The young maid arrived breathless with the basin and the pot of salve, and Elizabeth let her husband wash the small wound and bind it with a strip of linen. The maid stood by holding the basin, and when Elizabeth happened to glance at her she saw the girl gazing at the two of them with her whole soft heart in her face—the stern master bowed over his bride’s hurt hand and the bride too moved to speak—and the girl gave a small involuntary sound, half a sigh and half a hum, the sound a body makes at the sight of a thing too sweet to be borne in silence. Then, recollecting herself, she turned her flushed face firmly toward the wall.
So this was how the great romance would be reported below stairs by nightfall, matching what Georgiana had so breathlessly informed her—that she was a secret love the master had carried close and had at last been permitted to claim.
“You take a great deal of trouble,” she said after the maid departed, “over a wife purchased at a bargain price. I understood the terms to be plainer: a roof, a name, and the care of your nephew. Nothing in our agreement obliged you to kneel on your floor and fret over my hand as though it signified.”
His hands went still upon the linen, and his gaze lifted from her thumb to meet hers directly. “There was a great deal in it that we did not specify in the arrangement.”
CHAPTER SIX
A BREAKFAST OF QUESTIONS
Pemberley,it seemed, had overnight declared itself the theater of a grand romance, impervious to any inconvenient truths that might challenge its narrative.
While Clarice seemed immune to any speculations—romantic or otherwise—dressing Elizabeth with her usual staid efficiency, everyone else, from that round-faced housemaid who delivered the salve and bandages to the footmen’s furtive studying of their shoes to Mrs. Reynolds’s knowing smile, gave Elizabeth the distinct impression that she was a new bride too precious and recently loved to be gazed upon directly.
Her cheeks burned with the heat of their suppositions, though the only part of her that truly throbbed was her bandaged thumb. Clarice alone knew she had passed the night in splendid isolation, the connecting door to her husband’s chamber firmly shut. As Clarice was new to the household and as close-lipped as a locked jewel box, the romantic fervor below stairs had swelled to the ceaseless, maddening hum of a hive convinced it was time to swarm.
Unwilling to rob the household of its pleasurable belief in her wedded bliss, Elizabeth made her way to the breakfast room wearing a smile calculated to suggest mysteries she did notpossess. Darcy awaited her, rising immediately as she entered. She hadn’t expected this small courtesy, especially since he cleared his throat and appeared uncertain of what to do with himself, having risen.
He wore his riding coat, and the table was set for three—the newlyweds and their sister, Georgiana, a picture of familial harmony for the benefit of any who might be watching.
“Good morning, Mr. Darcy.” She managed a small curtsy.
“Mrs. Darcy.” He pulled out her chair, which brought him close enough that she caught the scent of bay and fresh air—he had already been out riding—and his hands retreated to his sides the moment the chair was settled.
She seated herself, arranged her napkin with care, and privately relished the absurdity that, after four days of enforced proximity in a carriage, she and Darcy now required the full armor of breakfast ceremony to sit together—an elaborate performance for the benefit of the household’s preferred fictions.
A footman appeared to pour her chocolate, performing the task with the solemnity of a man decanting communion wine, and when a single drop landed on the saucer, the young man’s face achieved a shade of mortification so vivid that Elizabeth feared he might fling himself upon the rug and beg forgiveness.
“Thank you,” she said, kindly, and the footman bowed himself backward with the caution of a man retreating from a loaded cannon.
Darcy watched this small drama in silence, though Elizabeth caught the brief tap of his fingers against the table.
“You are dressed for riding,” she said, “have you much business this morning?”
“I had a letter this morning. The physician, Mr. Abernathy, has taken the commission and will call upon your father within the week.”
She had known this was part of the arrangement, but hearing it spoken as a settled fact was another matter altogether, and she found herself obliged to swallow past a sudden tightness in her throat.
“That is… thank you, Mr. Darcy. I shall write to my mother and sister today so they may expect him. Has the post come in this morning? I half suspect Jane will have written before I was out of the county.”
Darcy addressed the footman. “Jamison, has the post come?”
“It has, sir. There is a letter for Mrs. Darcy.” He produced it from the salver by the door, and Elizabeth’s heart seized at the familiar hand: Jane’s, unmistakably, the neat round script that had never once failed to arrive when promised.
She accepted the letter, turned it over in her hands, but left the seal unbroken. It would hardly do for a bride to appear weary of her husband’s company so soon as to seek solace in her correspondence before breakfast was done.
Darcy noticed, as was his custom, his attentiveness as habitual as the first disapproving glance he had ever bestowed upon her in Meryton. Although since their marriage, Elizabeth had observed a certain softening in his scrutiny, and she could not help but feel the warmth of his care in the bandaging of her thumb—though, if the servants were to be believed, he extended equal solicitude to any horse with a limp.
“You may read it,” he said. “I do not require entertainment at breakfast.”
“You are very kind, but I shall save it. Anticipation improves even Jane’s letters, which are already so good-natured they read as though the entire world has been scrubbed clean and set in the sun to dry.” She tucked it beside her plate, where she could see it and be tortured at her leisure. “Besides, if I read it now, I shall cry, and Mrs. Reynolds will think you have said something dreadful.”
He looked as though he wished to say more, but the arrival of a boiled egg, presented by Jamison with the reverence due to a relic, intervened.
“How is your hand?” he asked, once the footman had achieved sufficient distance.
She held up the thumb, neatly wrapped in Clarice’s fresh linen. “Improved. The swelling has subsided, and I do not believe I shall require amputation before luncheon.”
