Page 36 of Mr Darcy’s Inconvenient Wife

He said it the way another man might agree to the date of a rent day. Her own answer came out steadier than she had expected, and she took a small, grim pleasure in that. But when he put the ring on her finger, his hand was not quite steady. The ring was plain gold and a size too large. It slid round as soon as he let go.

In the vestry she wrote Elizabeth Bennet in the register for the last time. His name was already there above hers, in a tall, even hand. Mr Bennet signed as witness, blotted the page, and looked at it for a moment.

“Well, it has been done properly, at any rate,” he said. “That is more than can be said for anything else this week.”

***

The wedding breakfast was cold ham, a boiled fowl, and the white soup Mrs Bennet had insisted on. There was also what was left of Jane's bride-cake. Mrs Bennet had hidden it at the back of the larder, and now she brought it out as though she had been saving it for this all along.

Lydia cut herself a second slice. “Jane will be so cross to have missed it. May I not write to her tonight? Only a line.”

“You may not.” Mr Bennet did not look up from his carving. “Jane and Bingley are to have their wedding journey in peace. Nobody in this house writes one word about today until they are settled in Edinburgh, and then Lizzy shall tell Jane herself.”

“Not even one line?”

“Least of all from you, my dear. Your lines have a way of running on to four pages, and then being crossed.”

Kitty laughed, and Lydia sulked. Mary said that discretion was the truest kind of charity. Nobody argued with her, because nobody had been listening.

Mr Darcy had eaten almost nothing. When the plates were taken away, he put down his glass and turned to Mrs Bennet.

“I must beg your pardon, madam. I have business in town that cannot wait, and I am expected there tomorrow. I am afraid we must leave this afternoon.”

“This afternoon!” Mrs Bennet put a hand to her chest. “But Lizzy's trunks are not half packed!”

“Mrs Darcy will not need a great deal from Longbourn. Anything she wants can be bought in London.”

For a moment Elizabeth could not think who he meant. Then she felt her face go hot, and she bent over her napkin and folded it into very neat quarters.

“My sister is in town just now,” he went on, and this time he spoke to Elizabeth. “She is very anxious to meet you.”

“Is she? I did not think you would have told her.”

“I wrote to her the night you said yes.”

Elizabeth did not know what to say to that. He had written to his sister that very night, then, while she lay awake upstairs and listened to her mother crying through the wall.

“We shall stay in town a few weeks,” he said. “Then we go home to Derbyshire, and you will take up your place at Pemberley.”

“Mistress of Pemberley!” cried Mrs Bennet. For a whole minute she forgot the Archbishop, and the scandal, and the trunks, and simply beamed at everybody. Then she remembered. “And I may not tell Lady Lucas that either!”

Under the table, Elizabeth turned the ring round on her finger. This was the first she had heard of London. She understood, without anyone having to tell her, that she would not be asked about it, any more than she had been asked about the rest. A wife went where her husband took her. She had always known that. She had simply never thought the wife would be her.

Her father seemed very interested in the pattern on his plate. He did not look up.

***

Charlotte came at two o'clock, while the trunks were being corded in the hall.

“I could not let you go without saying goodbye,” she said, and took Elizabeth's arm. They went out into the garden. The gravel walk still crunched with frost, and the roses had been cut right back for the winter.

For a while neither of them spoke. Elizabeth had been practising an apology for her mother all morning. It sounded worse every time she said it over to herself.

“Charlotte, what my mother tried to do...”

“I know all about it. Papa had the whole story from Mrs Long before supper on Saturday.” Charlotte did not sound in the least put out. “A stable boy and a shilling, and a bar across the door. I must say I thought it very clever, for your mother.”

“I am so very sorry.”