Page 27 of The Marriage Articles

Darcy sharpened a pen and set to work. The rents came first. Two farms he excused for the quarter. The third would be pressed, the tenant having no excuse but habit. Hargrave’s roof to be repaired at the estate’s expense, and the steward to see the family back under it within the fortnight. The meadows wanted a proper survey and a deeper cut along the southern hedge. He drafted the instruction, struck out a phrase, put in a plainer one. It was steady work and he enjoyed it. The complaints of a Derbyshire estate made a comfortable change from the complaints of the marriage market, which he had lately escaped by the narrowest and most fortunate of margins.

Through the connecting door between the study and the library he heard a knock, and then Mrs Fenwick’s voice, pitched at its most exact.

“Beg pardon, ma’am. When it suits you, I have the household books ready, should you wish to look them over.”

“Now suits me very well, Mrs Fenwick.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

There was the sound of a heavy ledger being opened, and the housekeeper’s voice settling into the patient cadence of an institution instructing a newcomer. Darcy bent back over his letter and found he was smiling at it. His wife was in the next room, governing his establishment as briskly as she learned everything, asking, he had no doubt, questions he suspected no Darcy had ever thought to ask. The house felt different with her in it. Larger in some way he could not have defended by any rule of reason. It was the very beginning. He knew it was the beginning, and he said so to himself with all due caution, and then he congratulated himself anyway on a better start than he had dared expect.

He had reached the bottom of the meadow letter when Georgiana came in, a letter of her own in her hand.

“I have had a letter from Anne.” She held it out as evidence. “She writes that my uncle and aunt Matlock are coming to town for the season, and they are bringing her with them. She says she longs to see me. Is it not wonderful?”

“It is very good news.” He laid down his pen. “You must have missed her.”

“Very much.” Georgiana sat down in the chair opposite, the letter folded small in her lap. “I do long to see her. It has been above a year.”

“I am glad of it, Georgie. Anne suits you.” He meant it. Anne de Bourgh was quiet, sickly, and gentle, and he had always liked her, a sentiment he kept well clear of his aunt Catherine’s hearing. Lady Catherine had spent twenty years mistaking his courtesy towards her daughter for an understanding, and the understanding for an engagement. Now, at least, that particular hint would have to find another nephew to land on. He was safely married.

Georgiana turned the letter over in her fingers. “Fitzwilliam. Do you think Elizabeth likes me?”

“She will love you, Georgie. She cannot help it, once she knows you. Give her time.”

Georgiana rose, and at the door she looked back. “I am glad you married her, Fitzwilliam. You have been smiling at your letters all morning, and your letters are from the steward, so it cannot be them.”

She was gone before he could answer, which was as well, since the only answer available was that she was right.

❧ ❧ ❧

The better part of the drive had been spent composing his face, and the composition proved, in the event, to be wasted labour. The house before which the carriage stopped was narrow, tall and very clean. A brass knocker had been polished until it shone, and the curtains in the first-floor windows would not have disgraced a square with a garden in the middle of it. Cheapside was expected to look like its name. This, he was not at all prepared for.

A maid led them up a stair carpeted with a good Turkey carpet to a drawing room where a woman of perhaps five and thirty rose to receive them. A man behind her set down his newspaper and rose also. Mrs Gardiner was younger than Darcy had calculated, which was the first of his calculations to fail. She had his wife’s way of looking pleased without ceremony, and she crossed the room and took both of Elizabeth’s hands before any introduction could be performed for her.

“Lizzy. You look well.”

“Aunt.” Elizabeth laughed and turned. “May I present my husband. Mr Darcy, my aunt Mrs Gardiner, and my uncle Mr Gardiner.”

Mr Gardiner shook his hand with a plainness that asked nothing and promised nothing. He was obliged to revise his account of the afternoon for the second time in five minutes. Mr Gardiner was well dressed. He was well bred. His wife was offering tea in a drawing room furnished with a taste so quietly correct that Darcy could find nothing in it to forgive, and he had come armed with a great deal of forgiveness.

“Do sit down, Lizzy, Mr Darcy. The children have been told you are coming.” Mrs Gardiner poured. “They are in the nursery being lectured on comportment, which I give ten minutes at most.”

The door opened on a boy of eleven, tall and grave, who made his bow with the care of a person who had practised it and meant to get it right. Behind him came a smaller boy who did not bow at all but grinned with a hole where a tooth had lately been. Behind the smaller boy came a small girl, who crossed the drawing room at a run, announced “Lizzy!” at a pitch that rang the teacups, and was caught up into his wife’s arms as though she had been thrown there.

“John.” Mr Gardiner’s voice was mild. “You were to make your bow together.”

“I did, Papa. Henry did not wait for me.”

Mrs Gardiner set down her cup. “Children, this is Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy, these are Henry, John, and Elizabeth, and I apologize for the three of them.”

No apology was necessary, Darcy said, which was a lie of the ordinary social kind, and then discovered it was not a lie at all. The little girl had both arms round his wife’s neck and was delivering an account of a doll, a cat and a pudding in no discernible order. His wife attended to it with the gravity other women reserved for the news of a coronation. She held the child on her lap and smoothed her hair with a hand that knew its business. With his tea in his hand he looked at her. He did not care who observed him.

“Henry.” His wife had settled the little girl on her lap and turned to the eldest. “How does the Latin?”

The boy’s gravity cracked at the edges. “Very well, Aunt. We are at the third declension.”

“Grim work. Mensae, mensae, mensam. My father taught me the first declension when I was younger than John, and I believed for years that Latin was a language composed entirely of tables.”