Page 7 of United By Happenstance
“Oh, but my bandbox and my trunk—all that has gone away with Lady Catherine!” Maria exclaimed with renewed distress. “She haseverything!”
“That is easily remedied,” replied Mr Darcy. “She will have had no thought for your luggage in any case. I will not raise her notice by stopping for the trunks in my own carriage when a cart and some discreet servants will suffice.”
Maria turned back to Elizabeth pleadingly. “Then I—I do wish to go now to the Gardiners’ with you, Elizabeth.”
“And I will go with you,” volunteered Miss Darcy. “I shall also request that my maid accompany us—” and here she eyed Maria’s reddened face with thoughtful compassion, “—after she has attended to you, Miss Lucas.”
Maria nodded, and Miss Darcy prevailed upon her guests to accompany her to her own dressing room to tidy themselves.With a bow, Mr Darcy excused himself to dispatch a footman and his trusted valet to House de Bourgh for the ladies’ purloined luggage.
SIX
The ladies were made comfortable above stairs, where they washed away their road dust, and Maria, her tears. Miss Darcy’s maid finished rearranging their hair just in time for them to all be summoned below stairs. The maid followed them down in some confusion at these instructions until Miss Darcy gave her a few quiet words in an aside.
As they arranged their bonnets and pelisses in the vestibule, Elizabeth struggled with the awkwardness of this attempt at propriety, even as the maid’s bemusement transformed into overtly curious glances.
For his part, Mr Darcy was the picture of proper decorum. He gave instructions to his driver, handed the ladies into his gleaming coach, and stepped into the cabin with great care for all their skirts.
Elizabeth saw Miss Darcy hide a smile as she took in her brother’s reaction to their seating arrangements, and suddenly understood his surprise at how neatly Miss Darcy had managed to place herself in the seat between Maria and her lady’s maid, leaving Mr Darcy to join Elizabeth where she sat, alone, on the facing seat.
Torn between consternation and admiration for her hostess’s slyness, Elizabeth gave herself the gift of space and time by shifting unobtrusively towards the window. Mr Darcy’s considerable frame settled onto the far end of their shared seat with similar care.
With a tap on the roof from Mr Darcy, the team surged forward. Maria, seemingly emboldened by the lavish comfort of the carriage, leant a little out the window to better take in the grand sights near Grosvenor Square and quizzed Miss Darcy on her knowledge of the families in residence along the edges of the green.
“I know that one well,” said Miss Darcy, her dainty gloves pointing rather emphatically, if impolitely, at one of the grandest of the houses. “That one belongs to the Earl of Derby, built for his father, Sir Edward Stanley. My brother told me Sir Edward fought the Jacobites in the rebellion.”
Elizabeth turned to look. “He sounds quite fearsome,” she commented. “I imagine there are many great personages’ homes here, each with stories representing valuable history.”
“My father told me a great many stories,” agreed Mr Darcy, his voice carrying with that tender, soft tone that made Elizabeth think fondly of the Darcy she had spoken to less than an hour ago in the study. “I have often wished for more Sunday drives with my sister so that I may tell her all the tales I know. I have been sadly neglectful.”
“But you have already told me so many!” Miss Darcy protested warmly. “You must not fault yourself. I simply cannot remember them all.”
As they made their way towards Charing Cross, the coach slowed. Miss Lucas sat forward to exclaim over the Mews, enjoining Miss Darcy to look out the window and admire the guards and the horses as they slowly drove through the busy streets. This was not a side of London that Elizabeth often saw,so she took in her view as well. They did not linger. The carriage jostled steadily along towards the Thames as their driver navigated through throngs of workmen and merchants towards the heart of the old City.
As the carriage rocked over the rutted streets, Elizabeth’s attention, once so fixed outside the carriage by the sights and doings without, now withdrew into the cabin.
Mr Darcy had begun their journey situated rigidly on his own side of the seat. But now the solid weight of him had naturally pulled towards the centre as the road roughened, closer now to Elizabeth than before. Close enough that the air between them seemed suddenly a shared space, filtered through the straw of her bonnet into her own breath, tasting to her senses somehow redolent of him. She could feel the downward drag of the cushion whenever his body adjusted to some new obstacle under their wheels, could even feel the way her own figure jostled in time to the same. With all her senses bound to this narrow world of the carriage seat, she found ample opportunity for the reflection the day’s events had made so necessary.
She had not entered his home that day expecting to see him again; she had even less expectation of his sudden defence of her in the face of his aunt’s ire. Nor had she anticipated his apology, or such a fervency of feeling in response. Try as she might to remind herself of all the reasons she had once cherished to maintain her dislike of him, she found that in the face of his earnestness with her, they all seemed very feeble. And when her natural sense of justice asserted itself to demand she extend charity to him, those reasons lost all influence completely.
Once she gave herself leave to absolve him where she could, and to endeavour to understand him where she could not, she found it easy to grant herself further liberties: To appreciate his good qualities. To even admire him. As she turned her eyes beyond the rim of her bonnet to glance at him, only to find himregarding her in that same spirit of fascination, she realised her danger.
“You seem unsettled, Miss Elizabeth,” he said cautiously, his tone guarded so as not to raise notice among the young ladies cheerfully chatting away in the seat facing them.
She could prevaricate, but such disguise seemed in every way abhorrent after the quarter-hour’s honesty they had shared in his study. She was endeavouring to master her own feelings, and until they were ordered again and properly understood, she feared others detecting them, feared what they meant, feared whether they were untrustworthy. She did not yet know how to put them into words. But she realised thatheat least, proved in his circumspection and loyal defence of her, was as trustworthy a confessor as any.
She turned towards him bodily, closing enough distance that when they were next jostled by the carriage as it rolled up from the dirt onto cobbled streets, her angled knees brushed his. She decided to confront the most pressing concern facing her arrival at Gracechurch Street.
“My aunt is a shrewd woman,” Elizabeth said softly. “I wonder, what she will make of Maria and me coming back in a gentleman’s carriage, with nothing but our hats to stand up in, with your servants coming after us with our trunks? She will undoubtedly begin to speculate.”
“Are we to meet with yet another officious aunt? I had not imagined yours would be so fearsome as mine, or that you should be made afraid of any other creature today,” he answered with amused concern.
“Oh, no! I must not have you think my aunt overbearing. Mrs Gardiner is the soul of discretion, and rather than an object of dread, she is one of my admiration and regard. I should hate to cause her disappointment or doubt. That is all I fear.”
He nodded, and the tension left his face. He was relieved—relieved forhersake. “Let us hope then, that her own affection for you will protect her from her worst assumptions. If she is as shrewd as you say, then she knows well your character. She will come to the right conclusion, and your arrival will look exactly as it ought.”
Elizabeth suppressed a smile. “I am glad to see your faith in aunts so restored, sir. But there is no way to represent today’s events to her without relating too much of our history in the misunderstandings that have led us here. I am hesitant to divulge it all, for it is not entirely my story to tell.”
This was a new consideration: she feared the loss of his own privacy as much as hers, evincing a value for him and his cares that she had not recognised in herself before, but perhaps, had held closely ever since receiving his letter in secret. He was looking at her with a keen interest, as if he recognised it too.
