Page 57 of The Marriage Articles

The knock came again, sharper.

He closed his eyes briefly, opened them, and looked towards the door with patent reluctance.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Darcy stood in the library with his wife’s warmth still on his hands and a strong desire to keep both warmth and quiet, knowing perfectly well that the evening had already been taken from him. The second knock had come sharper than the first. Elizabeth had stepped back from him at the sound, her breath uneven, her colour high, and had said nothing at all. He had made her a promise and kept it through dinners, through walks, through his aunt’s inspection, through every hour in which keeping it had cost him something. He had not supposed the price of breaking it would be demanded so soon.

The knock came a third time, patient now, certain of its business.

“Come,” he said.

The door opened on one of the hall footmen. He bowed, and held out a salver, and on the salver lay a letter.

“An express, sir,” the footman said.

Darcy took it. The seal was Lord Matlock’s. An express at such an hour was rarely sent for anything trifling. Nobody bore the cost of a rider and fresh horses to say that all was well, and his uncle was not a man to spend money on what might wait until morning.

“See the rider fed and the horse walked,” Darcy said. “I will have an answer for him within the hour.”

“Yes, sir.” The footman bowed again and went.

Elizabeth had come to the library doorway. She stood with one hand on the frame, very still, watching his face rather than the letter, and Darcy knew that whatever she read there was already more than he would have chosen to show.

His uncle’s hand was as disciplined as his uncle. Colonel Fitzwilliam had been injured on the Continent and was being shipped to England, to Portsmouth. Lord and Lady Matlock were in Scotland, too far by some days to meet the ship. Darcy was nearer. His uncle begged him, as the nearer of them, to go to Portsmouth and receive his son.

The letter did not say how badly Richard was hurt. It did not say fever or wound, did not say whether there was danger to his life, did not say whether the ship had already sailed or was waiting on a tide.

The cold of it came first in his hands. Richard had outlasted every campaign the army had put in his way. There was no man nearer to him, not in the way of brothers.

Five minutes ago he had been kissed by his wife in the library, and he did not know why, and he had wanted the rest of the evening to find out. The question was still there. It hung where he had left it, warm and unanswerable, and it would have to hang. He did not presume to name what had prompted her. He was not such a fool as to call it love on the evidence of one kiss, however the evidence had felt. But he had wanted to ask. Asking was now a thing for another day, and he was honest enough with himself to know that the frustration of that was a private, petty thing to set beside a cousin bleeding somewhere between a ship and a shore.

“Fitzwilliam.”

Elizabeth had not moved from the doorway. Her voice was quiet, and there was nothing in it of the teasing register she used with the rest of the world.

“What is wrong?”

“My cousin Richard has been injured on the Continent. He is being shipped to England, to Portsmouth. My uncle and aunt are in Scotland and cannot reach the ship in time. My uncle asks me to go and receive him, as I am nearer.”

She nodded, a quick motion, already thinking past it. “The letter does not say how badly?”

“It does not say.” He folded it once, along the crease it had made for itself.

“How long is the road to Portsmouth?”

“Three days. Two if I make haste.”

“Then make haste.” She looked at him for a moment. Something in her face hesitated, then settled.

“I will speak to Mrs Reynolds at once,” she said. “Go. Leave the carriage and your bag to me. You shall be on the road the moment it is ready.”

“Elizabeth.”

She stopped, half turned already towards the hall, and looked back at him.

There were a number of things he might have said. An apology, when he was not sorry, since Richard’s claim came before any evening of his own. A promise to come back quickly, when he could not know it. A word about what had happened in the library before the knock, which he had not mistaken and intended to take up again at the first hour God and the Royal Navy permitted. He said none of them.

“Thank you,” he said.