Longbourn (25 page)

“That’s kind,” she said, coming close.

“Your hands looked sore.”

Sarah could not account for it herself, but her eyes welled up and her nose prickled, and she was obliged to turn away and pick up the basket. They walked side by side back up to the house, and she felt, for those brief moments, a lightness and an ease that she only realized afterwards was simply happiness.

Wickham was always the focus of much attention at the table; the ladies all seemed fascinated with the tragedy of him. Sarah overheard it in scraps as she brought forth the plates and platters. The church he should
have preached at, the living that he should have had. The position he should occupy in the world, if it were not for the abominable pride of that great tall gentleman Mr. Darcy. She tried to imagine Wickham in clerical black, like Mr. Collins. Surveying his congregation from the pulpit with those knowing eyes. Eyes that seemed to see not just the surface of things, not just the clothes, the outward aspect, the veneer: eyes that saw through all of that, and knew everything that went on underneath.

When they had returned the guests’ hats and cloaks to them in the vestibule that evening, Polly wandered down the hallway, jingling coins in her apron pocket. Once in the kitchen, she trickled farthings from one hand to the other.

“Where did you get all that, then?” Sarah asked.

Polly tossed her head. “You all think that I am just a little scrub, fit for nothing but laying fires and emptying chamber pots. But I shall have you know that there are some as think me very fit indeed to serve on gentlefolk, and are very much appreciative of me, yes they are, for taking care of them, and giving them their dinner and their hats.”

The truth of Mr. Wickham’s predicament, Sarah was in no position to judge, but she was certain of one thing: she did not like him. She did not like the coins that chinked in Polly’s pocket, nor, now that she came to think about it, the way that he had taken off his glove that time, to touch the girl’s baked-custard cheek. But there was no danger in it, how could there be? Polly was just a scrap of a thing, a gangling foal; she had not even got her monthlies yet—she could not be an object of interest to him, surely? Not in that kind of a way.

James, for himself, watched the officers depart that evening with the relief a condemned man feels at a stay of execution. He stood back, in the shadows, once he had brought round the horses and hitched them by the front steps. The officers mounted up and trotted off, and were waved away: those pretty, smart young gentlemen with their shiny buttons and dressed hair and their cheerful noise that carried out of Longbourn with them, and followed them down the drive, and off into the night, and all the way down the dark road to Meryton.

They were just boys, he told himself; they were just playing at
soldiering. And Wickham was perhaps indolent and cowardly enough to let this slide—he would soon find much more useful projects than harassing the Longbourn servantry. But whatever James told himself, he could not be consoled: things could not be the same at Longbourn now; he could no longer be at ease. He had let his mask slip; his other self had glimmered out, and he could not bear to let that creature loose, not here.

“But do you think she would be prevailed on to go back with us? Change of scene might be of service—and perhaps a little relief from home, may be as useful as anything.”

Jane, of course, could go to London just like that, without it being any great thing: she could go, and having gone, she could still come back. She had a coach to take her there, her extended family to protect her, the Gardiners’ house in Gracechurch Street to accommodate her, and her aunt to chaperone her as she went about town and enjoyed its pleasures, and kept an eye and an ankle out for her Mr. Bingley.

That last was uncharitable of her, Sarah knew. She should not begrudge Jane her pleasures, simply because they were denied to her. Jane was sweet and beautiful, and so deserving of sweet and beautiful things. If you yourself were bitterish and scruffy—Sarah smiled as she blackleaded the breakfast-room grate, on her knees, her fingers sooty and her nose ticklish—then you got bitterish and scruffy in return: maybe you got James.

Christmas over, the house emptied; the Gardiners, their troop of little nuisances and Jane all departed. And Longbourn seemed to expand, to breathe out in relief.

Mr. Collins was returned to the vicinity, Mrs. Hill soon learned, though not to Longbourn. The wedding fast approaching, he took up his abode at Lucas Lodge. Mrs. Hill’s feelings on the matter were mixed. On the one hand, she was missing this opportunity to impress him; on the other, she was already exhausted by her efforts to impress—and disheartened, somewhat, since she was uncertain as to the level of her success.

She consoled herself with the knowledge that at Lucas Lodge there was nothing particularly to delight, unless it was his own wife-to-be’s
mince pies, and Mrs. Hill was not in competition with his wife. Instead, she set about fashioning a little reticule for Miss Lucas, in a dove-grey Norwich bombazine, which was, she thought, very suitable for that young lady’s new position as a clergyman’s wife. She presented it to the young bride-to-be at Charlotte’s farewell visit to Longbourn that Wednesday. The young lady received it with her characteristic good grace, and what seemed like genuine pleasure. She was not above these little kindnesses, and there was likely to be but little pin-money in her settlement. The reticule would, it was to be hoped, see much use, and at every occasion cause her to think kindly of Mrs. Hill and the good servants at Longbourn.

Miss Lucas was married on the Thursday, and the bride and bridegroom set off for Kent from the church door. Mrs. Hill and Sarah and Polly stood in the road, just outside the lich-gate, to wave them off.

“Mrs. Collins does look lovely,” Sarah said, when the couple had climbed into the chaise.

“All brides are beautiful,” said Mrs. Hill. “It is the one day when any woman is allowed to be so.”

“What was your wedding day like, Mrs. Hill?”

“It was a cold day too,” she said. “It was a long time ago.”

They were joined, when the well-wishers had cleared from the churchyard, by the Bennet family, and they all walked together back up to Longbourn House. All the way, Mrs. Bennet kept saying that she
wished
they might be happy, though her tone made it clear to Mrs. Hill that her thoughts were occupied with her own girls, and not really Mrs. Collins, and that she was not at all sanguine in her hopes.

Mrs. Hill, however, was warm enough in hers. Mrs. Collins had held her new dove-grey reticule on her lap, in the hack-chaise: this augured well. The marriage of Mr. Collins and Miss Lucas was not the worst possible outcome for the servantry, not by a long chalk. Though Mary, poor Mary, walked a little ahead of the others, and went straight upstairs to her piano, and played melancholy airs all afternoon.

“She is a good girl,” Mrs. Hill said, nodding over her needlework later on. “I always liked Miss Lucas, and I think we are a little more secure, because of this.”

But the whole thing left Sarah feeling very ill at ease. It was all as arbitrary
and as far beyond their control as the weather. To live so entirely at the mercy of other people’s whims and fancies was, she thought, no way to live at all.

That night, the branches cracked in the frost, and the ice deepened itself by inches, and the sheep huddled close together on the hillside and steamed. Sarah lay awake; the church clock had just struck midnight; her breath plumed and her nose was cold. All was quiet. Quiet, apart from Polly’s breathing, and the bronchial wheeze from Mr. Hill across the landing.

In the stable loft, ice climbed across the inside of the windows. The cold made James ache, and tightened the knots in his flesh, which made it impossible to sleep. His candle offered only an illusion of warmth, and but little light, along with the rank smell of old mutton fat. Faint body-heat rose from the horses below, which kept him from perishing entirely; with it came the stable smell; meadowy, dungy, with the warm musk of horse sweat.

He had become used to all of this. He had barely noticed it for weeks. Now, though, the scents of the place seemed to nudge their way back into his consciousness: they were so particular to this place, and his thoughts had been stretching far away from there.

He sat on his bed, still in shirtsleeves, with a blanket over his shoulders, and a book of Scottish maps on his lap. This way of rendering the hard facts of landscape was new to him: the little upward flicks of the pen for mountains, the tiny clustered trees for woodland, the blue patches of lochs. He wanted maps of other places, he wanted maps of places he had been, he wanted to follow routes across terrain that his feet had trodden. If he could show Sarah—but he must not think of Sarah. He could not let himself be drawn to her again; he could not let her risk herself like that. Every time Sarah stepped into his thoughts, he would lift her up and set her aside, and return to the happy details of the map. Oh look, a forest, he’d think. Oh look, those crags. And then there she’d be again, with hair escaping from her cap, stomping up towards him with a frown and a slopping bucket— No. He lifted her up, set her aside. He must not think of Sarah.

He smoothed the paper, settled his blanket around his shoulders again. Dumfries and Galloway. Fascinating.

Then he heard the kitchen door go; he stilled, listening. It was her; he knew her tread. What could she be up to, out at this time of night? He got up and crossed over to the window, pulled back the curtain just in time to see her ice-clouded shape pass below. She ducked in through the stable door beneath him.

He threw off the blanket, reached for his coat, started to pull it on, then slowed down, wincing, his muscles locked; he eased into it. The blanket was tumbled on the chair; he whisked it up and folded it and laid it on the foot of his bed. Then he sat down on the bed again and pretended to look at the map.

And she was there: there she was. True as life and twice as terrifying. Dark head and bird-shoulders and then body, all wrapped up in that ratty old blue coat they kept by the back door, the colour of it just so good against her skin. She hitched herself up to sit on the edge of the trapdoor, legs dangling down into the musk of the stables, and her face sweet and troubling in the candlelight.

“Good morning,” she said.

His mouth had gone dry. “What?”

“Good morning.”

“Why—?”

She swung her legs round and got up. She wore no stockings; her bare feet were wedged into her boots.

“Sarah—”

She clomped right up to him. She looked down at the map. “What’s that?”

“Sarah—”

“Is that a picture?” She sat down beside him.

“It’s a map.”

“Of where?”

“Scotland.”

“Scotland?” She leaned in to look at it. “Oh, it’s beautiful.”

A curl fell forward; he glimpsed a curve of skin as the blue coat fell open. Underneath it, she was just in her shift. He looked away, but she was so close that he could smell her; the day’s work, hard soap, vanilla.

“Sarah.”

“Have you ever been there?” She sat down beside him now. “To Scotland, I mean.”

“No, but—Sarah, please—”

Her clear eyes studied him. “What is it?”

“Go back. Please. Go back to your bed.”

She was so close that her hip bone pressed against his. Linen, wool, velvet, linen. Either side, the warm pulse of their separate flesh. He got up, and moved away, putting space between them.

“I can’t—” he began.

“I thought,” she spoke over him, “that we got off to a bad start. So I thought, ‘Start again.’ So. Here I am, starting again. Good morning.”

“Sarah.”

“Yes.”

She still sat there, on his bed, looking up at him.

“Sarah, I don’t know what you expect. From me. But this”—he gestured at the little room, the one candle, the borrowed map—“this is not just everything I have. It’s all I’m ever likely to have. It’s the best that I can do.”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

“I’ve nothing to offer you.”

“Why would you offer me something?”

“Sarah, please—” He turned away to the window, and peeled back the curtain, so as not to look at her; he blinked out into the dark beyond the frosted pane. There was a whole world out there, and so many people. Englishmen and Frenchmen and Turks and Indians and Americans. Millions and millions of men, and Sarah, she had met only the tiniest handful of them. He could not let her settle, not for him, not for this.

“Go back,” he said again, not looking round.

For a moment there was silence. Then he heard the thunk of dropped boots, and the pad of bare feet on the boards. Her hand, when she took his, was small and cold.

“Come away from the window,” she said.

The curtain fell back. He let her turn him away from the night.

She stood on tiptoe and touched her lips against his lips. And for a moment he just held her by the upper arms—so slight in his hands—keeping her still at this little distance. But it was too much to resist: he drew her to him, and let her body lean into his, the length of it, the bones and softnesses of her, and the warmth.