Six
Elizabeth woke with his fingerprints on her skin.
Not literally, she knew that. She was a rational woman with a functional mind and an education that, while interrupted by catastrophe, had not abandoned her entirely.
There were no fingerprints, no mark. There was only the memory of his hand closing around her wrist, and the fact that she had lain awake until three o’clock in the morning unable to think about anything else.
She pressed her thumb to the spot. The skin was smooth, unremarkable, entirely ordinary. It did not explain the heat that had shot up her arm when he touched her, or the way her pulse had thrummed beneath his fingers.
She sat up abruptly. She had slept badly and it showed—her reflection in the washstand glass confirmed what she already suspected. Shadows under her eyes, and a pallor that pinching her cheeks would only partially remedy.
She dressed, refusing to dwell on Mr Darcy one more second.
She pinned her hair and splashed water on her face.
She told herself that the image of him standing by the fire in his shirtsleeves, waistcoat hanging open, hair in disarray, brandy in hand, cursing into an empty room, was something that had happened and did not require further analysis.
Men drank brandy. Men cursed. Men removed their coats in the privacy of their own homes. There was nothing remarkable about it.
Except that the man in question was Mr Darcy, who had never in her experience been anything other than immaculate, composed, and buttoned to the throat.
She had known him at Meryton, at Netherfield, at Rosings, and at a disastrous parsonage in Kent.
In none of those settings had she seen so much as a loosened cravat.
Last night he had been undone by something internal, which had driven him to pace, grip the mantelpiece, and snarl profanity at the flames.
She did not want to consider what that something might be.
She did not want to consider how the firelight had caught the hollow of his throat where his shirt lay open.
Or the way his hair had fallen across his forehead, dark and disordered, nothing like the careful arrangement his valet produced each morning.
She certainly did not want to consider the three strides he had taken to cross the library, or how fast they had been, or how his hand had found her wrist as though he had mapped its exact location from across the room.
She did not want to consider any of it a second longer. She had considered all of it already, repeatedly, for five consecutive hours, and her eyes felt as though they had been packed with sand.
She went to the nursery.
Anne was already awake, sitting up in bed with Muffin wedged under her chin, her curls a magnificent blonde mop.
“Good morning, Miss Bennet. Did you know that the moon is made of rock and not cheese? Alice told me yesterday and I am very upset about it.”
“A reasonable response, Miss Darcy. The cheese theory was far more appealing.”
“I shall write to God about it.”
“You are building quite a correspondence with the Almighty.”
Anne thought about this, apparently pleased with her expanding epistolary ambitions.
She allowed Elizabeth to help her dress, submitted to the hairbrush with only moderate protest, and ate her breakfast with one hand while the other maintained a firm grip on Muffin.
The morning routine had established itself over the past week with a rhythm Elizabeth found predictable and safe.
A world measured in chalk, milk, and a child who wanted to understand everything.
By eleven o’clock, Anne was settled with Alice for the afternoon. Elizabeth had laid out the reading, and left instructions about the arithmetic that Anne would resist and Alice would negotiate. She changed into her outdoor dress, retrieved her bonnet, and descended the stairs.
Mr Darcy was in the entrance hall.
He was fully dressed, perfectly composed, every button in its place, his cravat tied. Not a hair out of order. He bore no resemblance whatsoever to the man who had been pacing the library at midnight with his waistcoat open and hellfire on his tongue.
Elizabeth was not sure whether this was a relief or an irritation. She suspected it was both.
“Miss Bennet.” He inclined his head. “The carriage is ready for you.”
She paused on the bottom step. “I beg your pardon?”
“The carriage. For your half day. It will take you to your family and return for you at whatever hour you specify.”
“Mr Darcy, that is quite unnecessary. I am perfectly capable of walking.”
“Humour me, Miss Bennet.” His voice was pleasant, his expression mild, and his jaw set in a way that meant the carriage was not a suggestion but a conclusion he had already reached. “I am a responsible employer.”
She wondered, briefly, whether the scullery maid received similar provision on her day off. She did not voice the thought, partly because it was ungracious and partly because Barton was stationed at his post by the door, shamelessly eavesdropping.
“You are very kind, Mr Darcy. Thank you.”
She did not stumble on the word kind. She delivered it smoothly, practically, as a matter of courtesy and nothing more. If the word caught slightly in her throat, that was the fault of the early hour and the poor sleep and nothing else.
He held the door and she passed through it. The carriage stood at the kerb, polished and gleaming, the Darcy crest on the door. A footman helped her in.
As they pulled away from Grosvenor Street, Elizabeth folded her hands in her lap and pressed her thumb, once, to the inside of her wrist.
It did not take long before they stopped at The Polygon and the footman opened the door. Elizabeth stepped down and saw the curtain twitch at number fourteen before her foot reached the pavement. Kitty, most likely. Kitty was always at the window.
“I shall return at six o’clock,” she told the driver.
He touched his hat and the carriage left.
Elizabeth stood for a moment on the narrow street, adjusting.
The shift was abrupt. Grosvenor Street to Somers Town was not a long distance in miles but it was a chasm in everything else.
She needed a breath at the threshold to put one world down and pick the other up.
The door opened before she reached it. Mrs Bennet stood in the hall, wiping her hands on her apron, and her eyes went straight past Elizabeth to the departing carriage.
“Was that a crest on the door, Lizzy?”
“Good morning, Mamma.”
“It was a crest. That was Mr Darcy’s carriage.” Mrs Bennet stepped aside to let her in, but her gaze lingered on the street. “He sent you with his own carriage?”
“He is a generous employer.”
“He is a peculiar one.” Mrs Bennet closed the door and studied her daughter with the shrewd, unsentimental gaze that poverty had sharpened from a blunt instrument into a blade.
Once, she had missed everything. Now she missed nothing, and Elizabeth found this new version considerably more difficult to manage.
“You are tired, Lizzy. You have not been sleeping.”
“I have been settling in. It is a new household. There is much to learn.”
Mrs Bennet’s eyes narrowed a fraction but she let it pass, which was a mercy Elizabeth had not expected and did not trust. Mercies from her mother were never free. They accrued interest and were collected at the most inconvenient moments.
Jane was in the kitchen, sleeves rolled to her elbows, washing dishes in a basin. She turned when Elizabeth entered and her face brightened, a quiet warming that did not reach a smile but was close. Jane did not waste smiles any more. She spent them carefully, the way she spent everything.
“Lizzy.” She dried her hands and embraced her sister, gently. Elizabeth held on for a second longer than necessary. Jane was too thin, the bones of her shoulders pressed through the cotton.
“You are eating, Jane?”
“Do not start.” But there was no sharpness in it, only a weary patience.
Elizabeth reached into her reticule and produced the envelope.
Mr Darcy had paid her first quarter in advance on Lady Day, three days into her employment.
Twenty pounds for her mother. The remaining five were already in the tin at Darcy House, where they would stay until there were enough.
Jane deserved a future that was not this kitchen.
“Mary and Kitty?” Elizabeth asked.
“Mary is at the lending library. She goes every other day now. She has found a circle of women who read and debate and generally behave as though they have opinions.” Mrs Bennet’s tone suggested she was not entirely certain whether to be proud or alarmed. “Kitty is upstairs, mending.”
“And Lydia?”
Her mother paused. It was the particular pause that always preceded any mention of Lydia in this house, brief and heavy, a silence shaped around what nobody said.
“In her room. She comes down for meals.” Mrs Bennet’s voice was carefully level. “She is quiet.”
Elizabeth nodded. Lydia was always quiet now.
The fifteen-year-old girl who laughed convinced that life was a party arranged specifically for her benefit was not there.
She had been replaced by a woman who moved through the house apologetically, as though she were a guest who had overstayed her welcome and knew it.
Elizabeth went upstairs.
Kitty was cross-legged on the bed, a stocking stretched over her fist, needle flashing. She was four-and-twenty and restless, her energy directed at whatever task was nearest because there was nothing larger to direct it towards. She sprang up when Elizabeth appeared and hugged her fiercely.
“Tell me everything. Is the house enormous? Is the child a terror? Is Mr Darcy as grim as he was in Hertfordshire?”
“The house is large, the child is magnificent, and Mr Darcy is—” She hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Civil.”
“Civil.” Kitty wrinkled her nose. “That is the dullest word in the English language, Lizzy.”
“Then it suits him admirably.”