Chapter Twelve
Mrs. Reynolds had outdone herself, Aga or no Aga: there were sausages, eggs, grilled tomatoes, and toast, far more than they could eat.
At Georgiana’s urging she sat with them and, as if it were part of the service, related the perennial story of the years he had spent as his sister’s horse.
Darcy endured it with his usual embarrassment.
Georgiana contributed gossip from her friend group, Waffles stole an entire sausage and was promptly banished, and Athena sat up and eyed them, waiting for something, anything, to fall to the floor. She was, of course, above petty theft.
The plates were carried into the kitchen. Mrs. Reynolds shooed them all out to do the washing up before leaving for her sister’s, and Elizabeth thanked her warmly. “I hope we see you again soon, Ms. Bennet,” Mrs. Reynolds said.
“Elizabeth,” she corrected, and the housekeeper’s answering smile struck Darcy as promising: an entry properly made.
Georgiana pled a food coma and went upstairs.
His sister was proving to possess a generous instinct for when to leave him alone with Elizabeth.
The room felt altered with only the two of them in it, the space intimate for all its height.
Darcy stood by the tall windows, hands clasped behind his back, thinking was easier that way.
Elizabeth was herself and yet not. She had smiled during the stories at the table but not offered any of her own. Her laughter arrived a heartbeat late, and the corners of her eyes did not crease in that adorable way he was used to. It concerned him. Elizabeth adored swapping stories.
Pemberley’s rhythms could be a lot at first, even over a quiet Christmas.
He had felt off-balance at her family dinner with so much affection, so many simultaneous conversations held up and down the table, he had required the quiet drive home afterwards to sort his impressions.
Perhaps that’s what this was. After all, adjustment ran both ways.
He let the moment pass, filing the thought away to revisit later when there were fewer variables—no guests, no holiday. For now, he took her at her word. It just required patience.
Darcy cleared his throat, which was ridiculous, because there was nothing to clear but nerves. “The frost’s lifting,” he said, annoyingly formal to his own ears. “You can see the edges of the lawn again.”
Elizabeth gave him that sideways look of hers, keen and warm, a little teasing. “You say that as if the lawn has been missing and left a note.”
“It has,” he replied, feeling the corner of his mouth twist upward. “It says, ‘Gone to ground under inclement circumstances. Kindly send tea.’”
Her soft laugh lit up the room in a way the high windows failed to manage. “You’re determined to be droll before midday. God help Derbyshire.”
“Derbyshire has withstood worse,” he said, then almost winced at himself. Less estate, more human being, Darcy. “More coffee?” He gestured at the cafetière on a tray Georgiana had carried in, the plunger still raised like a hand waiting to be called on.
“Always.” Elizabeth came over, sleeves pushed to her elbows, hair caught in a slightly lopsided knot that made his hands inexplicably useless for a second. He busied them with mugs and sugar and made sure not to look at her mouth.
“You were good with Maggie,” he said, somehow meaning, You are good with this house, with my sister, with the oddness of my life. “She can be particular.”
“‘Particular’ is the right word,” Elizabeth said, drinking. “She reminds me a bit of my headmistress. I’d have confided my darkest secrets to that woman and then apologised for my punctuation.”
He smiled, stood with her by the windows, drank his own coffee, watched the pale winter sun pick out dull sparks in the garden gravel. “When I was small,” he said, not knowing why he was saying this, “my favourite present was a toboggan.”
She looked up at him with immediate attention. “Was it?”
“A shiny red metal and wooden one,” Darcy said.
“My father bought it. Well, Mother likely did the practical choosing, he did the dramatic unveiling. There’d been a proper snowfall.
They took me out to the south slope, and I think this will shock you, we were all utterly irresponsible.
No helmets, no regard for speed. We just .
. . went.” He glanced at her. “It’s the rush I recall—the ground flying past and my mother telling us not to aim for the hedge. ”
“That’s lovely,” Elizabeth said, and it was. He swallowed.
“It was also a hazardous assault on the principles of safety,” he added, to ward off the treacle.
“We wound up with snow packed down our collars and my father declaring each run ‘the champion of all runs.’ When I tried that line on Georgiana later, she was furious because it was a mathematical impossibility for all of them to win.”
“How old was she then? When you tried it on her?”
“Thirteen.”
There was a softness in her face he had begun to recognise, the one he wanted to believe was for him. “Now what about you?” he asked. “Favourite present?”
She considered, mug cradled in both hands. “My father had my first manuscript turned into a book for me.”
He blinked. “Your first mystery?” he asked.
“No.” Elizabeth’s laugh was unguarded. “I was nine.”
“Nine,” he repeated, feeling a foolish delight at the picture of a nine-year-old Elizabeth setting crimes in motion. “What was it? The Five Find-Outers sort of caper?”
“Worse,” she said. “A pony story. With illustrations. Every pony had an unnaturally complex interior life and a dislike of side reins. My father took the battered stack of pages to a local print shop and returned at Christmas with this . . . this little book. He had someone draw a picture for the cover. It was laminated, because of course. I was unbearable for weeks.”
“I wish I had known you then,” he said, too quickly, and watched something flicker across her expression like a shadow passing behind glass.
It wasn’t a withdrawal so much as a caution. She smiled politely and sipped her coffee. The room ticked and settled.
He reviewed the last thirty seconds the way he reviewed legal drafts, line by anxious line. I wish I had known you then. Did that presume? Did it press? Had he stepped on a floorboard with dry rot?
“You were unbearable?” he offered, trying to coax her back. “I refuse to believe it.”
“Oh, I was,” she said, bright again, but a touch more than natural. “I quoted my own work. I assigned readings.”
“I’d have attended every seminar,” he said.
It was true. He put down his mug, glanced outside.
The sun had strengthened enough to turn the frost into glittering specks.
He didn’t want to sit in a room waiting for whatever this was to pass.
“Would you . . . Shall we walk? It seems criminal not to take advantage when Derbyshire has deigned to be picturesque.”
She turned to look out the window. “Yes,” she said, after that small pause that, from anyone else, would have meant nothing. “I’d like that.”
He found their coats in the hall, and negotiated Waffles, who had been lurking with a posture of exaggerated innocence. Athena dignifiedly joined them because it would, of course, be improper for her people to go out unchaperoned.
“Mind the step,” he said on the way out.
“Yes, Mr. Darcy,” she replied archly.
The air had that crisp, apple-snap freshness that made one’s lungs expand. After a few moments of companionable silence, he tried again. “Your father sounds like an excellent man.”
“He is,” Elizabeth said, and there was love there, unambiguous. Then the brightness again, paper-thin over something else. “He’s . . . he was very encouraging.”
Past tense? No. He bit back the question. Not an interrogation. Not today. “I owe him my thanks for the pony literature. It clearly led to the good stuff.”
“That, or a lifelong suspicion of laminators.”
“Fair.”
They took the west path, where the view opened over fields edged with dry-stone walls. In the distance, the lake held a skim of ice like breath on glass. Waffles loped ahead with too much enthusiasm; Athena maintained a stately trot.
After a moment, Darcy began. “I’m aware that I can manage a conversation somewhat like a hedgehog. Spiky. Inelegant. I’m trying not to prick you with the wrong questions.”
Elizabeth looked up at him, eyes warm. “You’re doing very well. Minimal prickliness.”
“High praise,” he said.
She walked a few more paces. “It’s just .
. . since we’re being honest—” A breath.
“When people say they wish they’d known me earlier, what I hear is, ‘I wish you were different now,’ which is not always what they mean but, well.
I know I can be a lot—strange job, odd hours, weird interests—and that’s often made pretty clear to me.
Sometimes it just takes me a second to shake it off. ”
He felt that comment like cold water; not at her, but at himself, at the accidental clumsiness. “I didn’t mean different,” he said. “I meant more. More time. Greedily.”
She studied his face as if checking a document for errors and finding none. The brightness gentled. “All right,” she said. “Greedy I can handle.”
“I’m a lot like you,” he said. “I was always on the bookish side, and I was entranced with mathematics. If not for Richard and Malcolm, school might have been very difficult socially. But they made the other boys include me in everything. By the time I entered secondary school and started rowing, it was easier to make friends.”
They reached the low stone stile that marked the turn to the beech walk. He held out a hand without thinking; she took it, the brief, firm press of fingers, then released. The dogs followed. Waffles bounding, Athena picking her way over.
He let the quiet have a minute; it seemed to do them both good.
“Tell me something else about the toboggan,” Elizabeth said at last. “I can’t get past your father declaring every run the champion of all runs. That’s a bold philosophy.”