been governing entrances.
“Enough,” he murmured, and set the paper out of reach.
Elizabeth stirred when he laid the shawl over her.
“Fitzwilliam?”
“I am here.”
“Papers?”
“In hand.”
Her eyes opened only a little. “Mrs. Wickham?”
“Gone.”
“Safely?”
“Indignantly. But gone.”
That drew the faintest curve of her mouth.
“She wrote to her son in London,” he added. “The note was copied and sent on. Mr. Latham has it. Bell is sent for, and an express will go to Davis. Nothing waits for you.”
She looked at him as if trying to determine whether that last sentence could be trusted.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing with any right to wake you.”
Her hand moved beneath the shawl. “There is too much to do.”
“Not for you. Not now.”
“You are very decided.”
“I have had an excellent example.”
Her lashes lowered, but her mouth softened.
He sat on the edge of the settee, and after a moment she shifted enough to make room for him.
He did not lie down so much as let himself be drawn beside her, carefully, absurdly conscious of his boots, her shawl, and the fact that Pemberley had survived a great many years without requiring his opinion during this exact quarter hour.
Elizabeth settled against him with a sigh that was almost surrender.
“Only until luncheon,” she murmured.
“Of course.”
It was not, strictly speaking, an honest answer.
They woke before luncheon because Evans, who had more mercy than obedience when properly encouraged, permitted the tray to wait ten minutes in the passage before knocking.
Elizabeth denied having slept again. Darcy, looking at the crease of the shawl upon her cheek, decided not to press a falsehood which had benefited them both.
They ate in the sitting room with the curtains drawn open and no household paper upon the table. Elizabeth received the news of Mrs. Wickham’s note more fully then, and with only one attempt to rise, which he defeated by putting bread into her hand.
“That is not an argument,” she said.
“No. It is luncheon.”
She looked at the bread, then at him, and ate it.
After luncheon, they walked.
It was not the walk he had promised after breakfast. Breakfast had been lost to ledgers, Mrs. Wickham, and the discovery that Pemberley’s memory had been badly kept.
But before dinner, when the light had softened and the heat of the day had begun to lift from the stone, Darcy took Elizabeth out through a side door where no servant with a salver had yet learned to lurk.
They went no farther than the first turn beyond the south lawn. The house could still be seen through the trees, and yet had, by the mercy of leaves and distance, lost the power to speak.
Elizabeth took his arm.
“You see,” she said, “the papers did not run away.”
“No.”
“Nor Mr. Latham.”
“I had him watched.”
She laughed then—quietly, tiredly, but truly—and Darcy felt something in his chest loosen which no crossed-out will, no copied note, no obedient clerk could have touched.
They walked slowly. Not because the path required it, but because haste had had enough of them for one day. The grass was long beyond the trimmed edge of the lawn, and the park opened in green folds beneath the late sun. Somewhere farther off, water moved over stone.
Elizabeth stopped once to look back at the house.
“It is very beautiful,” she said.
“Yes.”
“It looks innocent from here.”
That almost drew a laugh from him. “It has never been that.”
“No. But it makes a good attempt.”
Her hand rested on his arm.
“And you?” she asked.
He looked at the house, then at her.
“I am not yet sure.”
Her hand tightened.
“That is nearer an answer.”
“I thought you disliked uncertainty.”
“Not when it is honest.”
They walked on until the first dinner bell was almost due and the shadows had lengthened across the lawn.
Pemberley would have him again after dinner.
Mr. Latham would have found another packet.
Bell would have arrived, suspicious of advancement and therefore possibly worthy of it.
Mrs. Reynolds would have three new quiet victories to report.
Mrs. Wickham’s note would be travelling toward London, carrying both alarm and usefulness.
For the present, it all had to wait.
Elizabeth’s hand rested on his arm. The house stood behind them, beautiful, wounded, and no longer permitted to demand everything.
It was not enough.
But it was a beginning.