Chapter 3
Elizabeth
London smelled of coal and rain.
We had arrived the previous evening after a journey my mother had made memorable by commenting on every inn, every coaching stop, and every carriage we passed.
Jane had slept the last two hours, her head on my shoulder.
I had not. Georgiana’s collection sat heavy in my pocket, and every jolt reminded me that with each mile I drew closer to Mr. Darcy’s city.
His city. His house. His world.
We had scarcely crossed the threshold at Gracechurch Street before my mother demanded tea, a warming pan, and assurances that her boxes of lace had not gone astray.
Jane assured her that Hill had kept watch over the boxes. My mother replied that Hill had mostly slept between Watford and London.
“Hill mostly looked after the luggage, Mama,” I said.
My mother’s offended look answered before she did. My aunt Gardiner stifled a smile and kissed me.
“I would rather not repeat that journey tomorrow,” I whispered to my aunt.
“Let us not exaggerate,” she replied.
That was why I loved my aunt: she always knew where virtue ended.
?
The next morning, she found me in the small parlor, the poetry collection open on my lap, the same page staring back at me for nearly half an hour.
“Has the sonnet become any clearer on the sixth reading?”
I closed the book too quickly.
“I wasn’t reading it.”
“I had noticed.”
She sat beside me. Outside, Cheapside was waking to the clatter of wheels, the calls of merchants, and a fine rain that gleamed on the cobblestones.
“Aunt… how did you know you belonged in my uncle’s life?”
She did not answer immediately. She took my hand, turning my fingers over in hers as if the answer might be written there.
“I didn’t know right away. I knew that I loved him. The rest came after.”
“So they are two different things?”
“Very different. Loving a man doesn’t mean knowing how to live in his house, among his habits, with his silences and his stockings left by the fire.”
I laughed in spite of myself.
And so I learned that my uncle had been leaving his stockings by the fire for twenty years, and that my aunt considered loving him despite this proof of a remarkable attachment.
Her humor faded. Her fingers tightened around mine.
“What truly frightens you, Lizzy?”
I lowered my eyes to the sonnet. Darcy’s handwriting, firm and tight, filled barely a line. Sonnets 29. F.D. A man incapable of telling me what he felt without summoning Shakespeare.
“Mr. Darcy possesses Pemberley, a house in London, and a name that changes people’s smiles. I possess three muslin dresses, a doubtful talent for the pianoforte, and a mother who announces his fortune before she even speaks his name.”
“You also possess a mind that forced him to reconsider everything he thought he knew about himself.”
“That won’t teach me to manage such a household.”
“No. Mrs. Reynolds will teach you to work with her. Your mind will simply keep you from becoming insufferable by thinking you know everything on the first day.”
I turned the book over in my hands.
“And if he discovers I don’t suit his life?”
My aunt held my gaze with a gentleness so firm it forbade me to look away.
“Mr. Darcy did not ask for you despite what you are. He asked for you because of what you are. If you begin to diminish yourself to fit a role no one is asking you to play, you will lose precisely the woman he chose.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It isn’t. But complicating things before you’ve even tried won’t make them any easier.”
She stood and smoothed her skirt.
“Now, get dressed. Your mother means to conquer Bond Street before noon, and I fear the shopkeepers have had no warning.”
?
Bond Street was a theater, and my mother had decided to be its leading actress.
In the first shop, a saleswoman greeted us with distracted politeness. She showed us three serviceable muslins, two passable ribbons, and a shawl that Jane called lovely because Jane would have called a tablecloth lovely if she feared hurting its feelings.
“We shall need something finer for my Lizzy,” my mother declared. “She is marrying Mr. Darcy, of Pemberley.”
The saleswoman stopped folding the fabric.
“Mr. Darcy, madam?”
“Ten thousand pounds a year,” my mother clarified, in case multiple Mr. Darcys were vying for Derbyshire.
The change was immediate. The shopkeeper called the proprietress. The proprietress called an apprentice. A door that had been invisible until then opened, and out came silks that clearly did not exist for gentlemen's daughters with a mere two thousand pounds a year.
“This silk comes from the Spitalfields workshops,” the proprietress assured us, unrolling it before me. “It would suit the future Mrs. Darcy perfectly.”
I touched the silk. It was soft, light, almost liquid beneath my fingers.
“You didn't show us this one earlier.”
The woman blinked.
Jane discreetly elbowed me in the ribs.
“Lizzy.”
“I'm only wondering what changed.”
My aunt coughed behind her glove. My mother, fortunately, was no longer listening.
My mother requested eight yards. I proposed four. Jane arbitrated at six with the serenity of a diplomat ending a war, and the proprietress noted the figure before hostilities could resume.
Six yards of silk were duly added to the trousseau, to the great relief of the proprietress and the despair of my conscience.
By the third shop, my mother had recounted the size of Darcy's fortune twice, the supposed dimensions of Pemberley once, and three times that Lady Catherine de Bourgh was his aunt.
“Mama, that's not necessary,” I said quietly.
“Lizzy!”
“I'd rather we discuss the dress.”
Jane stifled a laugh. We stepped out while my mother demanded to see lace “worthy of Derbyshire.”
In the street, Jane slipped her arm through mine.
“You're awfully quiet whenever Mama stops talking for two.”
“I'm trying not to think about the cost of all this.”
“And are you succeeding?”
“Very poorly.”
She smiled, then her expression turned searching.
“It's not the prices that concern you.”
I watched a carriage stop in front of the shop. A lady stepped down. The proprietress rushed to greet her with the same deep curtsy she had offered me after hearing Darcy's name.
“Yesterday, these women wouldn't have noticed me. Today, they bow because I'm going to bear his name.”
“Their curtsies don't change you.”
“No. But I don't know yet whether they'll eventually make me forget they're not really addressing me.”
Jane stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Then look at those who knew you before the name. Aunt Gardiner. Papa. Me. Him.”
“Him especially?”
“Him especially,” she repeated. “Mr. Darcy loved you when you mocked him in the drawing rooms of Meryton. He'll no doubt survive six yards of Spitalfields silk.”
“You're mocking me.”
“A little,” she admitted.
This time, I laughed outright.
?
Mr. Darcy's carriage came to collect us the following afternoon. My aunt accompanied me. My mother had wanted to come, but a providential migraine—which I suspected my aunt of engineering—kept her at Gracechurch Street.
Before I left, Jane advised me to enjoy every moment, including the ancestral portraits. Those, at least, couldn't answer back—a considerable advantage after a morning spent with our mother.
The house on Grosvenor Square rose behind a pale stone stoop, tall, regular, and silent. It did not shout wealth. It murmured it with the assurance of people who had never had to worry about such things.
Darcy was waiting for us in the vestibule.
At Longbourn, he had always seemed too tall for the drawing room, too grave for the flowered cushions, too carefully composed for my mother's lukewarm tea. Here, the space seemed to have been built around him. The master of the house. Mr. Darcy of Pemberley.
He greeted my aunt, then turned to me, and for a full second he forgot to speak. Three weeks. Three weeks since I had seen him, and I discovered, from the way my breath caught in my throat, that I had been counting them too.
“Miss Elizabeth.”
“Mr. Darcy.”
His eyes traveled over my face as if to assure himself I was truly there. He took my hand to bring it to his lips, which was perfectly proper, and held it a moment longer, which was not. Through the glove, the warmth of his mouth spread all the way to my wrist.
“I hope the journey wasn't too difficult.”
“The journey was very comfortable, thank you.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
My aunt glanced between us with amusement she didn’t bother to conceal.
Some of the staff waited in the hall: a few liveried servants, two chambermaids, and Mrs. Thornton, the housekeeper, whose bearing would have made a duchess look careless.
Darcy introduced me to Mrs. Thornton, who welcomed us with warm dignity. Her gaze lingered on me a second too long—not impolite, merely appraising.
“I hope I won’t disrupt all your routines on my first visit.”
“A house adapts to those who live in it, miss,” she replied.
Darcy observed that Mrs. Thornton excelled at diplomacy. The housekeeper didn’t smile, but her eyes softened.
The tour began with the blue drawing room. White roses grown under glass had been arranged on the console with deliberate care.
“They’re magnificent,” my aunt said.
“They come from Richmond,” Mrs. Thornton replied.
I turned to Darcy.
“You had my favorite flowers brought from Richmond?”
“I thought they would please you.”
“You knew they would.”
“I hoped they would.”
He lowered his eyes to the flowers, caught off guard by his own attentiveness. The gesture touched me more than any declaration would have.
In the dining room, the table could seat twenty.
“This table seems immense,” I said.
“More often than it hosts twenty conversations,” Darcy replied.
My aunt suggested I might make the room less solemn. I announced I would begin by moving two chairs closer together. Darcy’s worried look confirmed that any reform must proceed with caution.
The great drawing room came next. Above the fireplace hung the portrait of Lady Anne Darcy.