Quite sad for the poor fish.
Many ships were moored along the line of wood, floating slightly up and down with every wave. There was also that peculiar slightly pleasant and slightly rotted smell of decaying sea life everywhere.
The waves made the pier moan and sway which gave Elizabeth the delightful sensation that the entire structure was about to collapse under her and toss her and Mr. Darcy into the sea. It gave her an excuse to cling close to his arm (her other hand needed to cling closely to her hat, lest it actually be tossed into the sea by the blowsy billowing wind).
At the very end of the pier there was a small wooden bench that they could sit on. They contemplatively looked out at the endless sea — not actually endless. The white cliffs of Dover, with the afternoon sun gleaming off them, were easily visible in the distance on this clear day.
Elizabeth sighed. “Just a few hours’ carriage ride away.”
Darcy took her hand and comfortingly squeezed it. “A little over twenty-seven miles. Or perhaps a little under, given the length of the pier, we are some appreciable fraction of a mile out into the sea.”
“Twenty-seven miles.” The white cliffs of Albion were beautiful. They were as beautiful as every patriotic poet or writer describing this scene, of looking upon his home from a foreign land had ever claimed. Something caught in Elizabeth’s heart, and she wanted to cry. She squeezed her lips tightly together.
Darcy was a calm presence, confident and caring. He sat with her quietly.
“‘Tis strange,” she said to her companion. “I had anticipated I would be purely eager and happy to be in a new country, a new land. I thought I would need at least a few weeks simply to explore every new sight, sensation and smell before I had the slightest longing for our green home. But…”
“You shall enjoy every sight, despite this longing, and I shall be at your side, to protect and care for you,” Darcy said, “I promise you.”
Elizabeth nodded, but she also pursed her lips with a little dissatisfaction.
Yes, he promised to be with her so long as she was separate from England. But he did not want to marry her. At least not yet. Thoughts in that direction would lead to a sensation of disappointment, and annoyance. And annoyance at her savior. At a man she owed her very life to, and in no metaphorical sense, for she would be dead of two causes, and likely a third as well without him.
“Well at least you do not guarantee I shall return to England soon as I may wish.”
Darcy smiled wryly at her. “I am not in the habit of making promises whose fulfillment I cannot guarantee — however much I may wish to comfort the person I make such promise to. Besides,” he grinned at her with a playful light in his eyes, “nothing simpler than to return to England, you can take any packet boat back to Dover.”
Elizabeth laughed. “I would very likely not be pleased with the reception I gain in England.”
“That is entirely possible,” Darcy replied smilingly.
“Thank you for making a joke about such a matter — though it is too serious to joke about such things…”
“If a matter is too serious too joke about, perhaps then it also is too serious to take seriously.”
“It is very like to what Anne of Boleyn said while she laughed afore she was executed, ‘I hear the executioner is very good, and I have a little neck.’”
“They will not execute you.”
“Did you know, King Henry had a swordsman who was obtained in France to execute his wife? Perhaps it would have been some sort of Lese Majeste if one of his English subjects were to do that to his queen.”
Darcy squeezed Elizabeth’s hand.
Thankfully, he refrained from insisting once more they would not execute her. She knew they would not. Elizabeth loved her life too much to return to England whilst that was a hanging chance. She was not one of those sad foolish men, on the run from the law, who returned in disguise just so that they could see their mother one last time before she died, and who were then seized by the law and hung for loving their parent too well. And also, presumably, murder.
No, she was one of those just as sad, and perhaps not wiser, persons who would stay in unhappy foreign climes though her mother begged to see her daughter one last time before she expired.
“I would not be in any particular hurry to return to England, if only I knew that I could return. It is the inability that makes me long for it.”
“That,” Darcy said, “is a reaction in no way out of the ordinary.”
Elizabeth laughed, deciding once more that she would never permit herself to descend into moroseness. “A perverse reaction, despite its popularity. But I have no taste for perversion, though we are now in France, and we all know what they say about France, I shall endeavor to enjoy my time in this country though I know not for what extent the duration of my stay shall be.”
“What do they say about France?” Darcy asked as he and Elizabeth stood to walk back down the pier.
“You know.” Elizabeth waved her hand and replied with a smile. She bit her lip and looked up at him from under her eye lashes.
Darcy swallowed.
The wind had kicked up. Clouds rushed towards them worrisomely fast.
Oh! But the view of the city was one of the grandest Elizabeth had ever seen. Lines of tall houses along the pier, and the brown wood of the pier for hundreds of feet, and the tall masts of the ships in the harbor, and birds circled high in the sky, their lonely cawing distantly audible, and the bell tower of the cathedral rang an hour, and the water lapped and slapped the pier.
Oh, so, so lovely.
The walk took the best part of ten minutes from the end of the pier all the way to the safe stone of the city. The clouds, which had not been present at all when they started their walk down the pier, opened up with soft sprinkles and Elizabeth was cold, and also terribly tired from the wandering of the morning.
There was a cafe next to the pier, which looked quite warm — the people, more women than men inside, had mostly put aside their coats as they sat at their coffee.
“Let’s go in,” Elizabeth said eagerly. “A real one of France’s famous cafes!”
Darcy’s face screwed up at the suggestion — Elizabeth knew that he did not consider this establishment, with some peeling paint and a sign proclaiming the prices in chalk, as meeting the fine standards to which a member of the Darcy clan, and those under his protection, were entitled to.
“It’ll be ever such a lark. Look at how many people are reading — and they are all dressed quite fashionably in the French way.” Elizabeth grinned widely at Darcy.
Darcy shrugged, and he then smiled with that brilliant familiar, heart turning smile of his, that he reserved mainly for her. “This location seems very much the sort of venue you wish to patronize.”
“Exactly.” Elizabeth shivered violently as a gust of wind blew. “Oh, I am so cold, and I need to sit down.”
“Oh, Elizabeth—” Darcy looked slightly miserable, as though he considered it his chief employment to keep the winds and rains from bothering her — or at least to ensure she stayed safely indoors if there was a chance of such rains coming down to bother her.
He rushed her into the cafe.
The air in the room felt like a blast from an oven upon their entrance, and they quickly closed the door behind them.
“I should have paid better attention,” Darcy said frowningly, “and made us to return from the pier faster. Are you tired also? — You need a great deal of rest. Mr. Goldman insisted you must rest for at least two weeks the last time he examined you.”
“You care for me excellently — even without Lord Lachglass’s interference, there is no chance I would have remained abed for longer than necessary. It is my conviction that the principal cause of ill health is enforced inactivity prescribed by doctors.”
Darcy smiled as he helped her to a collection of winged chairs around a low table. “I sound like a worried mother hen. But I do worry — your eyes rolling up when you fainted
is an image which shall stick in my brain forever.”
Elizabeth gratefully sunk into one of the chairs and closed her eyes for a moment of ecstasy at no longer being on her feet and at the warmth in the cafe. She said, without opening her eyes, “You are right. I overexerted myself today — don’t make yourself anxious. I shall be entirely well in twenty minutes if I do not continue to exert myself so.”
“Do you want tea, or should I ask if they have a cold dejeuner laid aside?” There was that slightly snobbish frown in Darcy’s voice again, as though he was quite skeptical of this perfectly respectable appearing establishment being able to furnish forth meats delicate enough for his lady’s palate— anyone in Elizabeth’s family would have happily patronized this place when they had money.
She loved Darcy very dearly.
Elizabeth opened her eyes to find Darcy’s deep worried eyes on her. Something happy in her chest fluttered. She loved even his snobbery. That snobbery was as deeply bred into him as his honor. “Just cafè au lait and a little pain avec beurre.”
Elizabeth smiled twistedly to make fun of herself for speaking in English, except for the words for food.
Darcy almost absently replied, “You must roll the Rs — are you sure?”
“Quite. This is a lovely place.”
The cafe had a big tiled stove with a pile of firewood next to it in the corner merrily radiating heat into the air. There was a counter like in an English inn, behind which were stored a variety of wine and whiskey glasses, bottles of spirits and wines, and there was a hot pot of water boiling on the stove. Several pairs of well-dressed young women talked eagerly to each other in French, after glancing at the English party that had just entered the premises.
There also was, delighting Elizabeth, a man in one corner with the delicate features and wild hair of an artist, furiously scribbling away with a nub of pencil on a thin stack of papers, pausing every so often to mutter angrily, and take his rubber out to deface the perfectly excellent rhyme Elizabeth was sure he had already created.
She was not used to being weak like this.
Elizabeth sighed and stretched her arms wide, noticing happily how Darcy paid close attention to her as she displayed — unintentionally, she would swear — her body. The waiter came up to them, and Darcy ordered for them the cafè au lait and pain avec buerre which Elizabeth had requested.
Outside the cold sea wind flapped the furled masts of the trading vessels and private yachts moored along the pier. The sky was grey and overcast, and quite beautiful in the way Elizabeth always found bad weather beautiful — except when she had to walk through it in her slippers, of course. She admired the waves splashing along the entire length of the pier, whose end almost disappeared in the distance.
Darcy smiled at her, and Elizabeth smiled back at him.
She sunk a little deeper into the comfortable armchair, and the warm air from the hot stove baked her back into comfort.
The waiter presently brought their hot coffee and the bread with butter that had been requested. The cream had been heated and was placed in a delightful little jar with flowers on the side. There were squares of sugar cut off of a sugarloaf and placed in a little pyramid with a pair of silver tongs set next to them.
Elizabeth exerted herself to sit up and take on the hostess’s duty, and she mixed Mr. Darcy’s coffee as she had noted over the past days he liked it. It was oddly intimate and thrilling to mix his coffee and to know how he liked it without asking, because she now knew him well.
Darcy smiled brilliantly at her when she pushed his cup and saucer towards him, and he lifted up the cup and took a sip of it.
It had always seemed to her a ridiculous little game when scheming mothers contrived to learn by bribing servants how their wealthy quarry liked to take their coffee — and it was. But there was a truth underneath the game. There was something special about knowing how a man liked things, and being able to arrange them to his comfort.
Elizabeth had a flash of insight in that moment about how Darcy must feel to be in the position of having been her rescuer. No wonder he seemed so generally cheerful now that he had saved from extreme danger the woman who — she allowed herself to believe — he loved dearly.
“Very fine, better coffee even than what Dessein provides for our breakfast spread.” That was Darcy’s judgement. “I was being ridiculous, and a useless peacock when I did not wish to enter — you saw my hesitation. No chance to deny it—”
“You may trust me to never hide your flaws from you.”
Darcy laughed happily. “Which makes your compliments the more precious by far that I can trust you to abuse me directly to my face any such time that I deserve it.”
“I am an exemplary woman.”
“Yes, yes you are.”
Elizabeth flushed with happiness at that simple compliment, delivered smilingly by Darcy.
To hide her blush she buttered her bread — fine butter and fine bread, but in truth no better than what she was used to in England. And perhaps the bread was slightly stale. Not that Elizabeth would ever let a matter like that damage her enjoyment of this fine moment. Only a fool, in her opinion, would obsess over trifles while she was alive, drinking fine coffee and fine food paid for without the necessity to work for a disreputable earl.
Elizabeth frowned at that thought.
Why couldn’t she simply accept the situation and be happy? Why did she need to ruminate over her position of unspecified dependence upon Darcy when her ruminations would do no good?
The coffee was as good as Darcy said it was, clear through, with none of the ground remains left in it.
They chattered over coffee, talking about a play and about the pier, but Elizabeth subsided into silence and yawns as she finished eating her bread and drinking her coffee. A little food and a little fat in her body, and she was already halfway to sleep. Elizabeth leaned against the wing of the chair and closed her eyes, lulled by the rhythmic splashing of the waves.
Darcy briefly took and squeezed her hand before releasing it.
Elizabeth snuggled deeper against the side of the comfortable chair, wishing that Darcy would squeeze her hand again.
She was woken some time later by the ringing of the church bells calling out four o’clock.
Elizabeth stretched her arms out, and rolled her neck side to side to get rid of the slight crick in her neck from the upright posture she’d slept in.
Darcy still sat by her side, though he’d taken out a book, which he now also put to the side. He looked between her and the street running along the harbor. The rain had stopped and the late afternoon sun shone across the waves. “I meant to meet General Fitzwilliam, but I could not bear to wake you. Now it is too late to escort you back to the hotel and still meet him according to our arrangement.”
“Just go off, go off,” Elizabeth laughingly said, rubbing her eyes. “You can meet him there easily in time — leave your book so I have more than the view to entertain myself with.”
“I can’t leave you alone in a cafe! Unprotected, and unguarded.”
Elizabeth laughed. “What do you worry will happen to me?”
The cafe was clearly a respectable place, and at least one other conversation was conducted in English. The waiters looked quite fashionable in their uniforms, and with the prices drawn on the menus there was little chance of a rowdy low clientele visiting themselves upon her.
Which she would also survive if they did appear.
Darcy frowned and did not answer her question.
“Are you wracking your brains to think upon every terrible thing that might happen to me if I am left alone for the span of an hour and a quarter in this place, or are you frowning for a different reason?”
“I just… I would never leave my sister without a maid or a footman — or best both — in such a place as this.”
Elizabeth laughed. “A caring and careful brother! ‘Such a place as this’ — I hope neither the waiters nor the regular patrons can understand English, el
se I will be in danger.”
“I confess…” Darcy scratched at the back of his head, almost confusedly. “You are alone; a British gentlewoman in a foreign country. Women must be protected… that’s the place of gentlemen, our purpose is to care for and ensure the wellbeing of those of the gentler sex around us. Especially when… especially a woman who I…” Darcy hesitated, he clearly wanted to say more, but also could not without directly declaring himself.
Infuriating, sweet man, Elizabeth thought both fondly and annoyedly.
“You saved my life, Mr. Darcy. You saved it at least twice — from the illness, and when you snatched me from under Lord Lachglass’s nose.”
“That was principally my cousin’s doing.”
“And you are a man who never wishes to take credit undeserved — which is a stance the easier for you to take since you deserve so very much credit, and you know it. You hid me from Lord Lachglass at the least; you called the doctor for me. You allowed me without a question of anything but friendship and concern to occupy one of your bedrooms, and your time and your care. You protect me, and you care for me exceedingly well. I… I depend upon you in this foreign, half familiar, half strange and different country.”
“However?” Darcy smiled at her. “I hear a however in your tone.”
“However, if someone in this cafe tries to bother me, I will first butt them with my head, and then bash a coffee cup over their head, and you shall need to spirit me to Denmark, and pay the dear owners of this establishment some extra money for damages caused.”
Darcy laughed. “I forget in a way… that you are not so defenseless. You look fragile and everything that is spirit and beauty. But…”
“I like to think there is animal and flesh and muscle within me as well. I am not just a spiritual being.”
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