Page 22 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)
No, she was one of those just as sad, and perhaps not wiser, persons who would stay in unhappy foreign climes though her mother begged to see her daughter one last time before she expired.
“I would not be in any particular hurry to return to England, if only I knew that I could return. It is the inability that makes me long for it.”
“That,” Darcy said, “is a reaction in no way out of the ordinary.”
Elizabeth laughed, deciding once more that she would never permit herself to descend into moroseness.
“A perverse reaction, despite its popularity. But I have no taste for perversion , though we are now in France, and we all know what they say about France, I shall endeavor to enjoy my time in this country though I know not for what extent the duration of my stay shall be.”
“What do they say about France?” Darcy asked as he and Elizabeth stood to walk back down the pier.
“ You know.” Elizabeth waved her hand and replied with a smile. She bit her lip and looked up at him from under her eye lashes.
Darcy swallowed.
The wind had kicked up. Clouds rushed towards them worrisomely fast.
Oh! But the view of the city was one of the grandest Elizabeth had ever seen.
Lines of tall houses along the pier, and the brown wood of the pier for hundreds of feet, and the tall masts of the ships in the harbor, and birds circled high in the sky, their lonely cawing distantly audible, and the bell tower of the cathedral rang an hour, and the water lapped and slapped the pier.
Oh, so, so lovely.
The walk took the best part of ten minutes from the end of the pier all the way to the safe stone of the city.
The clouds, which had not been present at all when they started their walk down the pier, opened up with soft sprinkles and Elizabeth was cold, and also terribly tired from the wandering of the morning.
There was a cafe next to the pier, which looked quite warm — the people, more women than men inside, had mostly put aside their coats as they sat at their coffee.
“Let’s go in,” Elizabeth said eagerly. “A real one of France’s famous cafes!”
Darcy’s face screwed up at the suggestion — Elizabeth knew that he did not consider this establishment, with some peeling paint and a sign proclaiming the prices in chalk, as meeting the fine standards to which a member of the Darcy clan, and those under his protection, were entitled to.
“It’ll be ever such a lark. Look at how many people are reading — and they are all dressed quite fashionably in the French way.” Elizabeth grinned widely at Darcy.
Darcy shrugged, and he then smiled with that brilliant familiar, heart turning smile of his, that he reserved mainly for her. “This location seems very much the sort of venue you wish to patronize.”
“Exactly.” Elizabeth shivered violently as a gust of wind blew. “Oh, I am so cold, and I need to sit down.”
“Oh, Elizabeth—” Darcy looked slightly miserable, as though he considered it his chief employment to keep the winds and rains from bothering her — or at least to ensure she stayed safely indoors if there was a chance of such rains coming down to bother her.
He rushed her into the cafe.
The air in the room felt like a blast from an oven upon their entrance, and they quickly closed the door behind them.
“I should have paid better attention,” Darcy said frowningly, “and made us to return from the pier faster. Are you tired also? — You need a great deal of rest. Mr. Goldman insisted you must rest for at least two weeks the last time he examined you.”
“You care for me excellently — even without Lord Lachglass’s interference, there is no chance I would have remained abed for longer than necessary. It is my conviction that the principal cause of ill health is enforced inactivity prescribed by doctors.”
Darcy smiled as he helped her to a collection of winged chairs around a low table. “I sound like a worried mother hen. But I do worry — your eyes rolling up when you fainted is an image which shall stick in my brain forever.”
Elizabeth gratefully sunk into one of the chairs and closed her eyes for a moment of ecstasy at no longer being on her feet and at the warmth in the cafe.
She said, without opening her eyes, “You are right. I overexerted myself today — don’t make yourself anxious.
I shall be entirely well in twenty minutes if I do not continue to exert myself so. ”
“Do you want tea, or should I ask if they have a cold dejeuner laid aside?” There was that slightly snobbish frown in Darcy’s voice again, as though he was quite skeptical of this perfectly respectable appearing establishment being able to furnish forth meats delicate enough for his lady’s palate— anyone in Elizabeth’s family would have happily patronized this place when they had money.
She loved Darcy very dearly.
Elizabeth opened her eyes to find Darcy’s deep worried eyes on her. Something happy in her chest fluttered. She loved even his snobbery. That snobbery was as deeply bred into him as his honor. “Just cafè au lait and a little pain avec beurre .”
Elizabeth smiled twistedly to make fun of herself for speaking in English, except for the words for food.
Darcy almost absently replied, “You must roll the Rs — are you sure?”
“Quite. This is a lovely place.”
The cafe had a big tiled stove with a pile of firewood next to it in the corner merrily radiating heat into the air.
There was a counter like in an English inn, behind which were stored a variety of wine and whiskey glasses, bottles of spirits and wines, and there was a hot pot of water boiling on the stove.
Several pairs of well-dressed young women talked eagerly to each other in French, after glancing at the English party that had just entered the premises.
There also was, delighting Elizabeth, a man in one corner with the delicate features and wild hair of an artist, furiously scribbling away with a nub of pencil on a thin stack of papers, pausing every so often to mutter angrily, and take his rubber out to deface the perfectly excellent rhyme Elizabeth was sure he had already created.
She was not used to being weak like this.
Elizabeth sighed and stretched her arms wide, noticing happily how Darcy paid close attention to her as she displayed — unintentionally, she would swear — her body. The waiter came up to them, and Darcy ordered for them the cafè au lait and pain avec buerre which Elizabeth had requested.
Outside the cold sea wind flapped the furled masts of the trading vessels and private yachts moored along the pier.
The sky was grey and overcast, and quite beautiful in the way Elizabeth always found bad weather beautiful — except when she had to walk through it in her slippers, of course.
She admired the waves splashing along the entire length of the pier, whose end almost disappeared in the distance.
Darcy smiled at her, and Elizabeth smiled back at him.
She sunk a little deeper into the comfortable armchair, and the warm air from the hot stove baked her back into comfort.
The waiter presently brought their hot coffee and the bread with butter that had been requested.
The cream had been heated and was placed in a delightful little jar with flowers on the side.
There were squares of sugar cut off of a sugarloaf and placed in a little pyramid with a pair of silver tongs set next to them.
Elizabeth exerted herself to sit up and take on the hostess’s duty, and she mixed Mr. Darcy’s coffee as she had noted over the past days he liked it. It was oddly intimate and thrilling to mix his coffee and to know how he liked it without asking, because she now knew him well.
Darcy smiled brilliantly at her when she pushed his cup and saucer towards him, and he lifted up the cup and took a sip of it.
It had always seemed to her a ridiculous little game when scheming mothers contrived to learn by bribing servants how their wealthy quarry liked to take their coffee — and it was .
But there was a truth underneath the game.
There was something special about knowing how a man liked things, and being able to arrange them to his comfort.
Elizabeth had a flash of insight in that moment about how Darcy must feel to be in the position of having been her rescuer. No wonder he seemed so generally cheerful now that he had saved from extreme danger the woman who — she allowed herself to believe — he loved dearly.
“Very fine, better coffee even than what Dessein provides for our breakfast spread.” That was Darcy’s judgement. “I was being ridiculous, and a useless peacock when I did not wish to enter — you saw my hesitation. No chance to deny it—”
“You may trust me to never hide your flaws from you.”
Darcy laughed happily. “Which makes your compliments the more precious by far that I can trust you to abuse me directly to my face any such time that I deserve it.”
“I am an exemplary woman.”
“Yes, yes you are.”
Elizabeth flushed with happiness at that simple compliment, delivered smilingly by Darcy.
To hide her blush she buttered her bread — fine butter and fine bread, but in truth no better than what she was used to in England.
And perhaps the bread was slightly stale.
Not that Elizabeth would ever let a matter like that damage her enjoyment of this fine moment.
Only a fool, in her opinion, would obsess over trifles while she was alive, drinking fine coffee and fine food paid for without the necessity to work for a disreputable earl.
Elizabeth frowned at that thought.
Why couldn’t she simply accept the situation and be happy? Why did she need to ruminate over her position of unspecified dependence upon Darcy when her ruminations would do no good?
The coffee was as good as Darcy said it was, clear through, with none of the ground remains left in it.