CHAPTER 75
Eleanor
Christmas dinner had survived soup, fish, two serious observations from Mary, and Bingley’s generous determination to praise every dish as if the cook had prepared it for his private salvation.
By the third course, Darcy had begun to think Pemberley might carry the evening off.
It was not ease exactly. Ease was too much to ask of a house which had spent the year discovering how many of its comforts had been ill-kept, misused, or withheld.
But the dining room was warm, the curtains were drawn against a hard winter dark, and the holly had been arranged with enough restraint that his uncle Edward had not once looked at it as if festivity were evidence against judgment.
His father sat at the head of the table.
Not as he once had done. No one could mistake him for the unchallenged master of former years.
He tired more quickly; his right hand had to be spared; his speech, when fatigue touched it, must be waited for.
Yet he had come down. He had dressed for Christmas dinner.
He had permitted the room to be full of people and conversation without making either thing answer to him.
That was not peace. But it was not nothing.
Elizabeth wore the pearls.
Not the sapphires. The sapphires remained above stairs, dark and severe, ready for some future occasion on which Pemberley might be required to defend her. Christmas at home required no armour. The pearls were enough: old, quiet, and hers.
His uncle sat near his father, dry, observant, and sparing of speech.
His cousin Richard, newly escaped from Matlock, had been placed near Bingley and had already made Darcy’s brother-in-law laugh twice, though Bingley had plainly meant to behave with solemn Christmas propriety.
Georgiana sat beside Kitty; Darcy had been glad to see it.
His sister had not hidden herself behind silence that evening, though Kitty supplied enough conversation for both when necessary.
Mary held herself with earnest dignity, Miss Bingley with careful elegance, and Jane with that gentle attention which made everyone near her feel better behaved than they were.
Even Pom-Pom had been granted a cushion near Kitty’s chair, on the strict understanding that Christmas sentiment did not extend to feeding him from the table. Pom-Pom had accepted the cushion and rejected the principle.
Richard had brought news of Matlock, Rosings, and Lady Catherine; it had taken very little encouragement for him to make a report of it.
“My aunt remains with my parents,” he said. “Matlock is insupportable because it is not Rosings. Rosings is insupportable because it no longer obeys her. My mother has begun to speak of Rosings with real affection.”
Darcy looked up. “Because Lady Catherine is absent from it?”
“Entirely.”
Jane lowered her eyes, smiling despite herself.
“And Lord Matlock?” Elizabeth asked.
“My father has discovered estate business in every room where my aunt is not. He now examines maps with uncommon devotion.”
“Useful things, maps,” said Edward. “They show one where not to be.”
Richard accepted this with a slight bow. “I have taken the lesson seriously.”
“You fled,” Elizabeth said.
“I came north in a spirit of family affection.”
“To the quieter branch?”
“To the branch less likely to denounce me before breakfast.”
His father made a rough sound which, in a healthier man, might have been laughter.
Elizabeth’s smile faded into something more attentive. “And Anne?”
“At Rosings,” Richard said. “With Sir Edmund.”
“You do not approve of Sir Edmund,” Darcy said.
His cousin’s expression altered. “No.”
There was no jest in the answer.
Richard set down his glass. “He is courteous to Anne. Very courteous. He has reduced expense without appearing mean, quieted the house without appearing tyrannical, treated my aunt with formal respect while removing every instrument by which she formerly made herself obeyed, and improved Rosings in ways that make complaint look unreasonable before one has formed the second sentence.”
Edward’s mouth moved slightly. “A dangerous man.”
“Yes,” Richard said. “That is precisely what he is. He gives no one the satisfaction of behaving badly.”
Miss Bingley looked as if this sort of offence seemed, to her, difficult to prove.
“And Anne?” Jane asked.
Georgiana looked up. “She writes.”
The room altered by a degree.
His sister coloured, but she did not look down. “Only twice. Not long letters.”
“In her own hand,” Richard added. “No corrections from Lady Catherine. No additions. No thunderbolts in the margin.”
Elizabeth’s face changed. It was not joy, not relief exactly. Recognition, perhaps.
“That is something,” Jane said.
“At Rosings,” Edward observed, “something may be all the truth can safely manage at first.”
His father had been listening in silence. Now he said, slowly, “A letter sent without permission is sometimes more than its contents.”
Georgiana looked at him then, and something in her expression was both tender and wounded. “Yes, sir.”
Darcy did not look away quickly enough to miss Elizabeth seeing it too.
Richard let the silence remain for a moment, then said, more lightly, “The greatest sufferer, after my aunt, is Mr. Collins.”
Bingley blinked. “Mr. Collins?”
“Entirely shattered. Sir Edmund has not disturbed the living, so Mr. Collins cannot even enjoy persecution. But Lady Catherine’s removal has deprived him of his chief exercise: reverence within walking distance.”
Kitty made a small sound and covered it with her napkin.
Mary frowned. “That is not a generous assessment.”
“It is accurate,” Darcy said.
Elizabeth lowered her eyes to her glass.
Darcy saw the smile she was attempting to hide. It was small, wicked, and wholly without repentance.
Jane murmured, “Lizzy.”
“I said nothing.”
“No,” Darcy said. “You were admirably silent.”
Elizabeth’s smile deepened for half a moment before she restored her face to respectability.
Pom-Pom, from his cushion near Kitty’s chair, gave a low sigh, as if disappointed that no one had yet consulted him on Rosings.
“He disapproves of Sir Edmund too,” Kitty whispered.
“Pom-Pom’s judgment,” Mary said, “is not evidence.”
“It is often accurate,” said Elizabeth.
The pudding was brought in then.
There was a little shifting of plates, a small renewal of attention, the agreeable domestic solemnity of a Christmas pudding meeting a company already too well fed to receive it honestly.
Bingley praised its appearance with immediate sincerity.
Miss Bingley observed that the arrangement of the dish was very handsome.
Kitty asked whether Pom-Pom might not have one crumb, as a religious exception.
Mary began to say that exceptions, once admitted into domestic practice, were apt to undermine all rule.
Elizabeth looked down at the pudding with an expression of grave negotiation.
Her hand stilled.
For one moment Darcy thought she was about to laugh.
Then Pom-Pom lifted his head.
The bark cut through the room.
It was not his offended bark, nor his social bark, nor the sharp declaration by which he condemned wheels, boots, and callers. It was brief, serious, and entirely unlike him.
“Pom-Pom,” Elizabeth said.
He barked again.
Darcy looked from the dog to his wife and saw that all the colour had gone from her face.
The pearls at her throat seemed suddenly too pale. Her lips had lost warmth. One hand had closed upon the table linen; the other rested low, not protectively now, but because she could not move it.
Jane went still.
Bingley half rose.
Richard’s expression changed at once. Edward put down his glass without sound. His father did not speak. He watched Darcy.
“It is nothing,” Elizabeth said.
Pom-Pom barked a third time.
Mrs. Doddridge, who had been near the sideboard with the air of a woman prepared to disbelieve festivity at the first sign of weakness, said, “Mrs. Tate.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes for the smallest possible instant. When she opened them, Darcy was already beside her chair.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said, very low, “do not look as if Christmas has been abolished.”
“I shall try.”
Her hand found his. It was cold and very tight.
Another pain took her then. She did not cry out. She drew a breath which did not belong to dinner, and her fingers closed harder.
“Mr. Grant,” she said, turning with effort toward Richard. “If you please. But not a commotion.”
His cousin bowed and was already moving. “No commotion.”
“Mrs. Reynolds,” Darcy said to the nearest footman.
“Already sent for,” Edward said.
His uncle had not appeared to move, yet somehow he had done what was needed.
“Kitty,” Elizabeth said, with an effort at command which would have deceived no one who loved her, “take Pom-Pom before he informs the county.”
Kitty’s face was white, but she gathered the dog at once. Pom-Pom resisted removal from office with all four paws and a sound of outrage. Georgiana rose immediately and caught up his blanket from the chair.
“I will come with you,” his sister said.
Kitty nodded. Her eyes were too wide. Georgiana’s were not much better, but she held the blanket as if the proper management of one anxious dog might steady the whole house.
Pom-Pom gave one last offended bark as Kitty carried him out.
“There,” Elizabeth said faintly. “One crisis contained.”
Darcy could not answer. He helped her rise.
It should have been impossible that so familiar a gesture could feel so changed.
He had helped her from chairs for weeks: from the nursery chair too low for dignity, from the sofa where Mrs. Doddridge had declared her settled and Elizabeth had declared no such treaty binding, from the window seat where she insisted she had only paused.
Each time there had been complaint, or teasing, or some protest against the tyranny of furniture.
Now the table was silent. The servants were silent. The pearls moved once against her throat as she leaned into him.
Jane came to her other side.
“I am well,” Elizabeth said, which was not true but was perhaps the nearest phrase she permitted herself.