His smile was wonderful. “When will you know without doubt?”
“When I feel the quickening, I suppose, but that could be many weeks from now, for I have only recently begun to suspect. Pray, let our hopes remain private until they are proved. It is yet very early and…well, nothing is guaranteed.”
The turn of his countenance assured her he had taken her meaning. “Will you tell your sister, though?”
“That depends very much on her. I would never have used to think I could keep such a thing from her, but we have shared very few confidences of late.”
His smile faded, and his frown returned. He stood up. “I will not have you distressed, Elizabeth. I shall put them off coming.”
“There is no need for that! Besides, ’tis too late. They will be here in a matter of hours.”
He was evidently uneasy with the arrangement but conceded there was nothing to be done about it. She mollified him somewhat by agreeing to see the apothecary before their guests arrived.
“You summon him while I eat my breakfast,” she suggested.
“Breakfast? You have just been violently ill!”
She shrugged. “I feel better now. And rather hungry.”
He shook his head, smiling with incredulity. “It grieves me that you must suffer in this way, but if you mean to carry it off with such éclat, I think I shall bear it almost as well as you.”
Oh, how she loved the ease with which he made her laugh!
He left to make the necessary arrangements, though not before placing the most tender of kisses upon her forehead and reiterating how very precious she was to him. She sat down to a breakfast sanseggs, reflecting that, after such a happy beginning, she felt eminently more sanguine about the day ahead.
“There it is!” Caroline exclaimed.
Jane opened her eyes and looked out of the window. What she saw, by contrast, lent the lodgings from which she had departed hours earlier all the proportions of a doll’s house. She had considered Elizabeth’s mentions of Pemberley in her letters somewhat boastful, but it would seem her sister, in fact, had been rather circumspect in her descriptions. The house was palatial.
“Now that is a welcome sight,” Caroline continued. “What an improvement to coaching inns and hotels.”
“Is there anything about this trip that you have actually enjoyed, Caroline?” Bingley enquired with uncommon asperity. “I wonder that you agreed to come at all.”
“My apologies, Charles,” she replied with negligible contrition. “But I confess I have had my fill of inferior lodgings and unappetising food.”
“The sooner we arrive, the better then, for all our sakes!”
They traversed the rest of the implausibly long drive in silence. Jane assiduously avoided all thoughts of her husband’s eagerness to get to the house and concentrated instead on Lady Ashby’s counsel to enjoy Pemberley and avoid any contention.
The Darcys awaited them at the foot of a grand set of stairs at the front of the house. Elizabeth had a hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun and was peering towards the carriage. Jane waved, and her sister broke into her customary, broad smile that was all the more welcome for the three weeks Jane had spent visiting strangers. For a moment, Elizabeth was Lizzy again, and nothing else mattered—’til the horses stopped and Bingley sprang from the carriage, issuing typically effusive greetings and leaving a footman to hand Jane and Caroline down.
“I am very glad you are come, Jane,” Elizabeth said to her after they had embraced. “It is wonderful to see you.”
Her feelings in disarray, it was all Jane could do to smile at her.
“Welcome to Pemberley,” came Mr Darcy’s sonorous greeting.
Jane felt a small frisson of alarm upon meeting his gaze. Heregarded her with peculiar intensity, his expression not cold precisely but with little of the welcome his words professed.
“Thank you,” she replied, thoroughly disconcerted.
“I trust your journey was agreeable?”
“Perfectly so, I thank you.”
“You say so only because you were able to sleep, Jane dearest,” Caroline interrupted. “I shall not be so obedient, Mr Darcy, but shall declare that it was a perfectly horrid journey, too hot and too long by half. We are all excessively fatigued.”
“I am sorry to hear that, Miss Bingley.”
