Page 8 of United By Happenstance
“Tell her what you feel you must. I see nothing to cast shame on you in any part, nor do I feel the need to conceal what has already earned your forgiveness. As for our present circumstance, it will all look as it ought, as I have said.”
“As it ‘ought’?” she repeated. “I do not know how that can be rightly represented.”
“It will look as if you were protected on your journey home by a gentleman,” he said plainly. “As if your safe return were important to me—important enough that I see you comfortably situated again. As if my attachment to you and your well-being weighed more in my consideration than any other appearance of decorum.”
“Oh.” She did not know where to look, but she felt him looking at her as openly as he had in the study, where such a gaze had worked on her heart to build trust between them both. Now, that look held more than just sincerity. It held a tenderness that was almost too much to bear. Feeling more shaken than shewished to reveal, she looked down at her left hand where her gloved fingers pressed fretfully into the seat cushion between them.
His hand came down over hers, covering her knuckles warmly, then threading between her digits softly, calming her. “It will look as though I loved you, Elizabeth. And that is the reality.”
The first time he had claimed to admire and love her, such avowals had given her nothing but doubt and disgust. Now, as she sat next to him in silent surprise, she examined her feelings for any resemblance to that suspicion and distaste, or to anything of her former, ill-formed dislike.
She found nothing of the old remnants. But there were new feelings aplenty, rushing onto her, over her, gaining speed like her heart, rolling like the carriage wheels under the floorboards, like thunder before a storm, sweeping her heedlessly, helplessly along. Their progression came so quickly that she had no names to give such sensations, and could only submit to the fullness of the exhilaration they gave.
She turned her palm upward under his, latching on tightly, mindlessly seeking that stillness so particular to him as her anchor. She took a quick breath and exhaled as soon as she felt him respond, clasping her grip with warm encouragement.
It felt like coming inside out of the wind. And quite naturally following this sensation came a beckoning craving for closeness and warmth, as would draw a weary traveller to the fireplace. In her body as much as in her mind, this strange, acute longing grew, this need to be wrapped up inhimfor comfort, for relief.
Situated as they were in the company of the young girls and Miss Darcy’s maid, there was no possible way to act upon this impulse. But as she let her fingers linger and twine with his, it grew ever more impossible to ignore.
She raised her gaze from their joined hands, no doubt giving him the wonder and wildness in her look. He read her expression at first with his own wide-eyed astonishment, then he smiled—sucha smile—as if what he saw in her, as if she herself, were all his happiness.
“So soon?” he asked, in incredulous delight.
“Itissudden,” she admitted in a small voice. “It is like all the decisions of my life were all wrapped into one moment. I did not trust myself to answer you at first—forgive me. Now I feel it so acutely—but—but we cannot speak of it here?—”
It was painful, so painful to let go of his hand, but her doing so as a precaution against the awareness of their companions was almost immediately proved correct. The carriage slowed, and Maria turned to them with an enquiry as to their approach to their destination.
SEVEN
Elizabeth looked out the window, making a show of identifying landmarks to give her disordered sensibilities time to reunite into true sense. “Yes, Maria,” she said at last. “We are very near Gracechurch Street now. See, there is the Friends’ Meeting House. The Gardiners live not far from the edge of the court, set back from where the street meets it. I am certain my aunt will be awaiting our arrival.”
They drew apace towards a brick house in the old city style, situated near a spreading elm and a garden gate enclosing the gap between itself and its neighbour. The porticoed door soon opened in observant welcome by the Gardiners’ old housekeeper, Mrs Hatton, and Elizabeth was glad to see from the expectation in the dear woman’s face that she had made the house ready to receive any visitors who were party to their arrival.
Mr Darcy was the first to disembark, and he handed Elizabeth out with a lingering hand, followed by the other ladies. As the women fussed over their skirts, Mr Darcy dismissed his driver to the nearby coaching inn. No sooner had he done so than Mrs Gardiner herself appeared at the door, tall and graceful. She eagerly drew down the steps where Elizabethintroduced her, and she then proceeded to invite all her guests inside.
“Gracious, my dear Lizzy,” said her aunt quietly, making a pretence of helping Elizabeth unbutton her gloves while her elderly servant and Miss Darcy’s maid tidily collected the bonnets off the other young ladies. “You have taken up with some new chaperonage, I see. Whatever happened to her ladyship? Was Lady Catherine unwell?”
“Oh, Aunt,” Elizabeth whispered back, already resigned to being discovered. “There is so much I should tell you! It has been a day of misunderstandings. I am still attempting to assimilate it all. And where—and how—is Jane? And the children?”
“They are all well recovered, but the children were quite of out sorts while awaiting your return. Jane took them all down with Martha to sail their little boats by the water. They will return soon, certainly in time to dine. I did not wish for Hatton to lay the table until after you returned. You and Maria are both safe and well, I see, although I would feel better if your trunks had come with you. We shall see what I have for you girls to borrow in the meantime if you wish to wash and dress.”
Elizabeth glanced away with a smile for the tall gentleman who now stood hatless, offering his arm to his sister to move into the sitting room. She turned back to her aunt, still grinning. “Our trunks are coming shortly, never fear. Mr Darcy has arranged it all.”
The brightness in her tone drew her aunt up from her task with sharp alertness. “Lizzy, did?—?”
“Oh, you have nearly worked it out already! But pray, be your perfect self and do not pry. Not yet. Mr Darcy and I have suffered our worst humiliations this afternoon, and he has been kindness itself. I would not subject him to further scrutiny today.”
Mrs Gardiner nodded and went into the sitting room, where she was once again as gracious, unruffled and welcoming ahostess as she had been at the door, pouring tea and seeing to everyone’s comfort.
With a slyness Elizabeth had considered yet never witnessed within the scope of her aunt’s powers, Mrs Gardiner approached Miss Darcy and introduced the subject of Lambton, her girlhood village, which by happy coincidence was less than five miles from Pemberley and therefore a shared domain of memories for both ladies. As they chatted and Maria sank tiredly into a cushion, Elizabeth took up her aunt’s teapot and approached Mr Darcy. His cup needed no refilling, but the pretence pleased them both the same.
She resettled the pot and then sat beside him, closer than she had dared to at first in the carriage, yet not so close as she would wish. Her own fatigue was battling with her excited spirits and the enchantment of their sudden, newfound understanding.
He turned towards her, moving his arm to rest along the back of the sofa, nearly close enough to touch her shoulder. The gesture oddly soothed her because of the way it carried an echo of her unspoken yearning.
“You have travelled nearly forty miles today,” he said softly, his gaze assessing. “And you have suffered more than the usual trials of polite society. You must be very tired.”
“I could never have believed only this morning that today would hold so many surprises,” she mused in agreement, wishing as she nodded her head that she could lay the weight of it upon that sturdy arm he kept stretched so close to her shoulder.
