Page 60 of The Marriage Articles

“Dr Baillie says otherwise.”

“He is paid to say otherwise.” Richard shifted, winced, and went still again with the particular care of a man pretending he had not winced.

He read aloud for a while from the newspaper, the movements of ships, the price of corn, an account of a launch at the dockyard that Richard interrupted twice to correct. Darcy did not press his company upon him. He had learned in the first days that close attendance only made Richard cross, and that a man of his temper mended best when left to believe he was overlooked.

The basin had been emptied and the linen changed, and Richard had been fed on broth he pronounced unfit for a midshipman. On the fourth afternoon he turned his head on the pillow and fixed Darcy with the clear, improper eye of a man who has been storing up a question for days.

“Now,” he said. “You have been here nearly a week and told me nothing. Out with it.”

Darcy set down the paper. He had written to Richard through the spring, and Richard had answered from the Continent when his duties allowed. It was not the same as speaking in the same room. Richard was his cousin and his oldest friend.

Darcy told him all that had passed since the garden at Netherfield.

When Darcy came to Wickham, Richard was quiet a moment. “I am glad,” he said, at last, without triumph. “Glad that rogue is finally out of it. For Georgiana’s sake, as much as anyone’s. She will sleep easier for never seeing him again.” He settled his shoulders against the pillow. “You should have let me break his head when I offered, three years ago. It would have saved you a great deal of correspondence.”

“You were in Portugal.”

“A man may have regrets.”

Darcy let the silence stand. Outside, a cart went through the yard, and somebody shouted, and the ordinary noise of the inn came up through the window. Darcy rose and hooked his hands behind his back and stood at the window. It was easier to say it to the harbour.

“She did not want me, Elizabeth.” Darcy went on. “When we were forced to this, she called me arrogant. Insulting. She thought my pride insufferable, and she was not entirely wrong.” He turned the signet on his finger once, round.

“I have spent some months endeavouring to deserve a better opinion. Whether I have succeeded, I cannot tell you. Lately she told me she needed more time. That she did not know what she felt, and asked me to wait. I promised her I would wait, and I meant it, and I keep it.”

“And?”

“And then, the evening your father’s express came, we were in the library. I had said nothing that was not ordinary. She stood up, and she kissed me, and said not one word, and then the knock came at the door and I was on the road to Portsmouth before the hour was out.” He heard his own voice lower, and stopped, and began again level. “I cannot make sense of it.”

He turned around. Richard was watching him with an expression in which sympathy and delight were contending, and delight, being Richard’s native element, won.

“Fitzwilliam Darcy,” Richard said, with great solemnity. “Undone. The mighty Darcy of Pemberley, who walked through seven London seasons untouched, who declined baronets’ daughters and a viscount’s niece and that terrifying girl with the emeralds, brought down at last, and by a country miss from Hertfordshire.”

“An earl’s niece, as it happens.”

“All the mothers in London must have held a week of mourning when the notice appeared. I can see them. Black crape on the door-knockers of half Mayfair.” Richard grinned at him.

Darcy looked away and smiled.

“And Darcy. Forgive me for fetching you to a harbour at such a moment. If I had known I was interrupting so intimate a scene, I should have arranged to be wounded at some less inconvenient juncture.”

“Perhaps next time,” Darcy said. He did not try to keep the smile from his voice.

The evening came on slowly, the way it does near the water, the light going gold and then grey over the roofs. Dr Baillie came at his hour, unwound the dressing, probed, sniffed, and pronounced his satisfaction. Richard closed his eyes and bore it with the dignity of a martyr. When the man had gone, Darcy sat again in his chair, and they talked of smaller things.

“How does Georgiana?” Richard asked.

“Well, and much with Elizabeth. Miss Bennet, her elder sister, is staying at Pemberley, and Georgiana is seldom without one of them.”

“And Lady Catherine? How did she bear the news of your marriage?”

“She came to Pemberley,” Darcy said, “and stayed nearly three weeks, and inspected everything, and at the end of it she declared herself satisfied, and left behind her an invitation for Elizabeth to come to Rosings.”

Richard’s brows went up. “Then your wife has done what no woman in the family has managed in thirty years. I cannot wait to meet her. Any lady who can stand three weeks of our aunt and come out carrying an invitation is a formidable creature, and I intend to offer her my allegiance.”

“She will make you earn it,” Darcy said. “She does not distribute allegiances carelessly.”

“Good. I am sick of honours and preferments given for little or no merit. It is the way of the army now.” Richard spoke slower now. His eyes stayed shut.