Page 24 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)
Darcy was deliriously happy two days later when he married Elizabeth.
There was an Anglican chaplain in the city. According to this chaplain, as they were not in England they did not need to have the banns sounded, or gain a license from a bishop, if they married in a French civil ceremony first.
To be married by French law Darcy and Elizabeth needed to swear before a notary as to their family circumstances, the location of their births, and their names.
And most specifically they were required to swear that there were no barriers to the performance of a marriage between them under the laws of France.
Both Darcy and Elizabeth were aware of none under the laws of England , and so Darcy hoped very much that French laws were not so different they perjured themselves when they made that oath.
The notary assured them that there was nothing strange, and that the French laws on this matter were in general more liberal than those of the United Kingdom, or at least he thought they were.
In the morning after they acquired the documents from the notary, they went to the town hall with General Fitzwilliam and Major Williams.
It was strange to Darcy to find he suddenly had a new and previously unknown cousin, though he liked Major Williams a great deal.
General Fitzwilliam and Major Williams were to witness their marriage, and then immediately ride off to the southeast to catch up to their regiment which had started the previous day its slow march to join the rest of the occupying army.
The happy couple duly presented at the town hall their documents from the notary.
They had cost Darcy two hundred francs to be written up and prepared on such short notice.
The mayor himself came out to administer the oaths — this apparently was unusual, and only occurred because Darcy was a great gentleman, and the mayor was an acquaintance of General Fitzwilliam.
The usual course was for a couple to have the oaths administered by a minor city clerk.
They were made to swear their wedding oaths in French, and after Elizabeth and Darcy had replied oui to each question, the mayor popped open a bottle of effervescent vin de Champagne that actually had been grown, aged, and bottled in Champagne.
They toasted their marriage, and happily smiling to each other they walked arm in arm out into the mostly cold February sun. The couple then needed to walk several blocks, holding a paper certifying their marriage, to the rooms the Anglican chaplain had rented to serve as a church.
The chaplain then properly married them before God, and the Church of England — which in Darcy’s view was a matter of somewhat more importance than being married before the laws and King of France.
They signed the register, which was just a single sheet instead of a whole book.
The chaplain had explained the previous day that their marriage would be properly registered in England under Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753 — the law which made Gretna Green the most popular destination for wedded bliss in all the land.
The Bishop of London kept a book in London to which the chaplain sent the register of each marriage he performed to be recorded there officially and properly in England herself.
After the chaplain married them, and they’d said their proper English “I do’s” in accordance with the well-known words of the book of common prayer, the chaplain also popped open a bottle of champagne.
This bottle was furnished by the cellars of a decidedly lesser gentleman, and was not quite so fine as the one the mayor of Calais offered them.
Darcy and Elizabeth still happily toasted themselves and their happy future once more with General Fitzwilliam and Major Williams.
On the street their carriage awaited them, with Becky and Joseph waiting to travel south with them.
Also Darcy’s coachman, grooms, and his footmen all were gathered round to travel with them as well.
Being rather tipsy, Darcy shook hands once more with his cousins, profusely thanked General Fitzwilliam for his help, kissed Elizabeth on the open street in full sight of everyone, and handed her into the carriage.
And so they set off into a happy future.
Darcy’s man of business had ridden ahead on horse the day before to rent a house in the city for them.
He would prepare everything for them to stay at least a month’s time in Paris.
As they travelled south, at each postal station the couple needed to show their passports to be allowed to rent the horses, and every single time Elizabeth smilingly took a walk about the French town.
She made an effort also each time she stopped to talk to someone in French.
She had improved enormously, having already a solid grounding in the language and reading a great deal in French, but she had just lacked the knack for the proper, and frankly strange to an English ear, pronunciation the language required.
Darcy loved each single minute of their travel south.
He and Elizabeth were constantly affectionate with each other, as they sat together in the carriage, his happy arm around her happy shoulder.
Elizabeth often rested her head on his chest. She usually smiled, and her smile was his favorite thing in the world.
Her body nestled soft against his, and he was filled with an infinite sense of protectiveness and affection, and he was very, very satisfied that she had — wise woman that she was — convinced him that it was better to be her husband than simply her guardian.
Elizabeth laughingly complained that the scenery did not look nearly different enough from England to be worth the price of the trip. All hedges with leaves lost for the winter, and she could see those in England any day of the year.
“That would only be true,” Darcy replied dryly, his hand upon Elizabeth’s — his wife’s! — leg, “were it a day in winter.”
Elizabeth laughingly kissed him. “Pedantic man — you have no love for the poetic.”
In actual fact, the landscape of France was not remarkably dissimilar to that of England.
There were of course differences, mostly in terms of the color of the paint preferred and the style of building, but it would take an architect to be able to really explain how French village construction differed from the British style.
There was a great similarity Darcy thought between all Christian cultures, even the Catholic ones.
The style of building and life was similar also in the Germanies — the same types and cuts of clothes worn by the fashionable, the same Beethoven and Mozart were beloved everywhere, the plays of Shakespeare and Goethe also.
No matter where you went in Europe, cultured men spoke French with some facility.
Only when one reached as far east as Russia did the appearance of the people and of the churches became really distinct. And if one entered the lands of serfdom, the peasantry was entirely distinct from good English cottagers.
Even in Russia the cities seemed to Darcy a little like the rest of Europe, likely because the cities were filled with merchants and aristocrats who travelled and imitated what they saw in foreign lands, whether for good or for ill.
In Russia Darcy had heard repeated twice the story of how Peter the Great had early in his reign gone to visit the more Occidental nations, so that he might learn the secrets of their wealth. And then upon his return, he promptly banned the wearing of beards, because the Dutch went clean shaven.
Spending every night in the same bed as Elizabeth was magical, everything he had imagined, and yet somehow more tender, and more dear and more special than he could have imagined.
He had had some worry that she would be shy or frightened of him because of natural maidenly delicacy, and because of fear occasioned by Lord Lachglass’s attempt to attack her.
Yet she was quite the opposite, warm and eager to explore and passionate with him.
However when Darcy had suggested such an idea to Elizabeth, she laughed and said that being with him was entirely different, and there was no reason she could see to be anxious with him when an entirely different man had attempted to attack her.
“Is it the normal and expected thing for a woman to be frightened of congress with a good man if once an evil man tried to force it upon her?” Elizabeth laughed.
She then frowned and rested her head on Darcy’s chest. “I can see in truth very easily see how such a fear could arise, were my nature different, but I am who I am and it has not.”
The weather had been unseasonably warm for February since the day Darcy asked Elizabeth to marry him (or had she asked him to marry her ?
— it was quite like Elizabeth to jump over such proper forms, and he loved her for it).
The winter fields were yet empty and grey, but there were hints of blooms and early green buds if one looked, which they did, as they took regular walks round the countryside.
The couple travelled slowly and took the road by easy stages, often just going twenty or thirty miles in a day and spending hours in each city or town of any interest. They arrived in Amiens before noon, and stayed there the rest of the day, as Elizabeth was charmed by the large gothic cathedral.
Another time they simply stayed in a village where they were changing the horses because the station master mentioned that the sunset was beautiful from a hill a mile from the town.
It was.
They came into Paris early in the evening, a little before sunset.
Darcy’s man of business met them at the postal station at St. Denis.
He had made arrangements for the rental of a fine set of apartments occupying two floors of a building on the Rue de Richelieu , with just a few minutes’ walk to the Palais Royal, and from there a few more minutes’ walk to the Palace of the Tuileries and the Seine.