Page 153 of Homeless

Not long after the Darcy marriage appeared in the papers, and cards began appearing at the door for Elizabeth, there was one among them from Lady Honoria. Elizabeth had turned it over with an intent to ignore it, but there was a note on the back, expressing how very much she was looking forward to meeting her again.

Again.

Somewhere in that first dreadful meeting, or soon after, the girl had put together the thin and sun-browned Miss Bennet lately home from Spain, and the love her almost-betrothed had spoken of and would not name, and had arrived at the truth… and had said nothing. Had never breathed to her father that the very Mrs Darcy whose existence had cost him a valley was her new friend “Elizabeth,” who took tea in his daughter's morning room.

They had talked today of ordinary things — of a concert, of a book, of Honoria's own affairs, which were prospering in a direction that had nothing to do with Fitzwilliam Darcy and everything to do with a certain gentleman whose name brought a particular colour to Honoria's cheek. Elizabeth had teased her about it and been teased in return, and had come away warm and easy. She thought, riding home through the chill of a late October rain, that there were stranger things in the world than to number among one's friends the woman one had once believed would take everything.

She was still laughing a little to herself when the curricle drew up to Darcy House, and she looked up, and stopped smiling, because something was wrong.

The larger town carriage was standing before the house. Horses to, a footman at the heads, plainly waiting, and as her curricle drew up behind it, the front door opened and Darcy came out — Darcy, who six weeks ago could not cross a room, fairly leaping down the steps. His hat was already in his hand and his greatcoat buttoned, and he wore an expression that she could only call, though it ill became a gentleman of his consequence, smug.

“You are home,” he said, handing her down from the curricle himself and telling the coachman he would not be wanted, and might retire the horse. “Good. I was beginning to fear I should have to come and fetch you out of Lady Honoria's morning room, and I did not think the earl would thank me for it.”

“Fetch me for what?” She looked from his face to the waiting carriage and back. “Fitzwilliam, where are you going? You are dressed to travel. You are not fit to travel. The physician said —”

“The physician says a great many things, most of which I have decided to survive.” He had her hand tucked through his arm and was steering her towards the carriage. “Get in.”

“I will not get in until you tell me where we are going.”

“Get in, and I will consider it.”

“That is not a bargain, that is a kidnapping.” But she was laughing, because it was impossible not to, because there was a light in him she had not seen since those heady days in Santander, a boyish barely-contained delight that sat oddly on her grave husband. She let him hand her up into the carriage, and he climbed in after her — a little carefully, she noted, a little slower than he would once have done; he was mending, but he was not entirely himself. He settled beside her, rapped the roof, and the carriage moved off.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Did you have a pleasant time?” he asked, as though they were making conversation in a drawing room. “At your tea with Lady Honoria?”

“Fitzwilliam Darcy.”

“I only ask because you look uncommonly well pleased with the world, and I should hate to think it was Lady Honoria's morning room that did it, when I have gone to such trouble to —”

“Where are we going?”

“— arrange a far superior entertainment,” he finished, unruffled. “‘I did have a pleasant time, thank you for asking, Fitzwilliam, you are very good to inquire.’ Say it back to me. I have been practising being asked after all my life, and I find I rather like turning the matter round the other way.”

She turned in the seat to look at him properly, narrowing her eyes, and set about the only course left to her, which was to make him regret his own smugness by every means at her disposal.

“You are enjoying this a great deal. It is not becoming. I had thought I married a serious man — a thoughtful, forbidding, consequential sort of man, the kind who quells ballrooms with a single look and refuses to dance, and here he is grinning like a schoolboy who has hidden a frog in the governess's workbasket, and will not say where we are going.”

“You have,” he agreed, entirely unashamed.

“Do not interrupt me. I am cataloguing your faults, it is a long list and I have only reached the second item. Where are we going?”

“You will see.”

“Is it far?”

“Not very.”

“Is it a surprise, or is it merely a torment? For those are different things, and I should like to know which I am being subjected to, so that I may allot my patience accordingly.”

“It is,” he said, “the best surprise I have ever had the giving of. And I have been sitting on it for the better part of two hours, waiting for you to come home from your tea, and it has very nearly killed me not to send after you, so if you will only be patient another quarter of an hour, I promise you will forgive me every particular of my smugness.”

She studied him. The light was still there, the delight, but under it now she could see something else, and her teasing died in her throat.

“Fitzwilliam, what is it? Truly.”

He took her hand. They were rattling east now — she noticed it suddenly, the turn of the streets, the direction; not west towards the parks and the fashionable calls, but east, towards the City, towards…