Page 62 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

For three weeks she had wanted nothing in the world so much as this.

It did not feel like freedom at all.

17

His hands could do everything now. Darcy found he could not bear it.

He shaved himself on the first morning in Grosvenor Square, before Parrish came up. The new skin of his palm pulled on the razor, and that was all. He nicked himself once, under the ear. He looked at the bead of blood in the glass. He wiped it away and finished.

Parrish came in at seven with the hot water and stopped in the doorway. "I see you have no need of me this morning, sir."

"I thought I would try."

"Very good, sir." Parrish laid out the blue coat without being asked. He stood by the glass with three fresh neckcloths over his arm.

Darcy tied the first one himself. It creased at the knot, and he pulled it off. The second sat straight. He buttoned his own waistcoat from the top. At the last button his fingers stopped.

You are respectable, she had said, with her hands on that button.

He remembered what those hands had done afterward, in the wing chair. Her fingers had been cool, and then they had not been. His face grew hot in the glass.

He fastened the button.

Weston had cut the blue coat close across the shoulders, as Weston cut everything. Darcy got his right arm into the sleeve. The left would not follow.

"Allow me, sir," said Parrish.

"Thank you, Parrish." Darcy held out his arm.

Parrish eased the coat up over his shoulders and smoothed the seams. Parrish had done it every morning for nine years. Darcy found that he was glad of it.

Parrish went to the press. He came back with a coat over his arm and held it out without a word.

It was the coat from the fire. One sleeve was scorched brown to the elbow. Darcy had last seen it around her shoulders on the night of the fire.

"The young woman from Longbourn brought it to me, sir," said Parrish. "Before we left. With Miss Elizabeth's compliments. Miss Elizabeth is very much obliged."

"Very much obliged," said Darcy.

"Those were the words, sir. It is past mending. Shall I give it away?"

"No. Leave it."

Parrish hung it back in the press. He shut the door on it very gently.

Georgiana had waited up for him the night before. She was in town for the winter with Mrs. Annesley. She had come down to the hall in her wrapper. "Your hands," she had said. "Show me." She had looked at the pink, puckered palms for a long time. Then she had kissed one of them, very lightly, and gone up to bed.

Darcy breakfasted before she was up, and cut his own ham. Nobody had to take the knife. He lifted his own cup.

Every small thing he did alone was a thing she was not doing. Each task his hands took back put her one step further off. Now he does not. She had said it on the hall bench at Netherfield. His own hands were proving her right, one button at a time.

And she had looked up at him on the stairs, and seen nothing in his face. He had taught her that face himself.

The settlements took two days, in Hartley's chambers at Lincoln's Inn. Bingley initialed the drafts where he was told. Twice he asked whether Jane would like it.

"Miss Bennet will like it," said Darcy. "Sign."

On the thirtieth Bingley went home. He stood in the hall with his hat in his hands. "You will come down with me? The banns are read tomorrow."