“So I gathered.”
He looked at her again.
Barton, who had clearly been trying to restore some semblance of normal function to the morning, produced a small wooden tray and presented it to Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy took his hat and gloves from it without looking. He put the hat on, then the gloves on, all of it while still looking at her.
Anne’s voice came from behind Elizabeth.
“Papa, you look handsome!”
The spell broke. Mr Darcy turned, his face rearranged itself into the particular softness he reserved for his daughter, and he crossed the hall to her.
“Thank you, Miss Darcy. You scrub well yourself.”
Anne laughed and he offered her his arm with the gravity he would have offered a duchess.
Soon enough, they were entering St George’s Hanover Square.
The church was full. The pews were filled to the back, and the aisle had been lined with white silk for the bride’s passage. The scent of lilies and beeswax hung in the cool air. Sunlight fell through the clerestory windows in pale, diagonal shafts, and the altar had been dressed with flowers from the Matlock hothouses at Derwent.
Elizabeth walked Anne towards the front.
Lady Catherine was already seated. She wore unbroken black silk, which among the pale plumes and coloured sashes of the rest of the congregation, produced the effect of a single dark brushstroke across a painted landscape. Her posture was straight, and her hands were folded in her lap over a plain black fan.
Elizabeth conducted Anne down the aisle until they reached the front pew, then released the small hand.
“Good morning, Lady Catherine.”
Lady Catherine did not turn her head. She extended her hand a fraction and Anne, who had also been instructed on this point, stepped neatly around Elizabeth and slid into the pew beside her grandmother. She arranged her pinafore and folded her hands in her lap in imitation of the figure beside her. She raised her chin and fixed her eyes on the altar.
Lady Catherine’s hand settled on Anne’s shoulder and Elizabeth withdrew.
She walked back down the nave, past the filled pews, past the clusters of Matlock, Fitzwilliam, and Lofton connections, past a dowager who raised a quizzing glass toinspect her and let it fall again with a small, disappointed sniff.
From where she sat, she could see the front pew. Anne’s blonde head beside Lady Catherine’s black bonnet. Elizabeth straightened her back, arranged her hands, and composed her face.
The congregation rose. Silk rustled, fans closed, heads turned. From the rear of the nave came the first notes of the organ.
Lord Lofton was already at the altar. He stood with his brother at his shoulder, and he had the pleasant, slightly bewildered expression of someone about to receive a blessing he could not quite believe was worth it. His brother murmured at his ear and Lord Lofton nodded once.
Elizabeth faced forward. She could not see Georgiana, nor Mr Darcy. They were behind her, at the back of the church, waiting for the music to release them down the aisle.
The organ shifted into the bridal air.
Everyone’s attention moved to the back of the church. Elizabeth held her eyes on the altar. The congregation turned as they passed, head after head, a slow wave travelling up the nave in their wake.
They drew level with Elizabeth’s pew.
Georgiana was radiant. The white satin caught the morning light and the Brussels lace at her throat was worth more than everything Elizabeth had ever owned, and none of it registered, because Georgiana was on her brother’s arm.
He turned his head, looking directly at Elizabeth, as though he had known from the moment he had entered theporch precisely where she was sitting, and had been waiting for this measured, impossible minute to look at her.
Their eyes held. It lasted one step, perhaps two.
Elizabeth did not drop her gaze.
Then they passed.
Elizabeth became aware, a fraction later, that she had not been breathing. She drew a slow breath and her chest ached with the held-back weight of the minute that had just ended.