Chapter 25
Darcy had meant to have Anders set him down at the Gardiners’ door. Instead, somewhere near St. Paul’s, he checked his watch and told the coachman to take the carriage on to Gracechurch Street and wait there. He would walk the rest of the way.
It was not a long distance, but it was enough to prove that physical exertion did not calm him any better than sitting still had.
Between St. Paul’s and the Gardiners’ house on Gracechurch Street, the speech Darcy had prepared changed three times.
By the Poultry, it had lost most of its polish.
By the time he turned into Gracechurch Street, only one sentence remained, and he suspected even that was too formal.
He was still early. So he walked around the block a few times, much as his mother had asked him to do in Mayfair. Finally, he stopped walking and raised his hand to the knocker.
The door was opened promptly by a footman, and just inside stood a boy of seven or eight, posted like a sentry.
“I am Mr. Darcy,” he said to the boy. And then, to the footman, “Mrs. Gardiner is expecting me.”
“You may not come in without the password,” the boy declared.
The footman pressed his lips together.
Darcy looked down at him. “I am afraid I have not been given one.”
The boy considered this. “Are you a link-boy?”
This must be the secret phrase, and Darcy bent a little, lowering his voice to match the gravity of the question. “Not before dark.”
The boy considered this reply. Darcy straightened and waited, hands folded behind his back, as though his admission to the house depended entirely upon the judgement of the child before him.
At last the boy nodded. “Very well. You may pass.”
“I am much obliged.”
The boy led him down the passage with great importance, stopping once to look back and make sure his prisoner had not escaped. Darcy followed.
At the parlour door, the small Gardiner knocked, opened it, and announced, “Mamma, Mr. Darcy has come. He did not know the password, but I let him in because he is not a link-boy until after dark.”
Mrs. Gardiner, to her credit, received this intelligence with only the smallest pause.
“Very kind of you, Edward. Mr. Darcy, good afternoon. Edward, now that Mr. Darcy has been admitted, you may return to your lessons.”
Master Edward frowned, apparently considering this dismissal by his mother a poor reward for his protection of the house. But he bowed to necessity and withdrew.
Miss Elizabeth sat near the window with her workbox open beside her. She was putting her things away, not having expected him, he thought, until the hour.
Both she and her aunt rose to greet him.
Mrs. Gardiner offered him a chair. She asked after Lady Anne and Miss Darcy, and Darcy inquired after Mr. Gardiner and Miss Bennet.
He was told that the warehouses had never been busier, which was both a blessing and a trial, and that Miss Bennet was currently providing the Gardiner girls with a sewing lesson.
Miss Elizabeth did not look up until Mrs. Gardiner mentioned their outing.
“I am grateful you allowed me to call,” Darcy said. “I was sorry the visit to The British Institution was so brief. There was more I had wished to say.”
Mrs. Gardiner set down her cup. “Then it is fortunate you have come.” She stood. “You will both forgive me. Thursday is the day for the housekeeper’s accounts, and she keeps the hour quite strictly. I shall bring the tea with me when I return.”
She went out calmly, closing the door almost all the way.
Darcy glanced over at Miss Elizabeth, who was not looking at him. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“My sister sends her compliments,” he said, although Georgiana had not known he was coming. “She is learning the second part of a duet for the spring, which she intends to ask you to play with her.” That, at least, was the truth.
For a moment, it worked. Miss Elizabeth met his gaze. There was the small tilt of her head he knew so well, and something warmer came into her expression.
“Miss Darcy does nothing without a plan. Tell her the first part of this duet had better be worth learning, for it is more difficult for me than for her.”
“I will tell her.” He hesitated. “Miss Elizabeth,” he said.
She looked up.
Darcy had meant to begin with Hertfordshire. Then London. Then his mother, because some part of that had to be explained. But her face was very still, and he thought that one more careful sentence might lose her.
“I love you.” He sat up straight. Leaned forward a bit. “I have loved you before I even knew what I was feeling. Since Hertfordshire, I think. Certainly since you came to London.”
Elizabeth did not speak. She did not move, except that her lips had parted slightly.
He drew a breath. “I had thought to say this more eloquently, but I find I cannot. I can only say that I came here because I did not wish you to say yes to someone else.”
She still appeared confused.
“Miss Elizabeth, will you marry me?”
At that, something changed in her face. He saw it before she could hide it. Surprise, sharp and unguarded.
“I fear you have the advantage of me, Mr. Darcy.” Her voice was level. “I had prepared myself for several conversations today, but I must confess this was not among them.”
Darcy held still. She had not said no. She had not said yes, but she had not said no, and for the moment that was enough to keep him from losing the little sense he had remaining. “I did not ask you properly. I am sorry, that was not as I planned.”
“On the contrary. It was very plainly done.” She clasped her hands together, then unclasped them. “Before I make you any answer, I ask that you satisfy me on one point.”
“Of course,” he said.
“A week ago I sat in your mother’s house and listened to your sister play.
At the end of the evening, I went to fetch my aunt’s shawl, and the library door stood open.
Your mother and uncle spoke of a fine girl with thirty thousand pounds and no nonsense about her who would be perfect for you.
‘Miss Finch is exactly the sort of girl he wants,’ your mother said.
She had not been so easy about a thing all season.
” Her chin was perfectly level. “I hope you will forgive me if I ask—if you love me, how can you allow your mother to match you with someone else?”
The shawl. Now he had his answer.
For a week Darcy had agonized, had searched his own conduct for any offence he could possibly have committed, and all the while it had nothing to do with him.
It had been something she had overheard between his mother and his uncle, something he had not even known had been said and that might have been corrected in ten words had she only asked him about it.
A hard, useless anger rose in him then. Not at Miss Elizabeth—though he was angry with her too—but at his mother.
Her cleverness, her arrangements, her meddling in other people’s lives, pushing them where she wished them to go.
She wanted to bring people together but had managed only to keep Miss Elizabeth and him apart.
She had told him to let Miss Elizabeth be, to be civil and expect nothing, since no sensible woman could forgive a man who had insulted her twice.
And he had obeyed. For weeks he had not spoken to Miss Elizabeth beyond the bare necessities of politeness, because his mother had judged it kindest and he had thought her wiser in such matters than himself.
Then, when he could stay away no longer, when he had begun to invent small excuses to be near her—walking her to the music room, to the warmth of the conservatory, seeking her out in the park, watching out for her when there were too many people in his house—his mother had not known what it meant, though others had.
How well he made amends, she had said. What credit it did him.
She had watched him falling in love and missed it completely.
Instead, she had been busy elsewhere on his behalf though he had told her he did not want it. The parties that quadrupled in size. Miss Finch, who was not what he wanted. Other ladies paraded before him for his mother’s own purposes. He had been called into rooms on cue, hat in hand.
He had let her do it. That was the worst of it. He had walked around the blocks of Mayfair at her whim and thought himself dutiful.
His mother had found Aldridge. She had set that good, steady, blameless man down in Gracechurch Street and left him there, and Darcy had been terrified that this match, unlike the others, would prove successful.
None of it had been necessary. He had loved Miss Elizabeth Bennet from very nearly the first, without any assistance whatever.
He set it aside as best he could. His mother was not in the room, Miss Elizabeth was, and she was currently watching him argue silently with himself. “They were not speaking of me,” he said, using every ounce of restraint he still possessed to keep his voice level.
Miss Elizabeth’s expression did not change. “No? Then of whom?”
“I was not there, madam, I cannot answer for their conversation. But Miss Finch is not for me.”
A little colour came into her face. “That is a difficult thing to know, Mr. Darcy, when so many people seem to have been deciding so many things on your behalf.” She paused. “And on mine.”
He could not deny it. “No,” he said. “You are quite right. I can speak only for myself, but my decision is the one that matters.”
“And that is where I am confused.” The words were quiet, but they struck him hard.
Miss Elizabeth rose. “Is this your decision? I thought I understood,” she said.
“I thought your mother had chosen one course, and that you were in agreement. Now I find I was wrong, and I am asked to believe that you feel completely differently than you did in Hertfordshire.”
“No.”
She sighed and her shoulders dropped, her expression sceptical. “You do not feel differently than when you insulted me?”
“I mean that I loved you then as well. Only I did not understand what I was feeling.”