Chapter 5
Elizabeth
I woke with my hand pressed to the spot where his lips had touched.
The glove was gone, but my body remembered the pressure of his mouth and those extra seconds he had allowed himself.
Magnificent, he had said. And: I know. As if my terror didn’t surprise him. As if he had seen it beneath the mask, behind every smile, behind every retort, since the evening began. As if he had watched me play a role and loved me for the courage it took to sustain it.
Jane was still asleep. Sunlight streamed through the window on Gracechurch Street, drawing a pale rectangle on the floor.
The house rustled with its ordinary sounds: the Gardiner children downstairs, the clatter of dishes, my aunt’s voice giving orders to the cook with that gentle efficiency that made her the finest mistress of a household I had ever known.
The ordinary world. The world where I knew who I was.
Last night, I had been someone else. Last night, I had danced in a drawing room in Grosvenor Square, beneath crystal chandeliers, among women who wore tiaras and men whose names appeared in Debrett’s.
I had discussed literature with a colonel, laughed with a countess, put Caroline Bingley in her place with a grace I was still rather proud of, and danced a country dance with the man I was going to marry without missing a single step.
He had missed one.
I smiled in spite of myself. Mr. Darcy of Pemberley, ten thousand pounds a year, master of the finest estate in Derbyshire, had forgotten to turn left because he was looking at me.
The thought should have flattered me. It did something far worse: it made me weak, soft, incapable of thinking with the clarity I ordinarily demanded of myself.
When a man of that caliber forgot the steps of a dance because of you, when his eyes lost that polite distance he kept between himself and the world and rested on you with a nakedness that felt like confession, it became very difficult to keep a cool head.
A thousand pounds dowry, forty pounds a year, an estate encumbered by an entail: that was what I brought.
But I am a gentleman’s daughter, and he is a gentleman.
On that ground, we are equals. I had said it to Lady Catherine without trembling; I only needed to keep saying it to myself.
Jane stirred beneath the covers. Opened her eyes. Smiled at me.
“Have you been awake long?”
“A little while.”
“You’re thinking about the ball.”
It wasn’t a question. Jane knew me the way you know a book you’ve read a hundred times: she could open to any page and know exactly where I was.
“I’m thinking about the way the guests looked at me. And Mr. Darcy on the threshold, when he kissed my hand.”
Jane propped herself up on one elbow.
“You looked so at home last night, Lizzy.”
The words struck me. At home. I had looked it.
Yes. Jane believed it. My aunt believed it.
The colonel believed it, and Darcy believed it, because that was what I had wanted them to believe.
I had put all my energy, all my intelligence, all my pride into that performance, and the result was so convincing that the people who loved me most in the world had seen nothing.
“I looked it,” I said. “Yes.”
Jane heard what I left unsaid. Her eyes clouded with a tender concern she didn’t voice, for Jane also knew when not to press. She laid her hand on mine for a moment, then rose to dress.
?
Darcy had invited us for a walk in Hyde Park. Jane and Bingley walked ahead; my aunt and uncle followed with the children; Mr. Darcy and I held the middle of this family procession, close enough to speak quietly and surrounded enough to satisfy propriety.
The park was beautiful. London’s sky, washed clean by the night’s rain, had taken on an unusual clarity, and the trees of Hyde Park seemed greener than they had any right to be in the city.
Riders passed at a trot on Rotten Row. Nursemaids walked with bundled-up children, some chasing after hoops.
At the park entrance, a street vendor hawked his wares.
London was playing at being the countryside, with the somewhat forced insistence of great cities that don’t know how to be still.
We walked in silence. Not the heavy silence of those who have nothing to say, but that of two people who have too much to say and don’t know where to begin.
The ball hung between us like something too large to name.
I felt Darcy’s presence at my left with that maddening acuity my body had developed over the weeks—that constant awareness of his warmth, his height, the movement of his arm as he walked.
It was he who broke the silence. Not with a compliment, not with a question about the ball, but with the unexpected.
“Have you begun Clarissa?” he asked at last.
I turned a wary glance his way.
“I’ve read a few pages. I’m already worried for her.”
“Yet you haven’t finished the first volume.”
“I know. But someone should have listened to her from the start.”
It is handy to keep a spare title for a quiet moment.
Choose one from Lokepub and come back to it later.
An almost amused crease appeared at the corner of his mouth.
“Richardson is interested in moral consequences.”
“Perhaps. But I find the silence around her unbearable.”
“You prefer Fielding, then.”
“I find him more alive.”
“That is a singular defense.”
“And you, Mr. Darcy, sometimes place too much value on seriousness.”
He stopped so abruptly that I took two steps before turning back.
“That is a serious accusation, Miss Elizabeth.”
“I mean it sincerely.”
“Would you defend it before other readers?”
“Yes.”
“You are very sure of yourself.”
“Not always. On this point, however, yes.”
This time, he laughed. A brief, surprised laugh that transformed his face and left me feeling I had won more than an argument.
“You never yield easily,” he said.
“Because you truly listen to my answers.”
We resumed our walk, debating with such fervor that Bingley turned around twice.
Darcy maintained that a novel should elevate as much as it entertained; I contended that a book incapable of stirring the heart elevated no one.
He invoked Johnson; I countered with Shakespeare.
Then we moved from literature to the education of women, a subject on which he was imprudent enough to suggest that perhaps not all women desired more instruction.
“Perhaps because they are taught from a very young age to desire nothing that might inconvenience men,” I replied.
“Do you believe, then, that education alone can make everyone free?”
“No. But ignorance almost always guarantees the opposite.”
He reflected before responding, which pleased me more than easy agreement.
“On that point,” he said at last, “I fear you are right.”
“Thank you for admitting it.”
“I can learn,” he replied.
That evening, in our room, I closed the first volume of Clarissa after reading a few more pages. Jane was already asleep. I blew out the candle. In the darkness, Gracechurch Street smelled of clean linen and melted wax, and through the half-open window the sounds of London rose like a distant tide.
Tomorrow, the final shopping for the trousseau. The day after, the return to Longbourn. In two weeks, the church. And after the church, the carriage, the road, Pemberley.
I brought my right hand to my lips. There, on the back of my hand, the exact spot where his mouth had rested. The skin was warm, ordinary, innocent.
Nothing was innocent.
Eighteen days.