Chapter 2 #2
We spoke of Montaigne for nearly half an hour. When I finally left the library, Elizabeth was waiting in the corridor, leaning against the wall with that keen curiosity she could never quite conceal.
“Did everything go well?” she asked in a low voice.
“Your father is a remarkable man.”
“Then he spoke to you seriously.”
“He made me understand certain things I should have considered sooner.”
Her smile faded slightly.
“Should I be concerned?”
“No. He merely reminded me that you will never be a particularly docile wife.”
She narrowed her eyes.
Finished reading for tonight?
Leave one more book waiting for you at Lokepub.
“And does that concern you?”
“It reassures me.”
“Truly?”
“I would be more troubled to see you agree with everything I say.”
“I prefer to contradict you.”
“I had no doubt of it.”
She offered me that smile I had been seeking since my arrival at Longbourn.
“We will have much to learn from one another, then.”
Kitty appeared at the end of the corridor to inform us that our absence was beginning to fuel Mrs. Bennet's speculations. Elizabeth rolled her eyes before making her way back to the drawing room.
I followed her. Thirty-two more days before she would enter my house. Thirty-two days to prepare myself for that house to no longer be solely mine, but ours.
Thirty-two days.
?
The last afternoon before the departure for London held an almost cruel sweetness.
We followed the path that ran along the fields behind Longbourn. Kitty walked far enough away not to hear us and close enough to preserve appearances. The sky, pearl-gray, held back a rain that seemed to hesitate as much as we did.
“My mother has drawn up an itinerary for London,” Elizabeth said. “It includes six shops, two milliners, a jeweler, and, I fear, no library.”
“A serious omission.”
“I knew you would understand the situation.”
“I can ask your aunt to arrange a stop at Hatchard's.”
She turned toward me with an amused look.
“You are already proposing to modify Mrs. Bennet's decisions?”
“I will not touch her lace. I value my life.”
Her laughter rose in the damp air. I loved that laugh precisely because it was never offered out of mere politeness.
“And you, Mr. Darcy?” she asked. “What will you do while we invade Bond Street?”
“I will ensure the house is ready to receive you.”
“Yet it has received visitors for several generations.”
“None of those visitors was you.”
She slowed her pace. Her expression lost some of its lightness.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
“I am endeavoring to improve.”
“I will repeat nothing.”
“I am grateful to you.”
She inclined her head, her smile softer.
We walked a few more steps. The tall grasses brushed the hem of her dress.
“Are you eager to see Grosvenor Square?” I asked.
“Curious, certainly. Eager… I do not know.”
“What is the difference?”
“Curiosity makes you want to open a door. Impatience assumes you already know what you hope to find behind it.”
I realized she was no longer talking just about London.
“And you don't know?”
She lowered her gaze to the path.
“I know the man I'm marrying better than I did a few months ago. I still don't know what room his life will leave for mine.”
Her honesty made my chest tighten.
“Miss Elizabeth, I am not asking you to abandon your life to enter mine.”
“Yet I will leave Longbourn. I will live at Pemberley. I will bear your name. It would be naive to pretend nothing will change.”
“Everything will change,” I admitted. “For you as much as for me.”
She raised her eyes.
“For you?”
“Pemberley has always obeyed my habits. Soon it will have to learn yours.”
“The entire estate is already trembling.”
“It should be.”
Her smile returned, but I pressed on before I lost my courage.
“I don't want you to become a quieter version of yourself to suit my house.”
“I want to believe you. But you may need to remind me some days.”
“I will remind you.”
“Even if I move a book?”
“Even then.”
She smiled, and we walked a few steps in silence.
We looked at each other. This was what I loved about us: our conversation never sought to fill the silence, but to draw us closer through opposition.
The wind rose suddenly. Elizabeth caught her bonnet with one hand, but a brown lock escaped and clung to her cheek, then to her lips.
My hand rose before I could think.
My fingers stopped an inch from her skin. Close enough to feel her warmth, too far to touch. Her laughter died. Her eyes locked on mine.
“You were going to help me,” she murmured.
“Yes.”
“And what's stopping you?”
“Everything I've been taught since childhood.”
“That must be quite a burden to bear.”
“At this moment, it is.”
She did not look away. Then she pushed the lock back herself, exactly where my fingers had nearly landed.
“In thirty days,” she observed, “the rules will be different.”
“I'm counting them.”
A faint flush rose to her cheeks.
“So am I.”
Kitty sneezed behind us.
Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment, torn between laughter and exasperation.
“We should head back. Kitty's getting cold.”
“Indeed.”
We took the path back to Longbourn, closer than we had been on the way out. Our hands did not touch, but the distance between them never stopped preoccupying me.
That evening, in my room at Netherfield, I wrote to Mrs. Thornton, the housekeeper of my house in Grosvenor Square.
The letter was practical in nature: prepare the drawing rooms for the visit of Miss Elizabeth Bennet and her family, check the bedrooms, have flowers arranged, bring in additional staff for the stay.
I added, in a postscript written and crossed out three times, that the library should be put in order and the English poets placed prominently on the first shelf.
Flowers in the blue drawing room. The poets within easy reach. Fresh candles in the candelabras.
I reread my list. Ridiculous. A man of twenty-eight, master of Pemberley and ten thousand a year, fretting over the arrangement of candles because a woman was about to enter his house for the first time.
I changed nothing.
The pen scratched against the paper in the silence of the room. Outside, night had fallen over the fields, over the path where we had walked, over Longbourn where Elizabeth was perhaps already asleep, her hair loose on the pillow. I closed my eyes.
Enough. These thoughts lead nowhere I can honorably follow.
But the image of that lock against her lips returned. The warmth of her cheek an inch from my fingers. The look she had given me when my arm fell back, where disappointment mingled with relief and something darker, hungrier, that had no name in the vocabulary of well-bred young ladies.
Thirty days.
I sealed the letter. I blew out the candle. Lying in the dark, I stared at the ceiling of this borrowed room, in this house that was not mine, in this county that was not mine, and I thought of her.
I always thought of her.
Soon she would enter my drawing rooms, see my portraits, walk through the rooms where I had grown up. She would see my mother’s portrait in the great salon, the desk where my father signed his letters, the library where Georgiana played the pianoforte on Sundays.
I wanted her to feel at home there. I feared she would feel like a stranger.
It was the same fear, at bottom, that had paralyzed me before asking her to marry me. The fear that everything I was—the name, the house, the weight of the estate—was not what she desired. The fear that by marrying me, she would marry a world that would crush her.
Sleep did not come. Somewhere in the house, a clock struck midnight. Thirty days. Then Longbourn, the church, the wedding. And after the wedding, the carriage, the road to Derbyshire, Pemberley.
The connecting door between our chambers.
I rolled onto my side and buried my face in the pillow. Patience was a virtue I had been taught since childhood, one I had practiced all my life, one I had elevated to an art.
Patience was going to kill me.