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CHAPTER 1

ELIZABETH

London announced itself by preventing their arrival. For some minutes the carriage had advanced no farther than the hindquarters of a dray horse, while its driver and a gentleman in a curricle conducted an argument whose principal subject appeared to be the existence of the other. Thursday had already supplied her with a headache, two indifferent meals and several hours in which her husband had declined to misunderstand her silence. She would have preferred him to try.

Darcy sat opposite, his travelling coat open, one gloved hand resting beside him. A crease marked the place where he had slept for perhaps a quarter of an hour against the squab, and this small disorder in a man otherwise so carefully assembled had occupied an unreasonable portion of her attention. She knew the dark hair at his temple would resist any attempt to smooth it. She wished to touch it, which was an inconvenient accompaniment to the question she meant to ask.

“Why did you send my letter?”

His gaze left the window. Beyond it, the drayman had enlisted the horse as a witness to his grievance.

“Because you had written it to your sister.”

“You read every other word with such diligence. I cannot suppose the direction escaped you.”

Darcy removed his glove, drawing each finger free before he answered. She had seen him accomplish less awkward tasks with more haste. “If you are asking about Charlotte's name, I did not consider it necessary to prevent Jane from knowing that you wished to see your friend.”

It was almost a satisfactory answer, provided one forgot who had appointed him to determine necessity. Elizabeth pressed the back of her head against the carriage lining. The movement brought no relief.

“You let me believe I had contrived something you could not supervise.”

Darcy confined his answer to the unexceptionable fact of having let a letter go to Longbourn.

“Yes. That is the action. I am asking about the pleasure you took in it.” His face altered sufficiently to make her regret the word pleasure, though not sufficiently to make her withdraw it. The exhaustion of the journey showed beneath his eyes. She disliked noticing his tiredness while she was angry with him.

“I thought it might ease your resentment,” he said. “You wished for a means of communicating with Jane. The message itself could do no harm.”

“To whom?”

Darcy looked down at the glove in his hand. “To anyone.”

He had considered her little contrivance, weighed its dangers and allowed her the satisfaction of thinking herself clever. The shame of it surprised her. She had expected fury, and fury would have supplied an excellent answer; instead she remembered choosing those flowers, arranging their names, imagining Jane's recognition. She had been pleased with herself. That was what hurt.

“I see,” she said. “You found my resistance more agreeable when you could read it first.”

“I did not say that.”

“No. I have saved you the trouble.”

The carriage moved at last. Darcy reached towards the strap as the wheels struck a hollow, then stopped short of touching her when she steadied herself. She had meant to make him uncomfortable. Now that he was, she found no enjoyment in it. He watched her with the concentration that had once seemed the highest compliment a man could offer, before she had discovered how little privacy survived such attention.

“I gave you my word about Charlotte,” he said.

“And I mean to make use of it.”

They passed into a broader street. Elizabeth turned to the window again, leaving the crease in his hair uncorrected.

* * *

The house in Grosvenor Square received them with the efficiency of a place where no one had been permitted to doubt when they would arrive. The fire in her sitting-room had been reduced to a comfortable glow, hot water stood ready above stairs, and a housemaid was carrying away a vase of lilies at Darcy's direction.

“They were very fine lilies,” Elizabeth said when they had reached her rooms.

“They were very strongly scented.”

She had complained of the smell once, at the house where they had spent the first weeks of their marriage. He remembered. Beside the window there was a smaller vase of roses, and on the table a volume she had left unfinished before their journey. He had remembered that too. Neither kindness answered what he had done in the carriage. She would have liked to enjoy the roses without having to guard her anger against them.

“You have anticipated everything.”