XLII #2
Elizabeth had come to see it done. He had thought she meant to make sure they were not cheated, but she did not haggle at all.
She stood at the mule's head with her hand on his nose, and when the price was struck she said to the carter — who plainly thought her mad — that the animal had come a very long and very hard way, and had been a very good creature, and would he be so kind as to let it rest some days before he put it back to work.
It had earned a rest. It had earned, she said, more than she could say.
The carter, bemused, agreed to whatever the strange, thin Englishwoman wanted. Darcy watched his wife stand a moment longer with her hand on the mule's face, saying something too low for him to hear, and then step back and turn away quickly with her jaw set.
“It is only a mule,” she said, to no one, walking off.
Twice, he saw her swiping at her cheek as he followed her.
The apartment was clean, dry, and it did not bear one sign of rodents.
There was a real bed with more pillows than anyone could possibly want, a real coverlet and clean linen.
There was a washstand with a jug and a basin and a towel, and even a bit of lavender water for good taste.
There was a window that looked down on the harbour, and a fire laid ready in the grate, and a door that shut with a key.
And she would have given it back in an instant to be sleeping in a ditch with his arms around her, the way they had been before she ruined it.
They had not spoken to each other directly since the checkpoint.
She knew only that he now carried an obscene amount of money in his threadbare pockets, and that he had asked after and been directed to the finest fonda to be had in the city.
And when he led her up to the face of it, she had gazed up…
and up… and her mouth had gone a little dry.
This was the sort of establishment Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley would frequent. Lest she dare forget the name and nature of the man, the large Spanish hotel stood ready to remind her.
He had asked for a room with a view of the harbour, and been granted private apartments, with two connected bed chambers and a well-appointed sitting room.
The floor was gleaming chestnut, the bedstead was intricate wrought iron with gilt petals worked into its design.
There was even a chest of drawers made of finest mahogany, and she had but one soiled gown to put in it.
All this, and this room was hers alone. Darcy had his own room, on the opposite side of the sitting room, and he had gone there at once as soon as the maid had showed them up. Elizabeth stood mutely at her own window, tears standing dead and drying in her eyes as she stared out at the harbour.
Sometime later, and it must have been a considerable amount of time, she heard his step behind her at the door. She braced herself with a long breath that quavered more than it should have before she turned round.
He looked like a different man. He must have hired the services of some valet or other connected to the house to groom him.
Gone was the half-inch long stubble that had hidden his bruised jaw and gently scratched the back of her neck on so many cold nights.
His hair had been trimmed to decent order, and the sun-bleached curls that had begun to fray about his face were now combed down with rosewater and pomade into the reflection she remembered meeting in Hertfordshire.
Even his tattered coat had been brushed into some measure of respectability, a new shirt procured from somewhere, and his cravat tied more neatly than she had ever seen him manage.
She refused to glance down at her own attire, but the mirror across the room betrayed her, and she compared it, nonetheless. Beside him, she looked like the foundling she was.
“You should rest,” he said. “I mean to go and ask after sailings and the tides. There is no sense in both of us —”
“Yes,” she said. “Go. I am well enough.”
“I asked after a lady’s maid for you. You need but ring, and they will draw a bath, take your gowns to be cleaned, bring something for you to eat, and anything else you require.”
She forced her lips to do something that looked pleasant. “Very kind of you.”
“It is not kindness, it…” He broke off with a sigh. “We can afford for you to be comfortable, Elizabeth. You need not… Well. See that you ask for whatever you wish.”
What she wished? That was not a thing she could ask for, but she nodded vaguely and tried not to let her eyes stray to her reflection in the mirror, six feet from him.
He remained for another moment, his finger ticking along the seam of his trousers. Abruptly, he drew a breath and pulled a pair of gloves from the pocket of his coat. Heaven only knew where he had got them, but they did the work of hiding his calloused hands from the world. “I will not be long.”
“Take as long as you need.” She heard how it sounded the instant it left her — stay away as long as you like. She would not have retracted it if she could have.
The door shut behind him, and she stood alone in the good, warm room she had dreamed of for two months. A solid roof, a locked door, a soft feather bed, and the whole of it to herself.
She ought to call for hot water and bathe, as he had done.
That would have been the civilised thing to do — wash the road from her, every stinking mile of it.
Let a hired girl rinse and plait and style her hair for her, let another hired girl clean her gown and her linens to wash out every stain, every sweat mark, and mend every rip.
And let someone else bring her tea — real tea, hot and dark, with rich cream and just a hint of honey in it, and something sweet to eat beside it.
But just now, all she could manage were tears, and the pillow looked like a willing confidante.