Page 23 of The Marriage Articles

Elizabeth said nothing to that. Netherfield was where he had gone because of her, and the estate business had been neglected during the very weeks he had spent entangling himself in her family. He had not meant it as a reproach, yet she wondered if a hint of blame had slipped out despite him, and she weighed the thought in silence.

He noticed. She had not thought he would, but after a moment his hands lowered from his cup, and he regarded her with the kind of attention that made her want to look away and hold his gaze in the same breath.

“I should say,” he said, “that you need not spend your days in this house unless you wish it. If there is anything in London you should like to see, galleries, museums, anything at all, you have only to name it. We shall not be troubled with callers for a while yet. Newly married people are left alone, by long custom and by my particular instruction. Whatever you wish to do, we may do.”

“That is a dangerous offer, sir. You do not know what I shall ask for.”

“I am prepared to be surprised.”

“Then I shall surprise you gently.” She set down her cup. “When I used to come to town, and stay with my aunt and uncle, I was taken to the opera. I loved it beyond reason. I have heard nothing since that did not sound thin by comparison.”

“The opera,” he said. “Which operas?”

“All of them. I was not particular. The music might have been no better than noise and I should have sat rapt.”

“I will not allow you to call it noise,” he said, turning his cup in its saucer. “Not all of it, at least. I keep a box there. It has been little used of late, for Georgiana does not care for the crowd and I do not care to go alone. If it would please you, we shall attend as soon as there is something worth hearing.”

Of course he kept a box. Elizabeth suspected he kept boxes the way other men kept spare gloves, several, for occasions. “It would please me very much,” she said, and meant it with such uncharacteristic earnestness that she caught herself short, looking down at her plate.

When they had both finished, he rose, and then stood still a moment, as a man does who has remembered something he ought to have remembered sooner.

“It occurs to me,” he said, “that you have not been shown the house yet. If you are not too tired from your walk, I should be glad to repair the omission.”

“I should like nothing better.”

They began in the entrance hall, where the staircase rose in a sweep of pale stone and the light came down from a skylight three storeys up. The drawing room was hung in green silk, stretching out with an expanse that made the familiar parlour at Longbourn seem like a miniature by comparison. The dining room had a table that would seat, Elizabeth counted, six and twenty persons, which was two and twenty more than she had ever wished to feed. The morning room faced the square and caught the sun, and she thought privately that she would gladly pass every morning there if the house were hers. Then she remembered that she was the mistress of it now, and could do very much as she pleased within its walls.

Up the stairs they went, along corridors that turned where she did not expect them to turn, as though the house were deliberately conspiring to confuse a stranger. They passed the stately row of guest chambers meant for formal visitors before crossing into the quiet privacy of the family wing. Past several closed doors went their slow progress, ending where her own bedchamber opened to the square and his lay just beyond the common sitting room that joined them.

“I shall require you to walk me from room to room for the first month,” she said, “or you will find me at last in the scullery, quite lost, telling the kitchen maid that I am almost certainly the mistress of the house.”

A smile touched his mouth. “When you are lost, you have only to pull a bell and a search party will be sent out.”

“Then I shall be found promptly, at least, which is more than many wives can say.”

He laughed at that. She found that he looked entirely different when he laughed, the severe lines of his face softening in a way she had rarely seen before. They had turned back down the stairs without her quite noticing, and now he held a door for her. She went through it and stopped.

She had never stood in a room that reached so far in every direction, the shelves climbing to a height that made her neck ache to follow them. The air was close with the scent of old leather and printed pages. A ladder ran on a rail as though books were fruit that grew high and had to be picked. She stood in the doorway longer than the doorway required.

“This is the finest room I have ever seen.”

She had not meant to say it aloud. She turned half round, wishing it back, and found him looking at her with an open pleasure that had not consulted his composure at all.

“It has been my favourite room since I was a boy,” he said. “I am glad you think well of it. What do you like to read?”

“Everything I can lay my hands on, though not always what a lady ought to read.”

“What ought a lady to read?”

“Conduct books and sermons, I believe, and she is meant to improve. At least that is what my sister Mary tells me. I never improved.” She went to the nearest shelf and ran her finger along the spines. “I have read Mrs Radcliffe and Miss Burney and a good deal of Cowper. Once, when my father was not attending, I took two volumes of Gibbon.”

“I shall not tell your father.”

“You are all kindness. Have you read Camilla?”

“I have. It required a great deal of patience.”

“Then you are a man of greater patience than I. I could not finish it.”