Page 65 of The Marriage Articles

“Explain yourself.”

So she did. She told it as it came back to her, in pieces, in the very cadence of her mother on her wedding morning, when Mrs Bennet had sat her and Jane both down. “She told us there was a certain compliance a husband expects.” She could not keep her mother’s satisfied little nod out of her own voice. “Which a sensible woman may supply while her thoughts are elsewhere. Her preserve receipts were the suggestion, I think. Or her new bonnet.”

“Her bonnet,” Darcy repeated.

“Her bonnet. Then a little awkwardness at first, which one may dispense with by putting out the candle.” She was warming to it now, and she let her chin come up and her voice take on that particular confidential shrillness. “And after that, the whole art of the thing is keeping it to oneself. One does not speak of it. One does not hint at it. And above all, above all things, one does not laugh. On no consideration is one to laugh. A gentleman would be quite overset.”

She finished, and lay looking at the canopy. The laugh she had been holding down since she woke came up out of her properly at last, quiet and helpless, shaking her shoulders.

He listened gravely to the end, then shook his head. “Mrs Bennet never said half of that in that order, and you know it.”

She was still laughing herself, her shoulders pressing into the pillow. “No, she did not. At least, not the whole of it.”

“Slander in my own bed.” He rolled to her side, over her just enough that she could not rise. “The penalty for such boldness is...” He stopped, as if considering sentence.

His look grew quiet. The humour stayed in his mouth, but his eyes were dark. He bent his head. His breath touched her cheek. She felt the brush of his lips, the slight give of his mouth, the small pause before he kissed her again, slower. When he drew back, his forehead rested against hers. His hand lay warm at her jaw. She did not speak. He did not either.

The light grew by degrees. Somewhere far below them, on some floor that did not concern them, the house was beginning to stir in its unhurried way, a door, a distant step, the great estate of Pemberley coming awake around them and leaving them entirely alone.

Chapter Forty-One

Darcy set the open volume on the library table and gave the morning up. The book was one he had meant to read since winter, some improving work on drainage that his steward had recommended, and he had not passed the second page. He was entirely content. He had been content all morning, ever since he had at last risen from a bed he had shared with his wife and that contentment went on winning now, over a treatise on ditches.

In truth, he was happier than he had any right to expect. He had desired her, he had been desired in return, and he smiled down at the drainage book.

“Good God.”

Richard stood in the doorway with his cane. “I have known you eight and twenty years,” he said, coming in by degrees and lowering himself into the chair opposite, “and I have never once seen you grin that stupidly. I begin to think I have been sent the wrong cousin.”

“Nothing can spoil my mood today.” Darcy leaned back in his chair. “And you may save yourself the ammunition. I am satisfied with my life, Richard.”

“Then I will not waste powder on a man already surrendered.” He turned the cane in his hands. “Since I find you in a humour to hear things plainly,” he said, “I will tell you something.” He was quiet a moment, which was not his way.

“I like Miss Bennet very much. It is too soon, I know it is too soon, and a younger son with a lame leg ought not to think of anything at all. But I have some hope she might not be entirely insensible. I have a soldier’s eye for ground, and her position is not hopeless.”

Darcy had not expected it. He had not perceived it. He had looked at nothing these past days but Elizabeth. “Since when?” he asked.

“Since the first day I saw her,” the colonel said, turning the cane in his hands. “And yet it was when the fever returned, and she sat by the chair and read aloud for hours until my head cleared, that I truly found my footing. We talked of a hundred things. I discovered an understanding in her that matched my own, and an ease of temper which made every hour a relief.” He paused, looking down at the carved wood. “She is handsome, but that is the least of it. She has a gentle disposition and a quiet sense that wins upon a man before he is aware.”

He was silent a moment. “I like her better than I ought, our acquaintance being so short.”

Darcy liked Jane. He had come to know her in these weeks as serene, competent and kind. “She is modest and easy, and obliging without effort. Georgiana loves her, and my house is easier for her being in it. I am glad for you.” He hesitated, and glanced at the cane. “What will you do about the army?”

Richard shrugged. “The army has no use for me anymore. My father has promised me Livingston Hall, a minor place, nothing to Pemberley, and I mean to retire upon it before the army retires upon me.”

“Livingston Hall?” Darcy knew it well, a small estate on good land. “That is half a day’s ride from Pemberley. You cannot think how glad I am, Richard. You will be out of danger, and you will be near.”

“I shall need to ride back and forth a good many times,” Richard said. “I know nothing of managing land, unless managing land is much like managing men. I shall be glad of your help.”

“You shall have it.”

Darcy let the warmth of it settle, and then, because Richard was still turning the cane, he asked the plainer question. “What do you intend to do about her?”

Richard’s mouth went wry. “There you have me. It is too early to declare myself, and I know it. But I have learned she is expected at Longbourn, and soon. Her father has written to hurry her home. Once she is in Hertfordshire she is out of my reach, Fitzwilliam.”

Darcy was quiet a moment. “I have written to Bingley. My man of business has his instructions. The lease of Netherfield Park is to be taken over from Bingley, with a view to purchase.” Richard’s brows went up, and Darcy went on, pleased with the arrangement. “It is a good, prosperous property, and a sound investment, and I do not pretend those were my first thoughts. It is a house where Elizabeth and I may stay when we visit her family, which we shall do often. And it is a house, Richard, where Mrs Bennet might be settled in comfort should anything take Mr Bennet from her. That consideration weighs with my wife, whether or not she has said so. She has not yet been told. I have been waiting until the arrangement was certain.”

“Good God,” Richard said again, more softly this time. “You do nothing by halves.”