XLIII #2
He did not know how to do this. He had, in nine-and-twenty years, never once bought a woman a gown.
His sister's things came to Pemberley by processes he had never inquired into, arranged by Lady Matlock and housekeepers and modistes. He had signed the accounts without reading them. He knew a great deal about a great many things and nothing whatever about this, and he had not even Elizabeth’s measurements as a guide.
He was utterly at the mercy of the memory of her body in his hands and the cleverness of strangers.
The woman who kept the shop had some English and more French, so he was able to make known his wants.
A gown, ready-made or nearly, in soft colours and gentle materials for his wife.
No, he had to tell her twice that he did not know Elizabeth’s measurements.
He heard how it sounded, a husband who did not know the size of his own wife, and did not try to explain.
Small, was all he could say. Her bust was…
more ample than a woman of her frame had any right to, but the rest of her had grown — he found the words difficult — she had grown very thin.
Yes, he knew that would be difficult to fit, but if the gown fell just so, it would highlight the colour she had earned in Spain and set off her figure in a way that would make her feel as beautiful as she was.
About so, he said, and held his hands in the air in an approximation that his arms could describe better by feel than his mouth could by numbers.
The woman was kind about it, for she had probably seen every sort of fool come through her door. She brought out what she had. He had her show one after another to him, and found that he did not want any of the fashionable ones.
There were smart things, town things, the sort of gown a lady wore to be seen in — and they were wrong, all of them, and it took him a moment to understand why. They were not her.
Or rather, they were not the her he wanted to see.
The Elizabeth of three months' nightmare — the stranded woman, the fever-nurse, the creature who had faced down three armed men on a mountain — that Elizabeth deserved silk and jewellery and every fine thing his money could buy for as long as he had it, and he meant to give it to her, all of it, for the rest of their lives if she would let him.
But the Elizabeth his hand reached toward, among the gowns, was an older one.
A girl in a country assembly room in Hertfordshire, laughing at something — probably at him — her eyes bright and her steps lively, in a simple soft muslin the colour of new leaves.
A girl he had stood against the wall and watched and told himself he did not admire.
He had lied, and had gone on lying until the lie had sickened him with regret.
It was a soft thing, a pale green like the first of the willows, sprigged and simple, with a little lace at the sleeve — not a grand gown, not a town gown, but a country gentlewoman's gown, the kind of thing a girl might wear to walk three miles across muddy fields to nurse a sister and arrive with her hem six inches deep in mud and her eyes shining and not care a whit for what anybody thought of it.
“That one.”
The shopwoman turned it in her hands, trying to talk him out of it — it was not her finest; there were richer things, more à la mode, and she had a very great interest in earning as much of his custom as he would give — but Darcy shook his head. That one.
It might want taking in at the waist, she warned; it was cut for a fuller figure than the senor described.
He knew. So long as it fitted at the bosom, where it still might, let the rest hang loose.
She would fill it out again. He would see to it that she filled it out again, that she never again in her life went so thin that her gown swam on her.
In the meantime, she would have something that was not the beggar's rag she had worn off the mountain.
He paid for the gown, and a shawl and slippers and new stockings and undergarments to go with it. He had them all wrapped, and refused the help of a boy to deliver it all, so he carried it back through the streets himself.
She was asleep when he came in.
He had half expected it — she had not slept well in days, and the good bed and the warm room had taken her down at last into a real sleep, deep enough that she did not stir when he opened the door.
She lay on top of the coverlet, still dressed, as though she had meant only to rest her eyes and been ambushed by her own exhaustion.
One hand lay open on the pillow beside her face, and in sleep, the barrier and refusal and worthless, noble dignity that made her think rejection was a kindness were all gone out of her.
What was left was only Elizabeth — tired and dirty, and so dear to him that he had to stand a moment inside the door and simply master himself before he could move.
He crossed the room quietly and unwrapped the gown, then laid it out on the bed beside her, over the coverlet, where her eyes would find it the moment she opened them — the soft green spread out careful and smoothed, the shawl and stockings folded at its side.
Then he drew the chair to the window and waited for her to wake.
He spent an hour, perhaps more, watching the harbour go pink and gold as the afternoon wore down, guarding his sleeping wife.
The green gown lay between them like the ghost of a girl in a Hertfordshire ballroom, back before either of them had learned how much there was to lose.
She woke as the light was going.
He saw the moment it happened — the change in her breathing, the small frown, the way her mouth worked against the thickness of her tongue after a sleep that had left her too incapacitated to even swallow.
He held still in his chair by the window and did not speak, because he did not want to be the first thing she saw.
She came up out of sleep by degrees. She stirred a little, swiped at her cheeks, and when her hand strayed senselessly back to the coverlet, it found the green muslin spread out there.
She moved it once, tousling the fabric as a little crease appeared over the bridge of her nose, and she opened bleary eyes to stare at it.
For a moment, she only looked at it without comprehension.
She kept blinking, as if that might resolve the gown into simply a blanket, or another piece of the furnishings.
Then she understood what it was, and sat up a little.
She lifted the sleeve, her thumb working over the edge of the lace, and then her head swivelled about to search the room until she found him.
She asked no questions. Her hand strayed into the fabric, and the crease in her brow had deepened from confusion to some more precarious feeling.
Darcy cleared his throat. “It may want taking in,” he said, when the silence had gone on long enough that he could not bear it.
“We can have someone come up to help you fit it. It should… I think it will fit around the… the top. You may decide that it flows well enough from there, but if you like, we can… Well. I am sure you know more of what is needed than I do.”
She was looking down at the gown, and not at him. He saw her throat move.
“I like the colour.” She smoothed the muslin with the flat of her hand. “I had one very like it, years ago. I wore it half to pieces.”