Up and down, hop and hop. Back and forth. Twirling in the line, holding hands, the hard breathing after a fast dance.
Darcy’s eyes when they’d danced.
She could feel his hand in hers, the way he had approached her and Charlotte and asked for her hand for the next set with a small bow. The fascination he’d held for her. The brightness in his eyes, the way that his fitted coat had displayed his figure, and how the white breeches clung to his muscular legs.
Elizabeth shook herself and stared down at the letter.
It was harsh, but Papa had been harsh as well.
Papa, I do not mean to refuse your apology, but to say I do not know if I can rely upon you.
I miss you, and I also wish that everything said during those days could be unsaid, but it cannot.
So let us take the matter slowly — write back to me, tell me the gossip of Meryton, and the small things that happen. What interesting character sketches have you drawn? What jokes have amused you? How is the house without Jane present? Do Lydia and Kitty still run after the officers? Is Mama still happy due to my marriage?
I do not know what will happen in my marriage to Mr. Darcy. We quarreled recently, in part about matters that would only cause pain if they were known more widely, and in part about how we had understood the events that led to our marriage very differently. I confess to hoping that we will find our way to an accommodation again, but I do not know where his mind is.
I beg you not to tell this to Mama, for I hold it verypremature for a general announcement, but I am with child. Mr. Darcy does not yet know, as we quarreled on the same day that I became fairly certain on the matter.
I have come to love Pemberley.
The neighbors are eager to become my friends, and Miss Darcy has become more, a dear friend, and another sister of my heart. With the help of her and her piano masters, I have enormously improved at play.
As for reading, the library here is like nothing I have ever seen before, not even in town. It is in a vast room that has two stories full of bookshelves, with a massive globe, a huge and pleasant fireplace, lovely chairs, tables and reading stands, and more than ten thousand books. Some of them are very old, and very fine. There is a manuscript copy of one of Cicero’s works that was copied out by hand before Gutenberg’s invention spread widely, and a copy of Shakespeare’s famed first folio.
Papa, I miss you too,
Your daughter,
E Darcy
Chapter Sixteen
Gloomy, gray, and grimy.
London in the second week of January was an unpleasant place to be.
At least it did not stink like in summer.
Much.
And your selfish disdain for the feelings of others.
For the first week that he was back, Darcy slept on the sofa in his study.
He did not want to go back to the joint suite where in one of the two bedrooms he had spent his wedding night with Elizabeth.
He’d been filled with lust and anger that night. And yet that night and its memory had become precious to him. And painful because he did not know if he would ever be able to touch Elizabeth again.
Darcy took long endless rides and walks around the city, pounding the cobblestoned streets in his fine Hessian boots, going miles and miles around, seeing markets, churches, bridges, filthy narrow alleyways, palaces, parks, canals, and docks.
Several times he watched the swans in the Round Pond at Hyde Park. Children would come out with their caretakers to throw bread to them. There were also geese, ducks, and seagulls.
At the end of this week, caught by a posted notice in Haymarket for a new performance of Mozart’sDon Giovanni, Darcy went to the opera. As he sat down in his usual box, he realized his mistake at once. Many of the faces in the other boxes studied him, and not the show.
Yes, London society, where a display employing dozensof people using years of studied craft to entertain the guests was seen chiefly as an excuse to stare at the other people who attended.
Darcy had returned to London without his bride, less than two months after his sudden marriage to a wholly unsuitable and penniless girl.
