Page 61 of The Marriage Articles

Darcy sat a while longer. He watched Richard breathe, easy and deep, and allowed himself the plain thought that his cousin would be well.

He went back to his own chamber, lit the candle, and took plain paper from his portmanteau. He added sand, and wrote in his exact hand, without draft and without ornament.

My dearest Elizabeth,

You will want more news of Richard, and you shall have it plainly. His leg will not yet bear his weight, so he cannot walk, but the wound is clean and mends as it should. The fever that attended it has broken and does not return. He is out of danger, and was perhaps never in so much of it as we feared.

The surest sign of his recovery is his temper. He is the most insufferable patient in England, cross with being kept still, and I take his impatience for the best proof that he mends. The surgeon judges that he may be moved if very carefully by carriage so as not to worsen.

I mean to keep him here until that can be done without risk, and then to bring him to Pemberley, where he may convalesce. The Matlocks were written to the first night to remain at Matlock, and they are there still, and they are welcome at Pemberley whenever they choose to come. I expect we may set out in a fortnight, or very near it.

I will write the moment the day is fixed.

You will have Pemberley in your care a little longer. I find I do not worry about it at all.

Yours with love, Fitzwilliam

He had not written of the library. What he did not understand he would not send across two hundred miles of post road and ask her to explain herself by return. The close would do the work. Yours with love. He had never signed a letter so in his life, not to anyone.

He rang, and gave the letter to the servant for the morning’s post, and watched from the window as the man crossed the yard towards the town, the paper a white flick in the lamplight, gone into the dark.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Elizabeth had been standing in the entrance hall for the better part of an hour, and her mind, which would not be governed by her resolutions, was still in the library. She had come down composed. The housekeeper had her instructions. The basin and the linen had been carried up. She had told herself she was waiting for the carriage as any sensible woman waits for one, which is to say with her hands folded and her thoughts elsewhere. Her thoughts had declined the assignment. They kept returning to her husband who was not yet within ten miles of her, and to the precise way he had looked at her before an express had taken him to Portsmouth.

“Any sound of wheels would carry from the road,” Jane said gently, from her place near the door. “We should hear it some minutes before it reaches the house.”

Georgiana stood at the window with her hands clasped before her, and turned at that with a smile she did not attempt to hide. Lord and Lady Matlock had been at Pemberley since the day before. The Countess had spent the hour in a state of perfect outward composure, seated very upright in the drawing room’s best chair, asking at regular intervals whether the doctor had been sent for. He had. He was to call in the afternoon.

Then there were wheels on the gravel.

Georgiana was at the door first. Jane rose, and Lady Matlock rose. Elizabeth discovered that her hands were no longer folded and that she had taken two steps forward without deciding to. The carriage drew up before the steps, and the door opened, and Darcy alighted first.

He found her eyes the moment his feet touched the gravel. Four days of a necessarily slow road had put dust on his coat and a weariness about his mouth, and he looked, Elizabeth thought with a helplessness she did not trouble to resist, quite absurdly handsome. He held her gaze and something in his face that had been held tight for close to three weeks came loose. Then he turned back to the carriage.

His cousin came down slowly, with Darcy’s hand under his arm and a footman steadying the step, his left leg held straight and his jaw set against the business of it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was a thinner man than she had expected, and paler.

“Georgie,” he said, as Georgiana came down the steps. “You have grown a foot since I saw you last, which I grant was more than a year ago, but I intend to complain of it anyway.”

“Richard.” Georgiana took his free hand in both of hers. “Pray do not make me laugh. You will laugh yourself, and it will hurt you.”

“Then see me to a chair,” he said. “I promise to be good when I am seated.”

He turned to Elizabeth. “Mrs Darcy, my cousin has written me a great deal of nonsense these past months, and the only sensible passages were about you. I find he did not do it justice.”

“Then I must conclude that your cousin’s judgement, which is usually so very exact, has at last deserted him where it most concerned him. I am only surprised he found anything sensible to say at all.”

Introductions were barely made when Lady Matlock had already come forward to take her son’s face. “You are not to stand talking in a doorway,” she said. “You are to be taken up directly. The doctor is to call this afternoon, and you will be in your bed and settled before he arrives, or I shall know the reason why.”

“Mother,” said the Colonel, with practised patience, “I am well. Truly.”

The business of the stairs was undertaken with one footman at the Colonel’s shoulders and another at his legs, and it was slow work. Georgiana and Jane led the way with Lord Matlock right behind them. Lady Matlock followed the whole procession, issuing instructions that nobody heeded.

Elizabeth remained below. Darcy was still at the entrance.

The sounds of their settling went on above her. Doors. Water poured. Lady Matlock’s voice, rising and subsiding. One by one the footmen stepped back to their places and then, at a word from the housekeeper, away entirely.

Darcy advanced towards her. Slowly. She watched him come, and she was happy. She knew she was happy, and did not try to be otherwise. Here he was, dusty and tired and looking at her. He smiled.