Chapter Text
I looked at Jane’s reflection in the mirror and, for a moment, could barely keep a straight face. Jane’s eyes met mine in the glass, a look of apprehension.
“What is it? Is it not right?”
My voice quivered, but I shook my head. “You are, as always, a vision. I was only imagining Mr Bingley’s reaction when he sees you. I think it is cruel for a man so young to die of apoplexy, do not you?”
Jane stared at me in horror, before understanding my meaning and colouring.
“Lizzy!” she said, chidingly. “You know this comes with a fichu!”
“Then I strongly recommend you wear it,” I said, picking the lace wrapper up from the chair and handing it to her. She tucked it around her neck and chest, and then stepped back to observe the effect.
“Come, stand beside me,” she said, reaching for my hand. “I think this will do, do not you?”
Next to her, I could not imagine anybody noticing me, but I thought we looked very fine and that the two weeks in London, during which Mamma had us visit near every shop in Town to assemble our trousseaux, had paid off.
“Mrs Bingley and Mrs Darcy,” Jane said ceremoniously, pressing my hand. She looked proud and happy at once, and it added a glowing quality to her ordinarily rather serene beauty. “It all happened so fast,” she sighed.
“Fast! I beg you, do not talk to me about fast! By the end, I was tempted to agree with Darcy that we ought to have taken to the border as soon as we were of one mind!”
Jane looked at me in shock. “He did not say so, did he?”
I laughed and shook my head. Darcy had, in fact, expressed some such sentiment once or twice, after having—with the patience of a saint—sat through an evening of my aunt Philips’s vulgarities or Sir William’s endless assurances that he would find us at St James’s. Darcy hadn’t been in earnest when he suggested we should run to Scotland, and neither was I now, although the wait had been torturous, especially since, for the past two weeks, while Jane could enjoy the attentions Bingley so liberally bestowed upon her, Darcy had been away in Pemberley, to prepare the house for all that was to come.
I missed his company. Two weeks is a long separation for lovers who had only recently admitted their feelings to one another. It was embarrassing to own that I thought of him nearly constantly. Love had the power of rendering its sufferers witless.
“Jane!” It was Kitty’s voice coming from the passage, along with her stomping feet. “Jane!”
“Here,” Jane said, stepping away from the mirror and opening the door. “What is it?”
Kitty looked in on us, smiling. “You both look very pretty,” she said, “but you might want to change, for-”
Mamma’s voice carried from the downstairs parlour, “Hill! Oh, Mary, write this down… something netted. Don’t frown so, you will have wrinkles before you are twenty. Where is Hill? Hill!”
Kitty dimpled. “She just saw Mr Bingley on his horse. He will be here soon.”
“Oh,” Jane’s eyes widened. “Oh dear, I have given him up today. We ought to change, Lizzy. Kitty, will you help?”
Kitty closed the door on Mamma’s cries, and helped us undo the buttons and the ribbons, and to find appropriate day dresses in which to greet my sister’s betrothed. Jane was all blushes when she made for the door, and Kitty and I had to stop her from tumbling down the stairs in her haste, for she had accidentally tucked her petticoat into her silk stocking.
When we came down, together, male voices could already be heard in the parlour. I was quite ready to wait my turn with Bingley, who was apt to see nobody but his bride as soon as she arrived, when my gaze was arrested by his companion. My heart gave a great leap. Mr Darcy! He had come early!
I beamed, and he smiled. I wanted to say something, but for the first time perhaps I felt a sting of shyness with him. It was, I told myself, due to our recent separation, and due to everybody being there and seeing us.
Jane enquired after Darcy’s journey, hoping it was a pleasant one. He thanked her and said he made good time.
“I daresay you did!” Bingley cried. “Though neither your horses nor your outriders will thank you for it. Whoever heard of a journey from Derbyshire taking but a night and a day! Madness! He must have been racing the mailcoach, upon my honour!”
Darcy looked as though he had hoped to have kept it a secret. I bit my lip to control my smile. Had all this haste been for me?
My mother began then to elaborate on the subject of how Mr Darcy, in all likelihood, could afford to change horses at the best inns, and had, to her mind, a hundred of them stored in every place in the country. It was a speech designed to give pleasure to no one but Papa, who came in just then and enjoyed the moment for all it was worth.
“How do you do, sir!” he said, first to Darcy then to Bingley. I was always anxious that he should like Darcy, but though he appreciated him well enough, he would not stoop to containing my mother’s wildest outbursts for him or anybody.
Mamma was already planning a great dinner, and as though convinced that this would impress Darcy, began to list, “The Gouldings will certainly be here, and you won’t want to miss them, I dare say, for he has been travelling very far and will have a great deal to say. And of course Sir William and Lady Lucas, and Mr and Miss Robinson, and Mrs Long… she will bring her nieces, plain girls but so friendly, one must pity them, I think, though it was never to be expected that they should do as well as my own daughters, for Jane, I always said, was fit for a duke!”
Jane’s face was entirely crimson, and I could find nowhere to look, but my father’s eyes were dancing with enjoyment behind his glasses.
“Look, Darcy,” Bingley said, stopping my mother from running on. “Is not it a fine autumn?”
“The finest,” Darcy earnestly replied, both of them making a great show of looking out of the window, which happened to present nothing more edifying than our courtyard of an autumn.
“It would be a shame to pass up on such a fine day, I think,” Bingley said laughingly.
“A great shame,” Darcy confirmed.
“I say,” Bingley exclaimed theatrically, “I have a great hankering just now to see that view again… the one Jane was so good as to show me the last time we went. In this light, I fancy, it will be quite a different experience!”
Darcy was convinced that the light must not be missed. I would have appreciated their methods more, had not my father been in a teasing mood.
“Now that you advertise it so much,” Papa said, “I might go myself! It is a very good light, is not it, Kitty? Mary? What say you wrap up your mother, and help her up for some exercise?”
Luckily, Mamma, not detecting the jest, exclaimed that she had no desire to be tugged about by the wind or pelted with falling leaves, but encouraged Jane and me to go, to improve our complexions, and so the four of us alone were, at length, allowed to leave.
With what swiftness Jane and I rushed to tie our bonnets and fasten our cloaks, I cannot say, but we were glad to be marching out of the gates and up the path moments later, never mind the wind or the leaves.
It had become our custom on these walks (our only reprieve from the intrusion of family, friends and neighbours) for Jane and Bingley to lag behind and for Darcy and me to charge ahead. This gave us some privacy without being entirely improper, and so no sooner did we pass the courtyard gate, did we begin to drift away from one another in the accustomed way.
Soon, Darcy and I could talk without being overheard. My hand was in his arm, and he looked down at me from underneath the brim of his beaver with a smile, but our recent parting had done the mischief and I was- well, I was shy.
It was silly to be shy of him, of course, for we were to be wed in but two days, and after all that had occurred of good and evil in the course of our acquaintance, we knew one another better, perhaps, than many another pair destined for the altar. But as we walked I could think of nothing to say, and he, meanwhile, seemed content to say nothing. For a while, we walked in this way, the cold in the air caused our breaths to come in puffs of steam, the ground was hard and cold underneath our marching feet.
Then I remembered something I had resolved to discuss with him, and breaking the silence I said, “I have a favour to ask you.”
He looked down at me, surprised, his thoughts had been elsewhere. “Yes?”
“While you were away,” I began, weighing my words, “it occurred once or twice but… my neighbours, very eager to befriend Bingley, have been coaxing him to spend all his time with them. Sometimes, I am sorry to say, he would yield all too readily, and cause my sister concern. Especially, since he would then be late to attend her, or sometimes forget altogether.”
He listened with a slightly uncomprehending frown.
“I think Mr Bingley yields far too readily to the powers of persuasion,” I said, hinting. His frown cleared.
“You disapprove, do you?” he asked in an amused murmur.
“How can you be surprised?”
“You did appear vehemently supportive of the idea that one ought to readily yield to the demands of friends only a few months ago,” he reminded me.
“Oh, don’t repeat the nonsense I said then. I only said it to vex you,” I laughed.
“You hardly needed to open your lips to do that.”
We had reached the crest of the hill and turned off the main path to walk to the little viewing point at its edge. Here the trees shaded us from the path, and ahead stretched a view of gentle hills, a patchwork of fields strewn with farmers’ houses and barns, and lines of leaf-less trees.
I laughed, feeling my cheeks warm, “Indeed! Very pretty, I thank you. And so, you will marry me, I suppose, so I can vex you until the end of our days?”
He put his arm around my waist and pulled me to him in one smooth movement. “As your husband I can put your lips to much better use.”
He placed a kiss on my neck, and I pushed on his chest, at once amused and alarmed. After the talk Mamma had had with Jane and me two evenings before, in which “duty”, “obedience”, “suffer with patience” and “get with child as soon as ever you can” were the dominant themes, I could not but feel a little nervous even amidst the flutter of excitement his kisses always elicited.
“I wish to ask you something very delicate, and you will do nothing but put me to the blush,” I said.
His eyes met mine in fond amusement, and he loosened his hold of me. “Very well, tell me. How may I assist you?”
“I would like you to talk to Bingley.”
“On what subject?”
“His… his duties. Towards Jane. His strength of conviction. His ability, or rather lack thereof, to refuse to be coaxed into others’ bidding.”
For a moment, Darcy seemed to be struggling with keeping a straight face, his dark eyes laughing at me.
“What?” I asked.
“My love, do you expect me to persuade Bingley not to be so persuadable?”
I could not but laugh with him, but assured him, too, that “If there is one man who could do it, I am sure it is you.”
“What, bend the powers of logic?”
“I really do not understand your opposition. It is perfectly logical to yield one last time and then never more. Your future sister’s happiness is at stake.”
“Do not you think that this might be something the Bingleys ought to discuss between themselves?”
“But Jane will never say anything, she never complains!” I said. “But you, as a man and one who already has so much influence over him… You could explain to him how he must be more… steady to his course.”
When he did not respond, I added, “You owe it to Jane.”
He sighed, his gloved hand playing with the ribbon of my bonnet.
“You make the most extraordinary claims,” he said. “What exactly do I owe her?”
“Well, you separated her from Bingley and made her very unhappy. Now you can do something to make her happy. This must appeal to your sense of both logic and justice.”
“If we are to be logical, and also, may I add, consistent and true to reason and reality all at the same time,” he said, patiently, “I believe I was also responsible for encouraging Bingley to return to Netherfield. I think that evens our score.”
“It does no such thing! You merely righted a wrong.”
“Merely?”
“Yes, merely. It was the very least you could do.”
He raised his eyebrows at me, but I could tell he was not offended: for one, I learned recently that he was not as easily offended or as stuffy and hard as he had at first appeared, and for another he had that look about him of a man who is looking down at an adorable idiot. I had once told him that he looked at me that way, and he protested vehemently, but I knew it for what it was.
“May I remind you,” he said, “that your sister had a very pretty display of this particular flaw in Bingley’s character during their courtship? It is not as though she did not know that he yields too easily.”
“Yes, and she loves him nevertheless.”
He smiled and, putting a finger under my chin so that he might kiss me more easily, did so very lightly and then, equally lightly, taking advantage of the flutter of confusion this always caused in me, he murmured, “Has it ever occurred to you, my love, that perhaps it is not his character that is at fault here?”
I, at first flustered by the kiss, could not immediately react, but when I did it was with my jaw dropping in shock.
“Jane?” I cried.
His eyes widened comically and, slightly imitating me, he said, “Jane!”
“Jane is not at fault! How can you say such a thing!”
He smiled patiently but said nothing, and so I, goaded, proceeded with a recital of all of Jane’s merits. I explained to him at length, as I had done many times, how Jane was the paragon of all possible virtues and that were I half as good as Jane I could die knowing I was very good indeed.
He did not seem moved by this. When I had done, he said, “Quite. But she does tend to accept other people’s missteps and misbehaviours without standing up for her own rights.”
“She can only see the best in people!”
“Just so. And it is very admirable.” This appeased some of my offended feelings. He continued, “But all that needs to happen in this current situation, is for her to tell Bingley that he has displeased her. He is violently in love with her. If he knew he had made her unhappy, he would be, I’m sure, mortified. And though I cannot claim to have even one day’s worth of experience more than he does in the field of matrimony, I believe it would be beneficial to both their and our future felicity if they learned to speak to one another of their needs without resorting to you applying to me to speak to either of them.”
I was reminded how it always was so difficult to reason with him. After all, what logical arguments could I summon to describe the look of loss on Jane’s face when Bingley did not show at the agreed time, for a late card party or an impromptu shooting had claimed his attention, exhausted him, delayed him?
So I did not use words, but instead looked up at Darcy, not pleadingly, but with feeling. He looked back at me, determined to resist me.
“It is for your sister’s own good,” he said.
I smiled. He cast his eyes to the heavens as though looking for forbearance and then shook his head. My smile widened. I could read capitulation in his features, and so astonished him by throwing my arms about his neck, whispering, “Thank you”.
His arms were around me still when we heard Bingley’s cheerful voice, and we fell apart and I righted my spencer, while Darcy pretended to study the vista.
On our walk back to Longbourn, Jane and Bingley walked close behind us, and Bingley regaled Darcy with the various wonderful ideas for entertainment he and his new friends in Hertfordshire had for him. Darcy, who was never exuberant, dampened Bingley’s spirits by telling him that his thoughts were elsewhere these days, and that he had far rather spend his evenings at Longbourn.
“Oh yes, quite!” Bingley laughed. “I can think of nothing better! We shall be most comfortable together in a smaller circle!”
I smiled up at Darcy and he, with an exasperated smile, murmured for my hearing alone, “Is this what marriage will be? You riding roughshod over me?”
“Oh of course,” I said. “You don’t know it yet, sir, but you are marrying the shrew of the family.”