Finally, with a resigned sigh, he conceded. “Very well. As I see you are not to be moved on the point, we will depart tomorrow morning. I trust this will be sufficient, for it is all we can spare.”
He did not wait for a reply, for any acknowledgement of his begrudging concession, but turned sharply on his heel with a stiff bow and stalked from the room.
The moment the door slammed shut behind him, a sound that reverberated through the suddenly quiet house, Elizabeth sagged against the mantelpiece, her strength deserting her in a rush, leaving her trembling and weak-kneed.
So this was to be the nature of their union. Their first private exchange had been a brief and acrimonious skirmish. A fortuitous beginning, she thought, for two souls magically bound to save the realm when they could not even navigate a single conversation without incivility.
Jane, having no doubt sensed the argument, hurried into the drawing room, her face etched with concern.
“Oh, Lizzy,” Jane said, rushing to her side, “He is truly formidable. And so very stern.”
“He is the most determinedly disagreeable man I have ever had the misfortune to meet!” Elizabeth said, the tears of frustration she had been holding back finally pricking at her eyelids. “He speaks to me as if I am an inconvenient piece of baggage he is forced to transport from one place to another!”
Jane gently smoothed her sister’s dishevelled hair. “Perhaps, Lizzy,” she ventured hopefully, “when you are working together against this terrible Blight, in time a true understanding, and perhaps even respect, may grow between you.”
“Understanding? Respect?” Elizabeth gave a pained laugh. “The only understanding we are ever likely to reach is a mutual agreement to occupy separate wings of Pemberley, communicating only through missives, if, indeed, we are forced to communicate at all!”
She sighed, a shuddering breath that seemed to draw all the remaining energy from her. Her spirit was giving way to despair. “One day. And then I am to be whisked away to his reassuringly quite large stone house!”
The afternoon was a flurry of heartfelt farewells. Elizabeth tried to memorise the soothing scent of Longbourn, the way the sunlight fell through the library window, the comforting presence of her family, knowing that everything was about to change.
The morning arrived all too soon. Mr Darcy’s travelling carriage, a massive, gleaming vehicle drawn by four matched horses, stood before Longbourn like an omen.
The farewells at the carriage door were predictably tearful on the part of Mrs Bennet (who, between sobs, was already enthusiastically planning her first extended visit to Pemberley, complete with detailed lists of what she intended to inspect and “improve”) and Lydia (who did her very best to extract promises for an invitation to London for the Season). Jane hugged Elizabeth tightly, her eyes swimming with unshed tears, whispering words of love and encouragement. Mr Bennet simply held his daughter’s hand for a long moment, his gaze conveying a wealth of love.
Mr Darcy stood by the open carriage door, his impatient figure an unwelcome intrusion on the family’s private grief. He assisted Elizabeth into the opulent interior with an impersonal gloved touch. The moment she was inside, the sounds of her family’s poignant farewells were muffled, replaced by the suffocating, luxurious quiet of her gilded cage.
As the carriage pulled away from Longbourn with a powerful surge of motion, Elizabeth did not look back. She could not bear to. She stared out of the window at the familiar Hertfordshire landscape blurring past, a hard, painful lump in her throat.
The journey to Pemberley, and to whatever unknown trials and tribulations lay ahead, had begun. And it promised to be a very long and very frosty ride.
CHAPTER FOUR
The first full day of their journey north towards Pemberley was as emotionally frigid as the moments immediately following their travesty of a wedding ceremony.
Her heart heavy with the fresh pain of parting, Elizabeth took refuge in the dispassionate role of an observer, a demeanour she recognised, with no little irony, as a reflection of Mr Darcy’s own. She turned her full attention to the window, watching the beloved landscapes of Hertfordshire – the gentle hills, the copses of ancient oak and beech – gradually give way to the more sharply defined, rolling hills, then the flatter, more cultivated plains.
Each parish boundary crossed, each milestone passed, felt like another invisible shackle tightening around her spirit, another irrevocable step further from Longbourn and her family’s comforting presence.
Darcy, occupying the opposite seat, appeared to be engrossed in a leather-bound volume, whose title, glimpsed briefly when he turned a page with a precise movement, seemed to be something extraordinarily dry and mind-numbingly official.
Yet Elizabeth, upon her careful observation, doubted he absorbed a single word. Several times, when she had turned her head quickly from the window, she had caught him staring at her over the top of the book, his gaze assessing. He would immediately drop his eyes back to the page, but the fleeting moments of intense scrutiny left her feeling like a particularly vexing riddle he was determined to solve. She could not fathom what he hoped to find in her countenance, unless it was further evidence of her unsuitability for the grand station she now occupied.
There was no conversation between them, only the overly persistent reminder of their magical binding. It was an energetic thrum that vibrated just beneath the surface of their individual awareness, a constant personal irritant, like an ill-fitting shoe one could not remove, or the nagging buzz of a trapped and furious insect.
As dusk, with its shades of bruised purple and fiery orange, began to settle across the sky, the carriage jostled over a cobbled inn yard and drew to a halt.
The sign creaked rhythmically in the rising evening breeze, depicting a rather regal, if somewhat chipped, stag with impressively gilded antlers.
The innkeeper, a portly, florid-faced man, bustled out from the warmly lit doorway, his eyes widening almost comically, then narrowing with shrewd assessment, at the sight of Darcy’s clearly very expensive equipage. Lesser travellers might warrant a cursory nod and a grumbled welcome; this arrival clearly demanded a full, bowing, scraping welcome.
Elizabeth felt a prickle of discomfort at the man’s servility. This, then, was the power of ten thousand a year. It was a deference Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn would have never known, and she was suddenly all too aware of the new name she carried.
Darcy’s valet disappeared inside with the innkeeper, doubtless to command the best rooms and a private parlour for his master.
Darcy stepped down from the carriage with a grace that belied the long, cramped hours of confinement, then turned to offer a perfunctory, gloved hand to Elizabeth. His fingers brushed hers for the briefest of unavoidable moments. Despite the barrier of the gloves, despite her own fierce mental resistance, she felt it – that deeply unsettling pulse of energetic connection that arced between them. It was infuriating, this involuntary yet constant reminder of their union.
As they came inside, the innkeeper, practically tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to please such obviously wealthy guests, led them through a maze of corridors.
