CHAPTER 74 #2
“No. You have many virtues.”
He held out both hands.
She placed hers in them, and the instant her fingers closed around his, the room changed again. It ceased to be only nursery, wife, child, house, future. It became simpler and more intimate: Elizabeth trusting his strength because she needed it.
He helped her forward slowly. She rose with care, one hand tightening on his, the other coming briefly to his arm. He set his free hand at her back, steadying her until she found her balance.
“There,” she said, a little breathless. “A triumph.”
“Entirely yours.”
“That is generous. I believe you supplied the leverage.”
“I am honoured to be useful as furniture.”
“Better than furniture,” she said. “Furniture does not look so concerned.”
“I am trying not to.”
“Then I shall reward the effort.”
He smiled, but only faintly. She had risen; that was all. A small domestic office, no more remarkable than drawing a curtain or moving a chair. Yet her hands were still in his, and Pemberley stood around them as if it had been waiting years to see him useful in so ordinary a way.
She should have stepped away then. She did not.
For a moment she remained before him, close enough that he felt the warmth of her, the changed balance of her body, the quiet fact of the child between them.
The nursery waited around them, all its order and linen and bells made suddenly intimate by her nearness.
Darcy had thought restoration would be a matter of papers, authority, names cleared, servants redirected, old lies exposed. It was those things. It had to be.
But it was also this: his wife’s hand in his, her weight trusting him in rooms prepared for their winter, Pemberley no longer a house from which he had been removed but a house learning how to keep what was his.
His throat tightened.
Elizabeth’s teasing softened. “Fitzwilliam?”
He bent and kissed her temple.
She grew very still.
“That,” she said after a moment, “was not required.”
“No.”
“Was it useful?”
“To me.”
Her fingers closed more warmly around his. “Then I suppose it may be permitted.”
Mrs. Doddridge returned with the folded linen, saw that Elizabeth had risen, and set the linen down without comment.
“Mrs. Reynolds has the second list, ma’am.”
Elizabeth released Darcy’s hand only after a moment.
Mrs. Doddridge adjusted the footstool by the chair.
“You will want it again,” she said.
Then she returned to the linen.
In the sitting room, the low October light had begun to silver the windows and soften the colours of the work gathered there.
Jane sat nearest what remained of the afternoon, sewing with the calm precision of one who had been born to make small garments look possible.
Georgiana bent over a seam with such anxious care that the needle seemed in danger of being reasoned into obedience.
Kitty had contrived a ribbon into a place where no infant could need one and was defending the innovation as cheerfulness.
Mary had undertaken a hem as if the future child’s principles depended upon its straightness.
Miss Bingley, who was not sewing, sat at the writing table with a letter half-composed and a folded list of Derbyshire names she had acquired somewhere with admirable discretion.
Darcy paused in the doorway and felt the sight move through him in a manner he did not care to examine in company.
His child, still unseen, had already collected a small parliament of young women: Jane’s tenderness, Mary’s severity, Kitty’s nonsense, Georgiana’s careful hope, Elizabeth’s notes, Mrs. Doddridge’s watchfulness, Mrs. Reynolds’s keys.
Even Miss Bingley’s disapproval, though not offered for the infant’s sake, might preserve the child from a ribbon too far.
“If Miss Kitty puts that ribbon there,” Miss Bingley observed, “the child will appear to have been trimmed rather than dressed.”
Kitty looked wounded. “A very small ribbon cannot injure anyone.”
“It can injure taste.”
Mary, without lifting her eyes, said, “Taste is often improved by restraint.”
Kitty stared at her. “You have been in Pemberley too long.”
Georgiana laughed softly, and Jane, seeing it, smiled down at her work.
Elizabeth looked at Kitty’s ribbon with an expression of affection disguised as assessment.
“Kitty, if you add that ribbon, you will be responsible for defending it when the child is old enough to form judgment.”
“A child cannot object to a ribbon.”
“Not at first,” said Elizabeth. “Which is why we must be scrupulous on the child’s behalf.”
Kitty looked down at the ribbon. “I think the child will have excellent taste.”
“Naturally,” said Elizabeth. “But I prefer not to test it before birth.”
Jane looked up and patted the place beside her.
“Lizzy.”
There was nothing in the word that could be called instruction. That was Jane’s art. She made concern sound like invitation.
Elizabeth looked at her, understood, and gave way without making the room notice it.
“Yes,” she said. “I believe I will.”
Darcy offered his arm. She took it without looking at him, but her hand rested more willingly than before. He settled her beside Jane and said nothing solemn, as she had instructed him by the mere glance she gave his face.
The afternoon was rescued from too much sewing by Bingley, who returned from viewing a house within seven miles of Pemberley. His boots carried a little of the wet parkland with them, and his greatcoat had the smell of rain not long escaped.
“It has a stream,” Bingley announced.
Darcy looked at him. “The last had a stream.”
“Yes, but this stream turns more agreeably.”
“You are choosing water by disposition?”
“I am choosing a house by whether Jane will smile at breakfast.”
Jane’s needle paused.
Bingley realised at once that he had said too much and not enough, but Jane was already smiling, and he looked so pleased by it that Darcy felt his own mouth soften despite himself.
The reason for the Bingleys’ winter stay had never been concealed.
Jane wished to be near Elizabeth through the cold months and the confinement; Bingley wished Jane to have what she wished before she had to ask twice.
He called it liking Derbyshire. Darcy suspected it was Jane’s wish translated into acreage.
The afternoon’s post arrived before Bingley could describe the stream’s character further. Mrs. Reynolds brought the letters herself, separating them with the efficient instinct of a woman who could distinguish ordinary paper from domestic disturbance by touch alone.
Mrs. Pratt had replied to Mary’s remarks upon Mr. Pratt’s newest compositions, and Mary’s colour rose in equal parts apprehension and triumph when she read that Mr. Pratt had considered her observations once with indignation and once with a pencil.
Lydia, by Mrs. Gardiner’s account, remained persuaded that London contained too few officers for its size, but had submitted to a drawing master with only moderate accusations of cruelty.
Elizabeth declared Mrs. Gardiner deserving of a monument and did not look as if she was joking.
The next letter altered the air before Elizabeth had read three lines.
Darcy knew Mrs. Bennet’s hand now. It had a way of filling a direction as if the mere address had been deprived of attention too long. Elizabeth opened it with an expression of patience that had prepared for battle and hoped to find only rain.
She read in silence.
Jane looked up first. Kitty stopped examining the contested ribbon. Mary lowered Mrs. Pratt’s letter.
Elizabeth’s mouth moved once, not quite into a smile.
“My mother has discovered quiet,” she said.
“Oh dear,” said Jane.
“Yes.”
Mrs. Bennet, it appeared, found Longbourn very empty.
Mr. Bennet was no company when he had a book, and worse when he did not.
Lydia was enjoying London without sufficient concern for her mother’s nerves.
Kitty had been gone so long that her mother hardly knew what gowns she possessed.
Mary’s absence had made the pianoforte very silent, which Mrs. Bennet had not expected to regret.
Jane was at Pemberley, and Elizabeth was at Pemberley, and surely Pemberley must be large enough to contain a mother who had been so cruelly deprived of all her daughters.
Mrs. Bennet could be of great use to Elizabeth in her condition, having had five children herself, and would not be the least trouble, provided she had a comfortable room, a good fire, no northern draughts, and some assurance that the roads were not fatal.
Jane’s eyes softened. Kitty looked guilty. Mary’s expression became one of filial calculation, as if she could already hear every sentence her mother would say on the subject. Miss Bingley looked as if she wished to hear the reply more than was polite.
Elizabeth folded the letter.
“I shall write that the house is full, that my father-in-law is still recovering, and that I must be quiet before winter. Not that she will believe any of it, but it will be true.”
“You need not justify it beyond that,” Darcy said.
“No. But I must make it possible for my sisters to read.”
That was the point, he understood. Not tenderness for Mrs. Bennet, and not guilt enough to undo prudence. Elizabeth was refusing her mother for the peace of the house, but she would word the refusal for the sake of the daughters who still had to love her.
“Will you walk a little?” he asked.
Elizabeth glanced at the others, then accepted his hand. “Yes. Before I become so prudent that I frighten myself.”
They walked only as far as the gallery outside the western apartments.
It was warmer and drier than the park, and the windows gave them the autumn without requiring Elizabeth to brave it.
Below, the gravel showed dark from recent rain.
Beyond it the trees had turned dull gold beneath a low October sky.
“You are not wrong to refuse her,” Darcy said.