Page 52 of Mr Darcy’s Inconvenient Wife

“Never mind the bay,” he called down the hall. “Just the carriage. And Mrs Darcy's cloak.”

The maid brought the cloak and a bonnet. Elizabeth tied the strings, and the bow came undone. She tied it again, and it slipped again, because her fingers would not do what she told them. Darcy moved her hands out of the way and tied it himself under her chin, the way he had tied Georgiana's a hundred times when she was small and would not stand still for her nurse. Elizabeth did not move while he did it. Neither of them said anything.

The carriage came round with the lamps already lit. He handed her in and gave the coachman the direction, and added a few words about the horses that he would not have said in front of a lady at any other time. Then he got in beside her, the door was shut, and they were off.

The square went by behind them. Elizabeth sat forward with one hand on the strap and watched every street lamp as they passed it, as though Georgiana might be standing under one of them.

“We shall find her,” she said.

He heard the word. He remembered his aunt's letter in his hand at the foot of the stairs, and Elizabeth turning round on the bottom step to say it back to him, We?, as though he had offered her money in some foreign coin.

He did not answer. He could not have done it without his voice giving him away. At the corner of Oxford Street the carriage swung round hard, and her shoulder came against his arm. She did not move it away. They went on like that towards the north road without a word, while the coachman's whip cracked over their heads in the dark.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Elizabeth

“You will stay out of sight until she is out of the room.”

“You have told me so already, Mrs Darcy.”

“I know. I mean to keep telling you until we get there.”

The carriage had come out of Oxford Street and was climbing north, and the houses were thinning on either side. Elizabeth could see very little beyond the lamps. Mr Darcy sat beside her with his hat on his knee. He had not put it on since the hall. Every so often he turned the brim a quarter round and then back again, and she did not think he knew he was doing it.

They had not spoken for a mile before that. There had seemed nothing to say that would not make it worse. Twice she had opened her mouth to tell him Georgiana would be safe, and twice she had shut it again, because she did not know it, and he would have heard that she did not.

Once, when the wheels dropped into a rut and the whole carriage pitched, she saw his hand close on his knee until the knuckles stood out. Then it opened again, slowly, one finger at a time.

At Hunsford she would have said he did not feel things as other people did. She had very nearly said it to his face. It was not pity she felt now, watching him. She would have known what to do with pity. She wanted to take hold of that hand and keep it still, and she did not think he would want her to, and she could not tell which of the two troubled her more.

So she talked about the plan instead. It was something to hold on to.

“I shall go in first, and alone. If anyone asks, we have stopped to change horses and I wanted a fire. I shall walk into the wrong room, and be very much surprised, and very glad to see an old friend from Meryton.”

“He will not believe a word of it.”

“No. But he cannot say so, not in front of her.” She had thought it through at every corner since the square. “He has told her I am a schemer. If he calls me one to my face and I only smile at him, he will sound exactly like what he is. He needs her to come away quietly and of her own free will. A scene does him no good at all.”

“Whereas a scene with me does him a great deal of good.”

She was glad he had seen it for himself. “It is just what he wants. He has written to her that you are cold and hard and mean to shut her up. If you come through that door with your face as it is now—”

“What is the matter with my face?”

“Nothing at all, in a library. In an inn parlour at seven o'clock it would frighten a sergeant.”

He did not smile, but she thought he came near it.

“Once she is with me, I will bring her out to you. Then you may say whatever you like to Mr Wickham.” She hesitated. “Within reason.”

“I make no promises about reason.”

“Then promise me you will wait. Whatever you hear, unless I call you.”

The brim of the hat went a quarter round and stopped. For a moment she thought he would refuse her.

“I will wait,” he said. “God help me, I will wait.”