Chapter 3 #2
Beautiful. Imposing. Born a Fitzwilliam, daughter of an earl, raised to reign over such a house. Her hands rested on the back of a chair with studied grace, and her eyes—the same as her son’s—seemed to measure the distance between herself and the daughter of Longbourn.
I stepped closer.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
Darcy’s voice changed. Barely. One syllable lower, one breath held.
“Does Georgiana remember her?” my aunt asked.
“Very little. She was still a child when our mother died.”
I looked at the portrait, then at the man behind me.
“She looks very formidable.”
Darcy raised his eyes to Lady Anne.
“She found smiling portraits undignified.”
“Was she different with her family?”
He looked at me, surprised.
“She rarely laughed in front of strangers.”
“And in front of you?”
His face relaxed.
“More often.”
The silence that followed was no longer that of a museum. It held a mother who had laughed, a boy who remembered, and a grief he never showed.
“Would she have approved of your choice?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Mrs. Thornton lowered her eyes. My aunt turned toward a console with admirable discretion.
Darcy didn’t evade.
“She would have wanted to know you before passing judgment.”
“I understand.”
He kept his eyes on the portrait.
“And after?”
He stepped closer.
“After, she would have loved you.”
Nothing in his tone sought to flatter. He was stating a certainty. My throat tightened.
He placed his hand on my elbow to guide me to the next room. The contact was perfectly proper. Barely a second. But I could still feel his palm through my sleeve, and I thought of the lock of hair the wind had pressed against my lips at Longbourn, of his hand stopping an inch from my cheek.
Soon, Lizzy. Soon, he won’t have to withdraw it.
The library was the last room. The mahogany shelves rose to the ceiling. The air smelled of leather, paper, and beeswax. Beneath these familiar scents, I caught the sandalwood mixed with fine wool—the same scent from Georgiana’s book.
His library smells like him. Or he smells like his library. One of the two is surely very improper.
I ran my finger along the spines.
“You actually have all these authors.”
“My family has been collecting them for generations.”
“I see.”
My aunt had moved away with Mrs. Thornton toward the windows.
The room smelled of leather, wax, and old paper—that library scent that's the same everywhere—and in this particular house, it suddenly made me dizzy.
I ran my hand along the first shelf, at palm height.
Cowper. Crabbe. Radcliffe. And several novels I'd mentioned to Darcy during conversations he'd barely seemed to listen to.
I turned around.
“You had these brought in for me.”
“Georgiana doesn't much care for Mrs. Radcliffe,” he said. “And Cowper isn't to my taste.”
“You remembered all these titles?”
“You spoke of them with enthusiasm.”
“I speak of many things with enthusiasm.”
“I remember that as well.”
His answer left me without one.
My gaze settled on the volumes of Clarissa.
“Have you read it?” I asked.
“Several years ago.”
“And you survived all seven volumes?”
“Barely.”
He removed the first volume from the shelf and held it out to me. Our fingers met on the binding, a second too long to be accidental, and he didn't withdraw his hand first.
“Take it. You can tell me what you think.”
I took the book.
“You might regret that offer.”
“I'll take the risk.”
My aunt examined the shelves, then drew Mrs. Thornton toward the gardens under the admirably transparent pretext of checking whether a London house could truly conceal a tree.
The door closed behind them.
We were alone.
The silence changed. It no longer pressed down—it drew us together. I heard the rain on the windows, the fire crackling in the hearth, and my own breathing, far too quick for a woman who claimed to be choosing a book.
“Thank you,” I said.
Darcy took a step forward.
“I wanted this house to resemble you a little before you entered it as Mrs. Darcy.”
“It will take more than a few novels for me to feel at home.”
“I'm counting on that.”
I looked up. He was close enough for me to see the vein pulsing above his collar, close enough to recognize the soap he used—something clean and cool with a hint of bergamot. I stepped back, but not as far as I should have.
“And if I disrupt the order of your shelves a little?”
“We've already discussed this. Certain principles allow no negotiation.”
Finished reading for tonight?
Leave one more book waiting for you at Lokepub.
“I shall try to spare Johnson.”
“Johnson may be moved.”
“I appreciate the sacrifice.”
“Don't abuse it.”
I smiled. He didn't. His eyes dropped for a second to my mouth, then rose again. That tiny movement erased the shelves, the windows, and the entire house.
“Fitzwilliam…”
The name escaped me, barely a whisper. I had never spoken it aloud to him before.
The effect was immediate, and I hadn't anticipated it. Something came undone in his face—a tension he couldn't suppress in time—and his fingers clenched behind his back as if he needed something to grip.
“Say it again.”
The request was so quiet I thought I'd imagined it.
“Fitzwilliam.”
He inhaled. A single breath, too deep, and I understood with brutal clarity that this man whom all of Hertfordshire judged cold was standing before me through an effort I couldn't begin to fathom.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor. He stepped back the moment the door opened. My aunt returned with Mrs. Thornton and an expression of innocence that fooled no one.
“The gardens are charming,” she announced. “The tree truly exists.”
“I'm reassured,” I replied.
The world resumed its proper distances. Not quite its balance.
?
Mr. Bingley was giving a dinner two days later, in the house he had rented on Grosvenor Street, and Miss Bingley presided as mistress of the house with a dedication that bordered on territorial claim.
She received us in the drawing room. She embraced Jane, complimented my aunt on her shawl with that precision that allows one to praise a garment while placing its price, and turned to me.
“Miss Elizabeth. What a pleasure. So you are in London? We've scarcely seen you.”
“My aunt lives in Cheapside,” I replied. “That requires a certain courage from visitors.”
A brief silence. My aunt, to my right, examined the ceiling with sustained interest.
“You have always had a great deal of wit,” said Miss Bingley.
“How kind of you to notice so often.”
Dinner was announced.
Darcy had arrived last and had said almost nothing. Standing near the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, he answered questions in monosyllables and stared into the fire as though expecting something to emerge from it. Anyone walking into that room would have found him insufferably haughty.
Two days earlier, in the library at Grosvenor Square, this same man had asked me, his voice barely above a whisper, to say his Christian name once more.
He offered me his arm to go in to dinner. His fingers pressed mine briefly—just a second—when no one was looking.
“You look like a condemned man,” I murmured.
“I’ve dined a hundred times in this house.”
“And?”
“And you were never here.”
I was seated between Mr. Hurst, who spoke only to comment on the sauce, and Colonel Fitzwilliam, who saved my evening. Darcy sat across from me, Miss Bingley on his right, which gave her ample opportunity to lean toward him with every course.
She did so methodically. She spoke to him of Pemberley, of Pemberley’s library, of Pemberley’s gardens, of what a tragedy it would be if such a perfect house were disrupted in its routines. She pitied Georgiana for being so shy. She inquired after Lady Catherine with pointed compassion.
Darcy responded. Politely. Briefly. Never turning his head toward her longer than politeness required.
“Miss Eliza,” she said at last, “you must be terrified at the idea of taking charge of a household of such importance. It takes years to learn these things. Years, and a certain education.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam set down his fork.
I could have responded. I had three replies ready, one of which my mother would not have approved—and which I still think, to this day, was excellent.
“You’re right,” I said. “It will take me years. Fortunately, I’m being granted about fifty.”
The colonel choked on his wine.
“Miss Bingley,” Darcy said.
Two words. His voice had not risen in the slightest. He turned on her a look I had not seen since Netherfield—the one that had earned him the reputation he trailed through all of Hertfordshire—and Miss Bingley suddenly found her plate of considerable interest.
“Mrs. Reynolds has governed Pemberley for twenty-two years,” he continued in the same even tone. “She needs no one to teach her her business, and Miss Bennet needs no one to teach her hers. The chicken is excellent.”
That was all.
Conversation resumed elsewhere. Bingley launched, with evident relief, into the tale of an ill-fated hunt, and no one mentioned Pemberley again for the rest of the evening.
He had not defended me by placing me under his protection, as one might shield a child. He had set things right, in front of everyone, and he had done so without raising his voice or dwelling on it.
I lowered my eyes to my plate to hide what my face was doing.
In the drawing room, later, Miss Bingley pressed Georgiana to play. Georgiana obliged and played magnificently, as always, with fingers that trembled through the first measures, as always.
“Lovely,” Miss Bingley said. “You’ll soon be playing duets with Miss Eliza. That should give you a chance to practice your scales, my dear.”
“I’m afraid I’ve never had the patience to practice,” I replied. “It’s a failing. But Miss Darcy gives me an excellent reason to begin.”
Georgiana turned scarlet with pleasure.
Tea was served. The gentlemen returned from their port earlier than custom allowed, which Miss Bingley attributed aloud to her brother’s impatience, and which I attributed to nothing at all—because Darcy crossed the drawing room and came to sit beside me.