Three
Darcy left Miss Elizabeth and turned east on Conduit Street.
The distance to Grosvenor Street was not above a quarter of an hour, so he had seen no need for a carriage.
He was thankful for that, because now he could move as fast as he liked without raising eyebrows in his wake.
He strode at a punishing pace, trying to analyse whether what he had just done was either extraordinarily stupid or clever.
Stupid, he decided. Whether it was the good kind or the catastrophic kind of stupid was yet to be determined.
He had hired Elizabeth Bennet.
He had gone out this morning to place an advertisement at a respectable agency.
A simple errand—governess wanted, patient temperament, able to endure relentless interrogation by a six-year-old with no respect for conversational boundaries—and he had been rather pleased with the efficiency of the plan.
And then he saw her. His plan had caught fire, and he had stood there watching it burn.
He turned onto New Bond Street. The pavement was busy—carriages, shoppers, a woman with a lapdog under her arm—and he wove through them with his head down and his stride long.
Lord Ashworth was crossing from the other side of the street.
Darcy saw the familiar gait—the leisurely, well-fed saunter of a man who had never once been in a hurry—and his stomach dropped.
Ashworth was a talker. Twenty minutes on the weather, fifteen on his horses, another ten on whatever bill was creeping through Parliament, and Darcy did not have a single civil sentence in him.
Not now. Not with his pulse still hammering and his mind still circling the image of her hands wrapped around a teacup.
He veered left. Sharply, without grace, directly into the recessed doorway of a tailor’s shop on the corner of Grafton Street.
He stared at the window display—a bolt of midnight-blue superfine, and a pair of ivory gloves arranged on a stand.
He held very still, feigning intense absorption.
He had urgent sartorial business, it seemed.
Ashworth’s footsteps passed behind him. There was a pause—had he been spotted?—then the footsteps continued, unhurried, receding into the noise of the street.
Darcy exhaled.
And then he noticed his own face.
The glass was not a mirror, but it did the job well enough.
The bolt of blue fabric served as a dark backdrop, and there he was—reflected, unmistakable, and entirely undone.
His colour was high, a flush spreading from his collar to his jaw.
His chest was rising and falling too quickly.
His cravat, which had been tied this morning by his valet, was now slightly askew, tugged loose by a hand he did not remember raising.
His eyes were too bright. The man who looked back at him could have been running, or fighting, or doing both at once, and the quiet street and the tailor’s window made a liar of both explanations.
What have I done?
The question hit him squarely in the chest with the force of a delayed blow. He gripped the window ledge with one hand—the wood was smooth, sun-warmed, absurdly real beneath his fingers.
He had offered one hundred pounds a year to a woman who had asked for fifty. He had done so all in the space of a single cup of tea. The calm, measured tone of his voice had been the most accomplished performance of his life, because underneath it his blood had been roaring.
She could not have refused. Not with a family to feed and her sisters depending on her. He had made her an offer so generous it was a trap, and they had both known it. She had accepted with a dignity that put him to shame.
Tomorrow she would walk through his front door.
She would be under his roof, in his employ, at his table.
He would see her every morning and every evening.
He would hear her voice in the corridors and catch her scent when she passed.
And he would have to stand there and breathe it in, saying nothing, doing nothing, wanting nothing.
He was already failing at the last of those three.
He pushed off from the window ledge and straightened his cravat. A woman with a parasol glanced at him curiously as she passed, and he gave a stiff nod that sent her hurrying on.
He walked the final stretch with his hands clasped behind his back, the picture of a gentleman returning from an errand. No one on the street would have guessed that anything was amiss. That was the advantage of good tailoring and a lifetime of practice.
The disadvantage was that it fooled everyone except the man inside the coat.
He climbed the steps to Darcy House and waited for the butler to open the door.
With a nod to him, he headed towards the grand staircase. He took the steps two at a time, which was not dignified and he did not care.
He could hear her before he reached the landing. Anne’s voice carried the way church bells carried— with eagerness, conviction, and no regard for volume.
“But why does the rain come down sideways, Alice?”
“It just does, Miss Darcy.”
“But why?”
“Because God made it that way.”
“But why did He make it that way?”
After a short pause, Alice’s voice came, strained with exhaustion. She had probably been answering the same question for three consecutive hours. “Perhaps you might ask your Papa when he returns, Miss Darcy.”
Darcy pushed the door open. Alice was young, freckled, and endlessly good-natured.
The moment she saw him, she sagged with relief so visible it made him chuckle.
She bobbed a curtsy and mouthed thank you, sir over Anne’s head with the fervour of a prisoner granted pardon.
She then started tidying up the scattered toys.
Anne launched herself across the floor. She collided with him, wrapped both arms around his waist, and tilted her face up.
“Papa! Alice does not know why rain goes down.”
“A grievous gap in her education.” He bent and scooped her up.
She was heavier than she had been last month.
She was growing fast, solid and warm, her blonde curls tickling his jaw as she settled against his shoulder.
Muffin, her wooden horse, was clutched in her right fist. Muffin went everywhere she went. This was not negotiable.
“I have news,” he said.
Anne pulled back to study his face. Her blue eyes—so unlike his own—were enormous and serious. “Good news or bad news, Papa?”
“Good news.”
“How good?”
“Very good. I have found a lady who is going to be your new governess.”
Anne considered this. Her brow furrowed. She tapped Muffin against his collarbone—a habit she had when thinking, and one that left small bruises he never mentioned.
“Is she nice?”
“Very.”
“Is she pretty?”
His heart performed a small jig he chose to ignore. “Yes.”
“Prettier than Alice?”
Alice, who had been gathering blocks from the carpet, turned a shade of pink that clashed magnificently with her freckles.
“That is not a question a gentleman answers, Anne.”
“You are not answering, which means yes.” Anne nodded, satisfied with her own logic. Darcy made a note to never underestimate this child. She was six and already cross-examining him with more skill than most barristers of his acquaintance.
She pressed Muffin to her chin. “Will she be my friend and play with me, Papa?”
His throat closed. The question was so simple. It was artless, built from nothing but want—and it cut him open.
“I believe she will, sweetheart.”
“Miss Burrow was my friend. She was nice to me. She read me stories with the voices.” Anne’s tone was matter-of-fact, the way children delivered grief—without ceremony, without self-pity, as a simple accounting of what had been and was no longer.
“She told me she was going to marry a nice man and live with him. I was sad, but she said I should be happy for her, so I was. Mostly.”
“That was very generous of you.”
“I know.” No false modesty. Darcy bit the inside of his cheek.
“Will the new lady do voices too?”
“I expect you will have to train her.”
Anne brightened at this, the prospect of authority appealing to her in a way that Darcy found both charming and mildly alarming. She wriggled out of his arms and landed on her feet with graceless confidence.
“Papa, come and see.” She seized his hand. Her small fingers wrapped around his index and middle finger, because his whole hand was too large for her grip. She towed him across the room to the table where Alice had set out paper and chalk.
“I drawed Muffin.”
“Drew.”
“I drew Muffin.”
The drawing was, by any objective measure, a brown oval with four lines protruding from the bottom and two dots near the top. It bore no resemblance to a horse or to any living creature. It was, however, presented with such fierce pride that Darcy nodded gravely.
“An excellent likeness.”
“Alice said it was a potato.”
He shot Alice a glance. She was suddenly very occupied with the blocks.
“Alice is mistaken. The ears are particularly fine.”
“Those are not ears, Papa. Those are eyes.”
“Ah. Naturally. My error.”
Anne patted his hand with the benevolence of a queen forgiving a minor courtier.
She returned to her chalk to add what she informed him would be a tail.
It was, when completed, a straight line emerging from the middle of the oval’s back.
Muffin the drawing now resembled a potato with a fork stabbed into it.
Muffin the wooden horse observed the portrait from his position on the table with dignified silence.
Darcy pulled a chair beside her and sat, watching Anne draw. For a few minutes there was nothing urgent, nothing broken, nothing burning.
Just his daughter and a potato.
He spent two full hours with her in the nursery before he made his way downstairs. He found Georgiana in the drawing room, buried in fabric swatches.