The Wedding Breakfast
Elizabeth remained where she was, Jane’s gloves still folded in her hands, until Mrs Bennet cried, “Mr Darcy is gone already?” with such injured astonishment that half the vestry turned.
Mr Bingley looked towards the door, his happiness dimming only briefly before Jane touched his arm.
“He came,” she said softly.
“Yes,” Mr Bingley said, and the smile returned, gentler than before. “He came.”
That, Elizabeth thought, was perhaps all Mr Darcy had allowed himself to do.
The wedding breakfast restored everyone else to motion.
Mrs Bennet recovered first, because triumph was more natural to her than confusion.
By the time they returned to Longbourn she had already explained to Lady Lucas that Mr Darcy’s attendance was a mark of respect, that Mr Bingley had behaved beautifully, that Jane had never looked lovelier, and that no one could say what might yet happen with Lizzy.
“Mama,” Elizabeth said.
“What? I said no names.”
“You said mine.”
“Only because it is yours.”
Lady Lucas, who had been waiting for precisely such an opening, declared that she had always thought Mr Darcy a very fine young man, if perhaps a little proud.
“He is tall,” Mrs Bennet said, as though this were a related virtue.
“And rich,” Lydia added.
“Lydia,” Jane said, though she was laughing.
Mr Bingley looked as if he would have agreed to anything that kept Jane laughing.
Elizabeth escaped them by degrees, first to the window, then to the side table, where Maria Lucas found her with a plate she had not filled.
“Lizzy,” Maria said breathlessly, “Charlotte says you are coming to Kent.”
Elizabeth looked up. “Does she?”
“She wrote it to Mama. She said you had promised, or nearly promised, which I think must be the same thing when Charlotte writes it. I am so glad. I was afraid I should not know what to do at Rosings.”
“That,” Elizabeth said, “is a feeling I expect many people have had before you.”
Maria glanced anxiously towards the far end of the room, where Lady Lucas was listening to Mrs Bennet with the fixed attention of long practice.
“Charlotte says Lady Catherine is very kind,” she said. “Though she also says one must not be startled by her manner.”
“That is an alarming qualification.”
“I thought so. Mama says I must be grateful for any notice from such a great lady.”
“And are you?”
Maria considered this with real seriousness. “I expect I shall be, after I have survived it.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Then I shall endeavour to survive it with you.”
Maria’s relief was immediate and disproportionate. “Oh, I am so glad. Charlotte says the parsonage is very comfortable, and Mr Collins writes that every shelf is placed to advantage, but I think comfort must depend a little on who is in the room.”
“That is wiser than Mr Collins is likely to suspect.”
Maria brightened at the praise, then lowered her voice. “Do you think Lady Catherine will ask me many questions?”
“Undoubtedly,” Elizabeth said. “But that is not fatal.”
Maria was summoned away before Elizabeth could offer any further comfort, though she went looking rather more fortified than before.
Elizabeth watched her cross the room to Lady Lucas and thought of Kent: of Charlotte, of Mr Collins, of Lady Catherine’s alarming kindness, and of a parsonage that had suddenly become less like an obligation than a road opening ahead of her.
Mr Bingley appeared at her side.
“Miss Bennet,” he said, and stopped at once, looking faintly startled by the sound of it.
“That will take some getting used to.”
“For both of us, I think.” His smile was warm, but uncertain. “I beg your pardon. I hardly know what I ought to call you now.”
“Elizabeth,” she said. “Or Lizzy, if you can manage it. You have married my sister. I believe we may abandon some ceremony.”
Mr Bingley’s smile spread properly then.
“Elizabeth,” he said. “I shall practise.”
“You must. Jane will expect proficiency.”
“I mean to be an excellent brother,” he said, so earnestly that she could not tease him for it. “Though I warn you, I have very little experience.”
“Then begin by being useful.”
“That,” he said, brightening, “I may be able to do.”
He glanced towards the door, then lowered his voice.
“I was asked to give you this.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught before she saw what he held. It was a small parcel, wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. Nothing in it declared itself important. Nothing in Mr Bingley’s manner suggested he knew it might be.
“From whom?” she asked, though she already knew.
“Darcy. He gave it to me before he left and asked that I should place it in your hands when there was no fuss about it.”
Elizabeth looked down at the parcel. Her fingers did not quite close around it.
“Did he say what it was?”
“No. Only that it was yours, or ought to have been.” Mr Bingley frowned slightly, trying to remember. “Something lost at Netherfield, I think. He said I was not to make a speech of it.”
“That was wise of him.”
“I thought so too, though I am not always certain when Darcy is wise and when he is merely determined.”
Elizabeth took the parcel at last.
“Thank you, Charles.”
Charles looked very pleased with himself. “There. Useful already.”
“Very.”
“Do not tell Jane I began so well. She may expect me to continue.”
“I suspect she already does.”
His attention went at once to Jane. “Then I shall try.”
Across the room Jane turned, as though some part of her had heard him think of her. Charles saw it and forgot Elizabeth, the parcel, and every other earthly consideration. He went to his wife.
Elizabeth remained by the side table, the parcel light in her hands and absurdly heavy everywhere else.
She considered carrying it upstairs unopened, but Mrs Bennet laughed loudly at something Lady Lucas had said, Lydia demanded more cake, and Mr Bennet observed that marriage seemed to improve everyone’s appetite except the bride’s.
No one was looking at her. Elizabeth slipped the string loose and let the paper fall back. Inside lay a small volume of Cowper, bound in plain calf.
The other copy had burned at Netherfield.
She had last seen it lying beside the candles, absurdly calm in the widening smoke, while Mr Darcy threw himself against a locked door and the curtains burned behind them.
Afterwards, no one had spoken of books. There had been smoke, servants, questions, Jane’s pale face, and Mr Darcy’s silence.
Elizabeth had never asked because she had known.
Inside the cover lay a folded slip of paper. Her hands were not quite steady as she opened it. There was no greeting. No signature. Only a single line, written in a hand she recognised at once, controlled and upright and entirely his own.
A book ought not to remain unfinished merely because the library that held it did not survive.
Beneath it, smaller, apparently added after some hesitation he had not quite overcome:
After August.
Elizabeth read it twice, then a third time, more slowly, as though the words might rearrange themselves into something less than they were if she did not look at them carefully enough. They did not.
She folded the paper along its original creases and slid it back inside the cover. Around her, the wedding breakfast continued exactly as it had a moment before: Mrs Bennet’s laughter, Lydia’s demands, Mr Bennet’s dry observations, none of it touched by what she now carried.
He had given her back what was lost. He had asked for nothing except time, and even that he had hidden beneath two words. It was exactly like him.
* * *
The carriage had barely cleared the lane beyond Longbourn before Richard said, “Well.”
Darcy looked out at the winter hedgerows. “Do not.”
“I have said one word.”
“It was a dangerous one.”
Richard settled back against the squabs. “You stood up with Bingley, signed where you were required, alarmed every lady in the parish, and vanished before Mrs Bennet could arrange your future. I consider that a successful morning.”
“I should not have looked at her.”
“No,” Richard said. “Perhaps not.”
“That is all?”
“What would you like me to say? That half the church saw it? They did not. That Miss Elizabeth saw it? Of course she did. She sees most things.”
“I had no right.”
“To look at her?”
“To give her anything to wait upon.”
“You gave her a book, Darcy. Not a ring.”
“The book was not the worst of it.”
“No,” Richard agreed. “Looking at her was, by my count, the third unwise thing you did this morning, after coming at all and after the parcel.”
“The parcel was not unwise.”
“The parcel was many things, Darcy. Unwise was certainly among them.”
“You think I should not have returned it.”
“I think a man hiding from his own brother-in-law in a borrowed house rented under another man’s name might consider it prudent not to hand his closest friend a small, private token to deliver to the one woman everyone in that church was already watching for signs of significance.
I am not saying you were wrong to do it.
I am saying you were not thinking like a man being hunted. You were thinking like a man in love.”
“You are saying I was a fool.”
“I am saying you were in love,” Richard replied. “Which is, on the whole, rather the point of doing it at all, I expect.”
The carriage rattled on. Outside, the hedgerows gave way to open fields, pale and stripped under the grey January sky.
“Bingley knows nothing of what the book means,” Darcy said. “He thinks it a book left behind in the fire. Nothing more.”
“Bingley believes precisely what you wished him to believe, because you are very good at arranging what people believe. It is a talent of yours. I only wonder how long you intend to go on exercising it where Miss Bennet is concerned, given that it has not once actually protected her.”
“That is unjust.”
“Perhaps. It is also, I think, true. Wickham already suspects she knows something. Today you confirmed, to an entire church full of witnesses, that you cannot keep your eyes off her. If he hears even a whisper of it, he will use it.”
“He will not hear of it from anyone in that church.”