Page 48 of The Marriage Articles

On the walk back the path narrowed where it dropped towards the viewpoint, and his hand found hers. She did not pull away. Her fingers settled into his as if the arrangement had been agreed in advance and minuted. They walked so, hand in hand, the whole length of the ridge path. His palm was warm.

The road home was kinder, or the light made it seem so, golden and low over the moors, the shadows of the stone walls lying long across the lane. Elizabeth was tired in the pleasant way of a day spent out of doors, and she let her shoulder lean, by degrees she could have sworn were accidental, towards his. He leaned towards her, by the same degrees. Their shoulders touched through his coat and her spencer, and neither moved away. She found, to her considerable astonishment, that she did not wish it otherwise.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The horses knew the way home, which was convenient, since Darcy had only one hand to spare for the reins and the rest of his attention had gone wandering somewhere it had no business being. The light lay golden across the park, low and long as it only fell at this hour of the year, and it lay across his wife’s face in a manner he was endeavouring not to study too openly.

She had been quiet since they left the ridge. He had been quiet for longer than that, if he were honest, though his quiet was of a different constitution. Hers was the quiet of a woman thinking. His was the quiet of a man who had spent six hours in the company of his own wife and had come home knowing less of how to behave around her than when he set out.

She turned her head towards the house as it came into view above the river and said, “We have been out the whole day. Mrs Reynolds will think we have been lost on the moors.”

“Then we shall have to disappoint her by coming home,” Darcy said.

She moved a fraction closer to him on the seat, sliding her hand through his arm with a quiet, happy expression. He was absurdly pleased with himself for the rest of the drive up to the door. A groom came for the horses. Darcy stepped down and turned to hand her out. She took his hand, and when she was down, on the gravel, on her own two feet with no further need of him whatsoever, her hand stayed in his.

The entrance hall was quiet. The household kept to its duties at this hour, and no one was in sight, which was either fortune or Providence and he did not care to examine which. He set his hand at her back and guided her towards an alcove. He drew her the three steps into the shallow recess, where some ancestor of his, in marble, had been staring past visitors for sixty years. The light came down through the high window and fell across her shoulder.

Her jaw was warm under his thumb, which moved once along her cheekbone. She was blushing. He saw her eyes, brown with traces of green in them, wide and steady on his. Her lips parted. He leaned in, and she did not pull away. He was near enough to feel her breath. He was near enough to close the distance entirely. Then it came.

Voices. A carriage on the gravel, wheels and hooves and the rattle of harness. And then, through the length of his own hall, his aunt’s voice, at a volume his aunt had never once in her life had reason to moderate.

“Where is my nephew? I wish to see him at once!”

His hand came down from her jaw. Afterwards he could not have said which of them had moved first, only that the sudden, cold draft of air between them felt entirely unwelcome after the warmth of her skin against his fingers. He stood in the alcove with his great-uncle’s marble profile at his shoulder and the last of the daylight going grey above them, and decided that of all his aunt’s many attacks upon his peace, this one showed the finest natural talent for timing.

Lady Catherine stood in the middle of his entrance hall in travelling dress, her maid two paces behind her, surveying the premises as though she had come to assess their worth. Anne stood a little to one side, and when her eyes met Darcy’s they carried an apology of several hours’ standing.

“Darcy.” His aunt turned the full apparatus of her attention on him. “I shall require a room, a fire, and dinner, and Anne will require the same, and I do not choose to wait in a carriage yard for any of it.”

He stared at the threshold for a long moment, entirely undone by the unexpected appearance of his visitor. “This is an extraordinary surprise, Aunt.” He recovered his composure with visible effort. “Lady Catherine, allow me to present my wife. Elizabeth, my aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.”

“So this is Mrs Darcy.” His aunt looked his wife up and down. “We have heard a great deal. One hears so much, and so little of it accurate.”

“Then I am very glad to relieve you of any further uncertainty, ma’am,” Elizabeth said, and curtsied with a grave and perfect grace. “You are most welcome at Pemberley, your Ladyship.”

Lady Catherine’s gaze moved to Darcy as though to enquire whether he shared her severe judgement. Darcy remained entirely silent, his jaw set against the familiar strain of his aunt’s disapproval. Before she could voice her thoughts further, Elizabeth had crossed to Anne and taken both her hands.

“Miss de Bourgh, how glad I am to see you again. You must be tired from the journey. You will forgive the state of us, for we have been out all day and the house was not expecting the honour.”

“One must wonder how long such an establishment can retain its former consequence,” Lady Catherine observed, letting her eyes sweep the grand hall with deliberate contempt, “when the management is committed to hands so entirely unused to weight.”

Darcy’s jaw tightened into a rigid line as he braced to rebuke her, but Elizabeth spoke first.

“Lady Catherine, you will allow me to order rooms prepared for you both at once, and a fire lit, for the evenings turn cool here even in this season. Will you take some refreshment in the drawing room while it is done? It will be only a few moments, and you shall not be kept standing in a hall.”

Anne caught Elizabeth’s eye over her mother’s shoulder. Her lips shaped the words I am sorry, without sound. Elizabeth gave her a small nod, quick and warm, and squeezed her hands once before letting them go.

As Elizabeth stepped quietly back, Darcy lowered his voice so that only his aunt might hear. “You will not speak to her in that manner, Aunt. She is the mistress of Pemberley, and I will not hear her disparaged in this house.”

He offered his arm. It was taken as tribute rather than courtesy, and he led Lady Catherine towards the drawing room, Anne falling in behind them.

❧ ❧ ❧

Darcy had the study ready in short order and then stood in it for twice as long with nothing to do. The desk had been cleared of the day’s papers, the fire made up against the cool of the evening, and two candles lit, though the light beyond the windows still held over the garden front and the terrace. Below the terrace the river kept up its low, indifferent talk. He had sent a footman to his aunt with a civil message, begging the favour of a private word before dinner, and he was aware that a civil message, delivered by a servant, was the only sort of summons Lady Catherine de Bourgh had never in her life been required to answer.

He meant to have the reproach once, on his own ground, before she had an audience. It was a strategy of defence, and he recognized it as such, and it did not make him any easier while he waited.

The knock, when it came, was a courtesy performed on a door already opening. Lady Catherine entered without waiting to be bidden, drew herself up in the middle of his study, and surveyed the room as though she had come to value it for sale and intended to offer less than the asking.