Page 53 of The Last House in Lambton (Pride and Prejudice Variations #6)
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
A laugh, which seemed to be constantly bubbling up my spine, nearly broke through as the team pulled the coach away from the house and made for the road.
I broke into a canter just in front of the dust thrown up by the wheels, once again feeling as though I had stolen Elizabeth from her rightful owners, but this time, more successfully.
When I brought her back to Longbourn, she would be more mine than theirs, though she would also always be her own person by divine right, and I, merely her faithful consort.
Keller must have sensed my mood of elation.
I do not know how he could escape knowing he carried what was precious cargo to me, and he kept the team at a lively, sustainable pace which smacked of display.
He was, if I was not mistaken, exhibiting the excellence of his driving for the benefit of Miss Elizabeth Bennet, daughter of Longbourn, inheritor of nothing save her natural nobility, and soon to be queen of Pemberley.
The laugh I had been striving to suppress then broke through my reserve, and I chuckled aloud, earning me a strange pair of looks from the footmen perched on the boot of the coach.
I quickly composed myself, for no one wants to be in service to a fool, and we went comfortably as far as Watford where we stopped at the Ram’s Head, and I was given my first opportunity to speak with Elizabeth.
I helped her down the steps first, before also handing down her sister Jane.
“If you do not object, we shall rest the horses for an hour or so. That way, we can make London without a change.”
“Of course,” she said.
“I have secured for your use a private room and a parlour for refreshments if you are hungry?”
This was a distressingly impersonal first conversation with my affianced bride after our formal agreement, but there was nothing for it. We were not alone, and I could hardly search deeply into her eyes and enquire, How are you faring, my love?
After half an hour, we convened in the private parlour and partook of a light collation in an atmosphere of stilted constraint, while poor Miss Bennet strove to maintain a conversation that refused to prosper.
I laboured through various answers until Elizabeth at last shook off her reserve and said, “I would dearly love to stretch my legs, Mr Darcy. If we are to sit in a coach for the remainder of the afternoon, I believe I might be more comfortable for a walk.”
Jane declined to go with us, for which I could have kissed her, and shortly after, I was escorting Elizabeth down a mundane road flanked on either side by the weary looking enterprises that congregate around a busy posting house.
“I wonder that we are always walking in such places as offer so little charm,” she remarked, looking around her impartially.
“It is curious that our best conversations have taken place on a crumbling wall beside a fallow field or on the deserted road north of Lambton. And now, here we are in the company of farriers and wheelwrights.”
“Hmm. Do not forget Mrs Jennings’s ill-lit kitchen,” I replied without thinking, for that memory must still be fraught for her. I swiftly changed the subject and asked what I had wished to know for hours. “But how are you faring, my darling? I have missed you.”
“And I you,” she said with a quick, flashing smile before looking abstractedly at the end of the road in the distance. “As to how I am faring, you may well imagine for yourself how I am after you have surprised my family with your offer.”
“Has it been very bad?”
“No, not at all. I have only been fitted for twenty dresses for a holiday that is to last one week and repacked my trunk three times over. I have been threatened with a trip to the London warehouses with Mama after which we shall look over your townhouse. Forgive me, sir, but that is such a terrible prospect I must beg to be excused—and, what else? Oh, I have been lectured, scolded, kissed, caressed, shown off to the neighbourhood, and forbidden to walk outside without the escort of a maid.”
“Do tell me you brought your one good dress . I have grown quite attached to it.”
“No sir. You will never again see me so resplendently attired while sitting at your table. It has been declared a rag and handed down to poor Mary.”
“A great shame, that. But Elizabeth, we must speak in practical terms. What is your pleasure with regard to our future?”
She graced me with one of the sweetest looks I had yet earned from her. “I knew you would give me the freedom to decide.”
“Have you come to trust me?”
“I believe I have and to a degree that may shock you, sir. ”
“Tell me.”
“I made a promise to Lydia that you would buy her a horse.”
“Did you? But that is not a terrible idea, if I can find a brute of a filly who will not mind her fidgets and flatly refuse to gallop, even under the insistence of a whip.”
“I knew I could count on you to select the perfect mount for her. But it must also be white, so it will best show off the riding costume you will inevitably buy for her. But before you decide these are paltry matters and my trust in you is not as robust as you would wish, you must know that is not the end of it.”
“No?”
“I believe such a gift must be funded rather lavishly, for the stables at home will need to be enlarged, and Lydia must be taught to ride and have a groom besides.”
I pretended to be fretful. “My word. We shall likely have to retrench in consequence.”
She grinned beatifically in reply and said, “You may discharge your French chef de cuisine, and I shall cook us pots and pots of soup.”
“Oh dear.”
“Oh dear, indeed.”
“Now, do be serious. I wish to hear your preferences. Are we to wed at Saint George’s or Saint Paul’s?” I asked with a wink.
“I regret to inform you, sir, I will be married at home, and if your storied relations choose to come to Meryton, we shall suffer a staggering degree of mortification and for such a prolonged period we may fall ill from it. But,” she said airily, “I refuse to feel the least bit sorry for you, since you have gone against my advice by refusing to forget me. You have forced this upon yourself, sir.”
“If I am not mistaken, I have been made to feel sorry more than once for making the mistake of offering for you. What was that little shrug you gave me when your mother would speak so outrageously to me this morning? Or just now when you would not offer up even a word to help along a most awkward meal?”
She laughed and said, “If you thought to marry me to spare yourself the duty of speaking in company, you are in for a grave disappointment. I shall be mute as a clam at our wedding breakfast, I promise you.”
“Good God, are you in earnest? Well, I had better be philosophical about it if that is how you mean to have your revenge.”
“I am curious,” she said sweetly, affecting wide-eyed innocence. “What will be your guiding principle on the occasion of introducing your relations to mine?”
“I shall endure it much as my sister must endure her presentation. I have often noticed that a wedding is the least romantic occasion in the world.”
She swiftly turned to me and laughed. “Have you? I have remarked much the same! You would not believe the accounts I heard of Mr Collins’s marriage to my poor friend Charlotte Lucas.
I considered myself lucky indeed to have been on my knees sweeping ashes out of the hearth at Auntie’s house when the dreaded event took place. ”
“I shall be sure to introduce you to the Countess of Matlock as the charwoman at the Frye house in Lambton,” I said, bringing her hand to my lips.
In all, my horses were afforded a two-and-a-half-hour rest while Elizabeth and I walked the length of Watford, a market town consisting of one long street.
We wandered through Saint Mary’s Church without seeing it at all, for we never ceased our conversation, quenching a longstanding thirst for such a liberty.
We commiserated on the practical, spoke of Seneca and of Mrs Burke, and briefly, of our deeper feelings.
These would be aired in fleeting phrases, in looks and in gestures, and in times of quiet reflection over months and years, rather than laid out in totality on the high road at Watford.
Thus, our existence as undeclared lovers was quickly transcended, and with every step and every word, we settled more deeply into comfortable, unrestrained intimacy.
As we neared the Ram’s Head, where stood Keller looking irritably up the road in search of us, I stopped and faced Elizabeth.
“I must ask, though I am loath to?—”
“Ask me anything, and freely, sir.”
“Bingley? How may I make amends to your sister? Should I invite him to Brighton? I know you suspect me of influencing him, and?—”
“Do not confess, I beg of you, for we shall fall into an unhappy subject for which I have no inclination whilst partaking of such a lovely view,” she said with a twinkle, sweeping her hand past the doorway to the saddlery. “Besides, I have long since forgiven you.”
“I do not know why. I do not deserve it.”
“Perhaps you do not, but I have only to reflect on how different will be my relationship with your sister to what Jane’s would have been to Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst to think more kindly on your intervention. That said, the choice must be Jane’s, I think, and I shall enquire as to her preference.”
“That is fair,” I said distantly, for I had momentarily lost myself in examining her face, and I could not quite recall of whom or what we had just been speaking.
Only Keller’s impatient cough brought me back from a truly dream-like other world to the commonplace scene of a posting house yard that reeked of manure.
After begging Jane Bennet’s forgiveness for our tardiness, we were soon heading into London proper.