Page 47 of The Marriage Articles

“The ridge beyond the Derwent is the beginning of the Peaks, and on a clear day you can see the high moor past it.” Elizabeth listened with the river running silver below and the wind taking her bonnet ribbons.

“You love it,” she said.

“It is home.” A pause. “I had not understood until this moment how much I wanted you to see it.”

She did not trust herself to answer that. His shoulder was next to hers, not touching, and the whole of her attention, which she had always flattered herself was a disciplined instrument, had reduced itself to the space of two inches of Derbyshire air between them.

Beyond the viewpoint a path ran along the ridge, rough underfoot, and when she stepped over the first stile of loose stones he offered his hand. She took it. They had not touched like this before, not deliberately, not for longer than a hand at a carriage door, and the newness of it travelled up her arm and lodged somewhere in her composure. He shortened his stride to hers without being asked.

They came to a stone wall where the path levelled and sat. The wind fell away, leaving the morning quiet. Below them the valley stretched out in long folds of green and shadow, vast and silent under the climbing sun.

He looked out over the view, resting one hand upon the grey stones of the wall. “My uncle used to say a man should know every acre of his own ground before he pretends to know the world beyond it. I spent years doing just that, reading books in crowded college rooms and pretending I understood the world from a Cambridge window, and none of it ever felt like this.”

“Will you tell me about Cambridge?” she asked. “I have a curiosity about the education of gentlemen. It cannot be all Latin, or so few of you would be tolerable company.”

He laughed. “There was Latin. I will not pretend otherwise. But there was also my tutor, Mr Halstead, a man of great learning and no vanity, who lost his wig into the Cam during a college celebration and pursued it in a boat, lecturing the while on Herodotus, which he maintained was a related subject.”

“He did not!”

“He did. And there was the midnight swim my second year, in water cold enough to settle a man’s character permanently, which we undertook because a third man had said we would not. We proved him quite right to doubt us, and got into the water anyway.”

Elizabeth laughed.

“I met Bingley at Cambridge. He was everything the rest of us were not. Charming, easy, welcomed everywhere the day he arrived.” Darcy turned a small stone over in his hand. “I could not account for his choosing my company. I was too grave for him, but he did not seem to mind.”

“I wish I could have gone,” she said. “To Cambridge. It is monstrous unfair that ladies may not. I should have liked the Latin. I should certainly have liked the boat race, and I daresay I should have won it.”

“You would have been a credit to the university, and a terror to its tutors.”

“My father was my university. He took pains with Jane and me. Books, languages, history, and the great sport of arguing with him across his study table, which he judged the finest education a young woman could have, mostly because it required him to stir from his chair only to fetch another volume.” The memory was warm and she let it be. “He would sit with us for hours at a time. Then Mary came along and read sermons at him, and his patience failed, and the whole enterprise was abandoned.”

“Then you were fortunate.”

“I was fortunate, but my younger sisters were not. I have felt the unfairness of it ever since.”

For a moment neither spoke. The valley lay below and the wind moved over the ridge.

She let the silence hold a moment longer, then said, more lightly, “You mentioned at dinner that you have a regard for boxing, and I have been curious ever since what a gentleman sees in being struck.”

“It settles the mind.”

“I cannot conceive that having one’s face punched settles anything but the nose,” she said. “Still, I take your word for it. What other sport do you follow?”

“Riding, if you will call it sport.”

“Ah. There I shall disappoint you. I am no rider.”

He turned his head. “Are you afraid of horses?”

“Not in the least. I have simply never had the opportunity. Our horses at Longbourn worked the farm and drew the chaise, and were not thought suitable for a lady’s saddle. Jane is the only one of us who learned, and then only because my mother declared it proper for the eldest. It is a want of opportunity, not of courage.”

“Then it shall be remedied. I will teach you.”

She had not expected the offer and it took her a breath to meet it. “I would be willing.”

“Good. Then we shall see it done.” He said it as he said everything he meant, without ornament, and something in her chest performed a small and entirely unauthorised revolution.

They sat a while without speaking. The valley lay below them in the late morning light, the river moving, a hawk turning over the ridge. She became aware that she was looking at him rather than at the view, at the line of his profile and the stillness of him, the stillness she had once mistaken for pride and was learning to read differently. He turned and met her eyes. The heat rose in her face without asking her leave. He looked away first, out over the valley, and the corner of his mouth moved once. Neither of them said anything at all.