Page 109 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

And Lady Theodosia Rowe, Richard told them in the carriage, going home up St James's Street at a walk because of the crowds, had sailed from Holyhead for Dublin on the Monday, with her maid and her father's old coachman, and without taking leave of anybody. Her aunt in Wexford had a large damp house on a cliff, and a great many dogs, and was said to go to church three times on a Sunday. Lord Stanway had let the house in Brook Street for a year.

Nobody in the carriage said anything to that. There did not seem to be anything to say.

#

That night, after the others had gone to bed, Darcy found his wife in the green room, sitting at her writing desk in her nightgown, with a candle, and a sheet of paper in front of her, and a pen in her hand. She was not writing. She was looking out of the dark window at the square, with her chin on her hand.

"You are not writing to the Queen," he said, from the doorway. "I hope."

She laughed, and turned. "No. I am making a list."

"Of what?"

"Of everybody who has been kind to us." She held it up. "Sir Hugh. Lady Harriet Kerr. Lord Aldridge. Caroline Bingley, God help me. Samuel Hobb. Mr Lavender. Mrs Coker, with her box under the stairs. Tom Hollins. The girl on the staircase today, and her mother. The ballad seller." She smiled. "It is a longer list than I thought. I have been sitting here adding to it for an hour."

He came and stood behind her chair, and put his hands on her shoulders, and looked down at the list.

"And what are we to do with it?"

Elizabeth tipped her head back against him and looked up at him, upside down.

"We are going to give a ball," she said.

He stared at her.

"Our own," said Elizabeth. "Here. In this house. Not to prove anything to anybody. Not to win anybody over. Only because I have been Mrs Darcy of Grosvenor Square for three months and we have never once opened our doors, and I should like to, once, before we go home. With music, and flowers, and too many candles, and everybody on this list." She paused. "And everybody else too, if they like. I find I do not mind them any more. Let them come and eat our supper and look at the door in the wall, if they want to. I shall show it to them myself."

"And then?"

"And then," said his wife, "we are going home. To Pemberley. For the whole of the summer, and the autumn, and as long after that as we like. And I shall make the coachman stop at the top of the rise."

Darcy looked down at her upside-down face in the candlelight: the dark eyes, and the freckle by her mouth, and the smile he had first seen round a pillar at the Meryton assembly.

"One ball," he said.

"One ball."

"Our own."

"Our own." She held up the list. "With a waltz. Mr Darcy. I have never waltzed with you. Everybody says it is shockingly improper. I should like to find out."

Chapter 29: The Waltz

Darcy House. Thursday, 18th June 1812

The Bennets came up from Hertfordshire on the morning of the ball, all of them, in the Longbourn carriage and a hired chaise behind it, and Mrs Bennet stood on the pavement in Grosvenor Square with her bonnet askew and her reticule clutched to her bosom, and looked up at the pale stone front of Darcy House, all four storeys of it, with the stone lions and the fanlight like a peacock's tail, and for the second time in living memory could not think of a single thing to say.

It lasted perhaps five seconds.

"Lizzy!" she shrieked, as Elizabeth came down the steps. "Oh, Lizzy! Oh, my dear girl! Is it all yours? The whole house? And the lions? Oh, Mr Bennet, look at the lions!"

"I am looking at them, my dear," said Mr Bennet, getting down stiffly from the carriage. "They appear to be looking at me." He turned, and saw his second daughter on the steps, and something happened to his dry, ironic, tired face that Elizabeth had seen only twice before in her life: once in the library at Longbourn, when he gave his consent, and once by the window at her wedding breakfast. "Well, Lizzy."

"Well, Papa."

He held out his arms. She went into them, in front of the whole square, and he held her very tight, and said nothing at all for a long moment, and she felt him breathe out.

"I read about the wager," he said at last, into her hair. "In the Post. Your mother read it aloud to the whole of Meryton. Twice. In the middle of the High Street. Sir William Lucas had to sit down on a mounting block." He held her off and looked at her face. "I said to your mother, if ever he makes her unhappy, I shall send you after him. I see I shall not have occasion."