Chapter 16 #3
"You have it," he said.
She did not pretend not to understand. "Yes."
"And you have not read it."
"No."
The answer seemed to sit between them a moment before he spoke again. "Then do not read it until you choose."
That was not what she had expected—not even a gentleman's sentence in the usual sense.
It was too generous for a man being held on suspicion in a room with bars.
She looked at him through the iron and thought, with some irritation, that he made every decision more difficult simply by being reasonable in the wrong place.
"Did you write it for such an occasion?" she asked.
"No. I wrote it because I could not do otherwise."
"That is scarcely an answer."
"It is the only one I have."
She ought to have been angry still. She was angry.
Yet the anger did not prevent the other feeling, which was more troublesome because it made use of the same facts.
He had written to her. He had brought the letter through the journey and the storm.
She had carried it into the city and into his arrest. The thing remained unread because she had not yet found the moment worthy of it.
Perhaps she had been waiting for a calmer one.
The world, however, had chosen not to oblige.
Outside the chamber, feet passed and voices lowered, then rose again to the business of the office. Inside, Darcy waited without impatience, which was almost more affecting than any plea would have been.
At last he said, "Are you safe?"
Elizabeth gave him a look that would have chastened a less self-possessed man. "I am standing in a Custom House at the bars of a room in which you have been confined. What answer do you require?"
"The truthful one."
"I have not yet been carried off by the government."
"That is comfort enough for you?"
"No. But it is something."
His expression changed by a shade. "Then I am glad."
She nearly said that she was not. It would have been easier. It would also have been false. The thing in his tone, quiet, and stripped of ornament, did more than all the neat language of the magistrate. He had not asked after himself. He had asked after her.
Cécile appeared in the corridor with Thomas beside her, and Mr. Bennet just behind them, carrying a newspaper he had evidently already read twice and found no improvement in it. The passage was crowded enough now to feel like a drawing room by bad management.
Mr. Bennet said, "This is an inconvenient way to make a visit, Darcy."
Darcy turned toward him. "I had hoped for a more private reception."
"You should have chosen a profession less visible to customs officials."
"That may yet be sound advice."
Thomas glanced at Elizabeth. "He will be allowed visitors, so long as they do not obstruct the office."
"Then the office has little to fear from me," she said.
"Only from your opinions," said Mr. Bennet.
No one smiled enough to call it comfort, but the attempt mattered.
Elizabeth looked back at Darcy. Through the grate, in the hot, close air of the corridor, he appeared both more distant and more himself than he had on the river.
Some part of her wanted to demand certainty from him, some proof that he would not be passed from one government to another like a parcel.
Another part knew well that governments did what they pleased and called it order.
"You will be exchanged," she said.
"Yes," he replied.
"You say it as though you have already accepted the verdict."
"I have accepted the facts."
"And the future?"
His glance held hers. "I have not yet been given that luxury."
She had no answer to that. The letter in her pocket seemed to weigh more than paper had a right to do. Her thumb found the fold through the cloth, once, and then stopped. She had not read it. She still had not decided whether she would read it. That, too, felt like a kind of confinement.
The magistrate called for the next paper. Voices lifted. The Custom House resumed its business around them.
Elizabeth kept her hand on the iron and said, very softly, "I have not decided what to think."
Darcy's answer was immediate, and quiet enough to belong only to her.
"Then do not decide in haste."
She almost laughed at that. Almost. It was exactly the sort of counsel he would give, and exactly the sort that made patience seem less like virtue than necessity.
"Very well," she said.
He looked at her once more through the bars. "Miss Bennet."
"Yes?"
"Keep the letter dry."
The phrase was so like him that it hurt more than any sentimental declaration would have done. Practical even now. Concern translated into instruction because that was how he was built.
"I shall," she said.
Outside the office, the city went on reading its newspapers, tallying its losses, and making plans that would not include him for the moment.
Inside, he stood behind iron, and she stood before it with an unopened letter in her pocket, the war declared, the arrest made, and the world divided into what had been known before the paper and what must now be known after it.