Page 70 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"With no lock." His voice was not steady. "I will not be on the other side of it. Not for a while. I know that. But I wanted you to have it there. I wanted you to be able to open it, if you liked, in the night. Even if the room beyond it was empty."

Elizabeth did not answer. She could not. She slid down in the bed until she was lying beside him, and put her head on his shoulder, and her arm across his chest, and held on.

They lay there for a long time without speaking. The fire burned down. Somewhere below, a clock struck midnight, and then the quarter.

"I am frightened," she said at last, into his shoulder, very low. "Not of Wickham. Not of the road. Of being so far away. Of waking up in the morning and you not being there, and not knowing where you are, or what is happening, or whether you are safe. Of not being able to see your face."

"So am I," he said.

"You never say you are frightened."

"I have never been married to you before." His arm tightened round her. "I used to think there was nothing in the world I could not bear. I did not know about this. I did not know there was a thing that could be taken away from me that would take everything with it."

She lifted her head and looked at him in the dark. Then she kissed him.

It was not like the other nights. It was very slow, and very quiet, and very sad, and at the same time so sweet that she thought she would remember every moment of it for the rest of her life. He held her face between his hands as though he were trying to learn it by touch, so that he would have it with him in the dark when she was gone. She held on to him as though he were the only solid thing left in the world. Neither of them said very much. There was nothing that needed saying that they did not both already know.

Afterwards she lay with her cheek against his heart and listened to it slow, and did not sleep. She did not want to sleep. She did not want to miss one hour of the night that was left.

Neither did he. At four o'clock, when the sky was still black and the first cart was rattling across the square, she felt his hand move in her hair, and heard him say, very softly, as though he were saying it for the last time for a long while:

"Good-morrow."

"Good-morrow," said Elizabeth, and pressed her face into his neck, and did not let him see her cry.

#

The mews behind Darcy House. Monday, 13th April. Half past five in the morning.

The carriage yard was cold and grey and smelt of horses and wet straw. The lamps were still lit in the grooms' loft above the stables, and the travelling coach stood in the middle of the cobbles with its four bays stamping and blowing in the traces, their breath smoking in the half-dark. Two grooms sat on the box with blunderbusses across their knees, looking self-conscious. James the footman stood at the door with the step down. Hannah was already inside, surrounded by baskets. The hamper was lashed on behind.

Darcy stood in the gateway and watched them load the last trunk, and thought that he had never seen anything so unbearable in his life as that coach.

Anne went first. Lady Catherine brought her down, in all four shawls, and stood on the cobbles with her while the grooms settled her into the corner seat with rugs and a hot brick and a bottle of her drops. Lady Catherine did not kiss her. Darcy had never seen her kiss anybody. She only stood by the open door and looked in at her daughter for a long moment, and then reached in, very awkwardly, and straightened the top shawl.

"Do not die," she said.

"No, Mama."

"I mean it, Anne. I will be extremely displeased."

"I know you will," said Anne, and smiled her crooked smile, and put out one thin hand and laid it for a moment on her mother's cheek. Lady Catherine stood very still. Then she stepped back, and turned away, and stood by the stable wall with her back to them all, looking at nothing.

Georgiana came next. She came across the yard in her grey travelling pelisse with her face composed and white, and went straight to her brother, and stood in front of him.

"I am not running away," she said. "Elizabeth says it is not running away. It is only—"

"Moving the one piece they can hurt most off the board," said Darcy. "I know. She told me too." He took her face between his hands and kissed her forehead. "You are not running away, sweetheart. You are going home. I will come for you both when it is done."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

She put her arms round his neck and held on, hard, for a moment. Then she let go, and let James hand her up, and did not look back.

And then there was only Elizabeth.

She was standing a little apart, by the mounting block, in her dark blue travelling dress and the straw bonnet with the blue feather. She had been saying goodbye to Mrs Dawes, who was weeping openly into her apron, and to Pearce, who was not weeping but whose face had gone quite rigid, and to Richard, who had hugged her so hard he had lifted her off the cobbles. Now she turned and looked at Darcy across the yard.