“I will be glad to share some of those thoughts. But will you, first, tell me what it is that brings youyourhappiness?”
Elizabeth thought about what to say, at first hesitating—people were so apt to make judgments about one based on the smallest evidence. But as her aunt had said, the only way to go from the ‘not knowing’ to the ‘knowing’was to tolerate the discomfort of this vulnerability. “I love to read, to sew, to walk in the beauty of nature. I love the theatre—my uncle Gardiner has taken me several times.”
“I wish I had known—I would have taken you.”
“I thought you wished to avoid people, for now.”
“Not at the expense of any pleasure of yours.”
She smiled at him—he really was very kind. “We will go next time we are in town.”
“When you imagined your future husband, what attributes did you picture?”
“Hmm. I did not have a detailed list, you understand.”
“But you must have had some conception.”
“I do not think I wished for anything that most girls do not want—that he be intelligent, considerate, and respectable. Oh, and very handsome, of course,” she said, grinning.
He adopted an expression of profound thought, then counted off on his fingers. “One, two, three, and of course the fourth. All your wishes can be accommodated, I believe.”
She laughed, delighted with his teasing, but then his expression grew solemn.
“I wished for the same. I also hoped to find someone devoted, someone whose first loyalty would be to our family. When you came to Netherfield, on foot, to care for your sister, I knew you to be a woman of just such dedication and spirit.”
As she thought of how she wished to reply, she decided she would be candid with him, no matter how silly it sounded. “When Jane and I were very young—we played as I think children, especially girls, often do—setting up little households in the nursery with our dolls. I particularly loved this game, but I always demanded a bit more realism than Jane required. We would argue, because I thought our game required a ‘mama’ and a ‘papa’—but of course,Iwas the mama.”
“You forced your elder sister to play the father?” He seemed to find this amusing.
“Well,someonehad to be. But she would cry.”
“She wanted to be the mother, I suppose.”
“Probably. But that is not what made her so sad. It was that the papa did notdoanything useful in our girlish little world. Finally, we agreed on the designation of a particular doll to be ‘Father’, and we usually simply tossed him under the bed—out of sight, to do whatever it was fathers do. I suppose that I have always hoped for a husband who would be involved in our family’s day-to-day living, not merely a visitor who appears nightly at the dinner table. That he would be actively participatingwithme in life, and with our children if we are so blessed, even before they are able to read and converse easily with their elders.”
He leant forward on his seat. “Whatever else I am, Elizabeth, I can promise you this: I will never be anunder-the-bed papa.” He looked and sounded perfectly serious.
That was the moment when she began to fall a little bit in love.
17
A LEAP OF FAITH
The journey from town to Pemberley had never been his favourite—stopping every ten miles or so, it required fifteen or sixteen changes. However, this journey was different. He was with Elizabeth, and finally, finally, he was beginning to see again the woman he had begun to know before Miss Bingley’s conniving. As she became easier in his company, he found he could be easier in hers, telling her things he had never supposed he would tell anyone at all.
“In a small way, you remind me of my mother,” he told her, after leaving Dunstable with a fresh team. “She always seemed to brighten any room she entered. Others were drawn to her.” She smiled across at him, a little shyly, and his heart beat harder to see it.
They pulled into an inn, perhaps the eleventh of the day. As usual, she walked around and he accompaniedher. She seemed to enjoy with interest the prospects around her.
“What an excellent travelling companion you are,” he told her. “Most women seem to stay in the carriage, unless they have a specific reason to move. I prefer to walk, to see what sights surround me.”
“I feel the same,” she said. “Look at that old tower, perched by itself upon that hill? Do not you wonder who built it, and why?”
Inwardly he vowed to gain its history before the next time they came through.
When they returned to the carriage, he handed her in as usual, and seated himself across from her.
She appeared to hesitate. “If you were to sit beside me,” she said, her voice just the slightest bit tentative, “and if I were henceforth to doze, you could prevent me from making a fool of myself by falling off my seat.”
