Page 46 of The Marriage Articles

“He is home,” Jane said. “A man is easier to esteem at home.”

“He is kind to his tenants, Jane. The housekeeper speaks of him as though he were answerable for the tides, and his servants speak for him in the same way. A man who keeps his servants steady keeps his word steady.”

“And his house?”

“His house I shall not disparage, whatever may be said of its master.”

Jane smiled. “Then I am satisfied.”

Elizabeth looked out the window. “I like him, Jane. I enjoy his company. I notice his hands, and his voice, and the way he smiles when he thinks I am not looking.” She laid her hand flat on the window seat, where the wood was warm from the sun. “But I do not know if that is love, or gratitude, or loneliness, or simply that he is kind and handsome.”

Jane said nothing for a moment. The needle went down and came up again in a steady, measured rhythm. “You have always known your own heart, Lizzy,” she said at last, looking up with a fond smile. “Trust it. I am very happy for you.”

Elizabeth smiled despite herself.

Jane gave her a sly look, her fingers pausing on her work. “Perhaps Mr Darcy has a cousin who might be persuaded to compromise me in the garden. You set the fashion, after all.”

Elizabeth laughed. “You had better keep to embroidery. Gardens have proved dangerous in this family.”

They sat a while without speaking before Elizabeth asked a question she had been keeping to herself for the past week. “Mr Bingley is expected within the week. I am sorry for it, or glad of it, I hardly know which. How have you fared?”

Jane set down her work entirely, which was a concession she made to very few conversations. “I was disappointed, Lizzy. I will own it to you. When I consider that our acquaintance was not a very long one, I cannot wonder at it. I have thought about it a great deal, and I have concluded that neither of us felt very much. He is amiable beyond any man of my acquaintance, and I was flattered.” She turned her face to the window, where the pale grey stone of the house caught the light. “My heart was never touched. My only sorrow is our mother, who laments the loss with a violence of regret wholly out of proportion to the event.”

Elizabeth watched her sister and saw nothing in her face that asked to be doubted. The quiet there was not resignation. It was ease. She let out a breath she had not known she was holding.

❧ ❧ ❧

Elizabeth climbed into the curricle and settled her skirts. It occurred to her, not for the first time that morning, that the man who had once declared her tolerable was now handing her the rug with the anxious solicitude of a suitor of three weeks’ standing. Georgiana had risen with a headache, Jane had offered to sit with her, and so the excursion belonged to the two of them alone. The morning was fine. The park lay green and still about them, the river catching the early light, and ahead of them the whole of Derbyshire waited, a county she had so far seen only from windows.

Darcy took up the reins and they were off, the curricle light and quick beneath them, the gravel of the drive giving way to the lane beyond the park gates. Cottages appeared at intervals, set back among their gardens, and from doorways and field gates people straightened to watch the carriage pass. A woman lifted her child to see. Two men at a stile raised their hats. Darcy tipped his own to each in turn.

“Good morning, Mr Shaw. How is the wife?”

“Very well, sir, I thank you.” The farmer’s face folded into a smile. “You heard we have a granddaughter, sir? Born in March.”

“I did hear, and I was glad of it. Alice, is it not?”

“Alice, sir.” The cap was turned round once in the big hands. “You are very good to remember.”

“Give Mrs Shaw my compliments.” Darcy touched the reins. They moved on.

The road worsened once the farmland gave way to the rise of the moors. A rut took the near wheel and threw her shoulder against his, and she caught the side rail.

“I beg your pardon,” Darcy said. “The road is a disgrace and I shall write to the surveyor.”

“Do not trouble him on my account. I have walked worse in Hertfordshire, and in shoes I minded more than my dignity.”

“I remember. Five miles of mud is nothing to you.”

“Three,” she said. “It grows in the telling, like a fisherman’s catch. You must not believe everything reported of me, sir.”

“I believe only what I have seen myself, and I have seen your muddy petticoats.”

She turned to look at him, and found the smile he could not quite hide, the one that had been appearing with increasing frequency since the wedding, as if he had mislaid the habit of gravity and was in no hurry to recover it. She looked away before he could catch her looking. Silence settled, and it was comfortable.

The lane climbed and bent, and at its height he drew up at a viewpoint where the ground fell away to the Derwent Valley below. He handed her down, and they stood at the low wall side by side.

“Oh,” she said. “It is beautiful.”