Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mummy, can I see your ring?”
Elizabeth was texting Charlotte directions to their vacation rental.
She and Mary were joining them tomorrow for the rest of their stay in the Lake District.
They rented a stunning house on its own grounds with amazing views over Lake Windemere.
She and Sandra were on a multi-level deck in the sunshine while Darcy and Georgiana walked to Ambleside.
She set down her phone and held out her hand, which Sandra clutched with both of hers and tugged close. “Miss Sheryl’s engagement ring is a big diamond.”
“I have a diamond in mine, right in the middle. Do you remember what the stones spell?” The first letter of each gem of the cluster ring spelled a term of endearment.
“‘Dearest,’ because you’re Daddy’s most dear person. But I’m his second.”
She laughed. “Yes, you’re very dear to him, too. Daddy had this ring made for me and it became my engagement ring because he wanted me to know how dear I am to him.”
“Like how you got him that keychain with your eye because Daddy always says you have pretty eyes?”
“Sort of, but Daddy’s gift is more special.” When she went to London with Charlotte last year, she found a studio that did high-resolution iris photography and had a small keychain with only her eye made as a present for Darcy.
“You and Daddy really love each other.” It was a statement, not a question, and Elizabeth agreed. “When did you know you wanted to marry Daddy?”
Probably when she spilled candle wax on herself in 1811 and he rushed forward to help her and they held hands in the dark.
That was the moment she realised how much his fated death would absolutely wreck her.
She had wanted to tell him his future, hoping he could change it, but he was too honourable to ask about his destiny.
But she couldn’t tell her seven-year-old daughter that she was sure she loved a man enough to marry him after knowing him for only three months, when they had no way to be together, and before they were in a defined relationship.
“Well, it took a long time, like six months, for us to really get to know each other. But we loved each other for a while before we actually said ‘I love you’ and talked about getting married. Two years went by between the time we met and when we decided to get married.”
They had both known the other loved them, even though neither said the words. Nearly the entire time they were together in 2011, they had felt what was certainly a timeless love. She just didn’t think there was a way for her to be happy in his time, and she never thought he would return to hers.
Maybe she shouldn’t be so astonished Darcy chose a life in exile two hundred years out of his time for her.
The bond between them was the deepest relationship of her life, and he was right that he thrived here.
He had been determined to fit in, to learn all he could, to act like he was born in the 1980s.
And despite the challenges, he enjoyed being here.
From the moment he had to answer a phone call and stop calling her “Miss Bennet,” he succeeded here in a way she never could have in the past.
“We’re back,” Darcy called from the house, and she smiled at the sight of him. She had to stop being insecure about her own worth. Sandra would pick up on that, and her daughter deserved better.
As soon as he came outside, Sandra asked him, “When did you know you loved Mummy?”
“The first moment I saw her,” he said directly, while Elizabeth scoffed in disbelief.
Sandra, however, grinned. And then her attention shifted, and she called into the house, “Aunt Georgiana, do you have any jewellery I can look at?” Georgiana held out her wrist to show her the bangle she had worn through the stone circle, and Sandra ran into the house, slamming the door behind her.
“You did not love me at first sight,” Elizabeth said as Darcy walked to the hot tub and ran a hand over the frame, head tilted with that curious look she knew so well. “You said there was nothing suitable about me as a woman.”
He turned with a smile. “And you thought I was going to burn you at the stake for being outspoken. We were both angry and frightened by what happened at Nine Ladies. But it was near enough to the truth for Sandra. Besides, a few days later, I noted you were rather pretty.”
“That was because I wasn’t yelling at you and I wore a dress instead of jeans.”
He looked to the sliding glass door and, presumably seeing his sister and daughter occupied, put his arms around her.
“Sandra can know from you that it takes time to truly know someone and fall in love with them, and she can know from me that I loved you instantly and wholeheartedly. Both will settle in her mind, and the truth about what makes love work will be a mixture of both.”
A warm feeling burst through her chest and she brushed his lips. “You’re a wonderful dad.”
“You did not always think so.”
This staggered her. She gasped and stepped back. It was said plainly, without malice but with sadness. “What are you talking about? I couldn’t ask for a better father for her.”
He hesitated, and for a moment she imagined him in top boots and a waistcoat about to bow and stand before a window to avoid speaking candidly. But Darcy stayed by her and said, “I know I’m a good father—now.”
She stared for a long moment. “Are you thinking about Sandra’s first year?
We were both a mess,” she cried. “We had new parent anxiety and a lot of sleep deprivation, and trying to manage Pemberley and a baby and our marriage. It was so hard. One downside to not having an army of servants around anymore,” she said to make him smile.
He gave her a long look. “You know that is not the full truth. Every common child-rearing task was completely unknown to me. No advice book, no parenting blog could prepare me.”
“Every new father says that.”
There was pain in his eyes when he said, “You saw fathers parent even if you did not have one yourself. Your friends. Books. Television. Men who soothed their crying children, who were their primary caretaker, it was around you. And whilst I prefer parenting here over the way Georgiana and I were raised, I did not have a culture where men had much to do with child-rearing—and you and Sandra paid a price for that.”
Part of that was true. He had not been as helpful as she had assumed he would be, given how dedicated he was in every other facet of his life. But as the months went by, through the frustration, she realised she was being disappointed by things that Darcy hadn’t even known to do.
“Time, patience, and practice solved our issues.” By the time Sandra was walking, those memories about how hard things had been faded. “Not everyone adjusts easily to parenthood, no matter what century they were born in.”
“It was more than new parenting anxieties,” he said wearily, “which I must assume are common to everyone. What it meant to be a father in 1812 was not even close to the requirements of this century. It is not enough to discipline, to protect, and provide. I had never felt so out of my time in any other moment since I came here.”
“Most parents of a screaming infant feel more lost than you do two hundred years out of your time.”
He gave a wan smile, and she added, “I never had a father, so I had strong opinions on how involved you should be. I should’ve known much sooner that I just had to tell you what I needed.”
“I adapted so well to everything else…” He shook his head as though disappointed with himself. “I took too long to know what fatherhood meant in the twenty-first century.”
“Oh, Fitzwilliam.” She put her arms around him and he clung to her.
“You were a good dad from day one. I wouldn’t have had a child with you if I didn’t think you would be a great father.
You adjusted to other things here so well it didn’t occur to me that we had different pictures of what ‘good father’ meant. ”
“The hardest thing about living in this century has not been my ignorance of the two hundred years of history or the sometimes-unrelatable social mores. It was how to be a father here when I had no model for what that looked like.”
“I’m sorry I made you feel that way,” she whispered in his ear. Her throat closed, and her chest felt tight. “I should have helped you more.”
“It was never your job to be responsible for how I adapt here,” he said in a tone of surprise. “Helping me as much as you do is already an unfair burden on you.”
“Explaining this world to you is never a burden,” she insisted. “Don’t we do life together? And I would do all that and more to have you here with me.” She squeezed him tighter. “You’re a good dad.”
She felt the tension in his shoulders ease, and he settled into her hug, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I have not been sensible, have I?”
She pulled back and took his face in her hands. “I felt guilty for all the things you sacrificed to be here with me, and you felt guilty that you didn’t instantly know how to take care of a child? No, that’s not sensible at all, not when we’re so happy together.”
He kissed her, then smiled and tapped the edge of the hot tub behind her and said, “Then you won’t mind telling me what is the purpose of this. I can tell multiple people sit in it, but why? Public bathing is no longer in fashion. This century is all about privacy.”
“You never soaked in a hot tub?” Had they never used one on any holiday they had been on? It certainly wasn’t the sort of thing to install in a four-hundred-year-old mansion maintained to look as much as possible as it had in the nineteenth century.
“I think you know every modern experience I have ever had,” he said drily. “Is the point medicinal or recreational?”
“More recreational in a setting like this,” she said, pointing to the view over the garden with Lake Windemere in the distance. “You’d sit here with friends in your bathing suits with drinks to relax together.”
“How does it work?”