Chapter Thirty-Four
Thedaysafterthesitting room were not the same as the days before it.
Nothing had been said of any consequence. Fitzwilliam had sat on her floor for perhaps an hour and they had talked of small things, or said nothing, and eventually she had said she thought she would sleep, and he had got up and said goodnight, and that had been the whole of it. And yet the days after it were not the same. This was not something Lydia knew how to account for, and so she filed it away carefully with the other things in that category, though she was becoming increasingly aware that thefile was becoming rather full and she would need to attend to it soon.
There was a knock at her sitting room door the following morning: she said come in, and he came in, and asked how she was. Having slept better than she expected, she said she was feeling quite well, and thanked him for enquiring. He said he was glad to hear it, looking at her with those eyes that she had always felt saw rather too much. He sat in the chair that was not on the floor and they talked for twenty minutes about nothing of consequence.
“Are you choosing to stay retired for a little while?” he asked apparently casually, as he rose and prepared to take his leave.
“I had thought perhaps two weeks,” Lydia said. “He… was not family, but…”
“He was more than worthy of your grief, Lydia.” Fitzwilliam paused at the door, gave her a little smile she thought almost seemed… approving? “Take as long as you need.”
She almost cried again, when he left.
The fourth day after the sitting room, Darcy and Elizabeth took James to the Gardiners for the afternoon. Georgiana departed at eleven for the Anstruthers, with the brightness of a girl whose engagement, recently and privately settled, had not yet been publicly announced but was radiating from her in a way she was happily failing to suppress. The house emptied around them with the cheerful unconcern of a household that had other places to be.
Lydia came downstairs at half past eleven to find Fitzwilliam in the morning room with a book he was not reading, looking out at the garden with the expression of a man who is waiting for something without quite knowing what he is waiting for. “Good morning,” she said, which she had already said.
“Good morning,” he said, though he had already said it too. They regarded each other briefly across the morning room.
“Shall I ring for coffee?” she said.
“Please,” he said.
Coffee was asked for. She sat down, picked up her embroidery, put it down again, and looked out at the garden. January had produced, apparently against its own better judgement, a weak and watery sunshine that made the frost on the paths look almost deliberate. A remark about it: he agreed that it was unexpected.
“Georgiana was very bright this morning,” she observed.
“Anstruther spoke to Darcy yesterday,” he said. “Asking for her hand. And Darcy gave his consent.”
“Oh, well that certainly accounts for it! About time,” she said, and then caught herself, because that was the kind of remark she did not generally make in front of him, and glanced across.
He was smiling. Not the polite, managed one she had grown accustomed to. Something more real, with an edge to it. “I have been saying so almost since the day I arrived home,” he said,“and Darcy has been looking at me as though I am an optimist of the most dangerous kind.”
“He is very protective of Georgiana,” she offered.
“He is,” Fitzwilliam said. “Also wrong about Anstruther, and he will shortly have to acknowledge it, which will not come easily.”
Something was different; she could not identify it at first. Then she understood: they were having a conversation neither of them were managing. They were just in it, saying what they thought, what came naturally.
It felt extremely strange.
The coffee came. She poured it and handed his across and he took it and said thank you and they sat in the winter sunshine.
“I have been thinking,” he said, after a while, “about the spring.”
“Oh?” she said.
“About what we do with it. Where we go.” He turned the cup in his hands. “Matlock, I had thought, once the season ends. Or before, if you would prefer. There is the Leicestershire property, of course, my mother’s estate, but I think we both know I need to learn Matlock properly before I can be of any use running anything independently. My mother has written twice on the subject and I have been somewhat evasive in my replies, which she will have noticed and which will not improve her opinion of my decision-making. “
“She is very decided in her opinions,” Lydia said.
“She is,” he agreed, with a warmth that was not complicated. “Also generally right, which is what makes it complicated.” A look across. “She was right about you, I think. From the beginning.”
Lydia said nothing for a moment. Then: “She was very patient with me. In that first winter, especially, I was a considerable amount of work to her.”
“She did not say so.”
