Chapter Twelve #2
“It made losing impossible,” Darcy said. “But it didn’t make winning meaningless. Each run felt worth a ribbon.”
She touched his sleeve, brief as a bell. “I think that's lovely.”
The path bent. The house came into view again between the trees, square and steady. He felt the oddest sensation of something that had been off kilter settling one notch nearer to true. Not perfect. Just . . . nearer.
“Elizabeth,” he said, daring the name for the simple luxury of it, “if you ever feel I’m getting it wrong, I should be grateful if you’d tell me. Preferably in words of one syllable.”
“I can do better than that,” she said. “I can draw you a diagram.”
“Laminated?”
“Only for posterity.”
Waffles barrelled back at them with a stick too large for his ambitions. He cannoned into Darcy’s shin, missed Elizabeth by a whisker, and was greeted with a chorus of scolding.
He could practically hear Athena rolling her eyes.
They walked on, not hurrying, letting the day be the day.
Darcy felt steadier for the walk; the air had sorted his thoughts into sensible piles.
They rounded the last yew and found Mrs. Reynolds in the forecourt, pink-cheeked and cross, tugging at the fingers of her gloves as if the leather were to blame for the morning.
“Oh, I give up!” she declared. “First the Aga burns the strata, and now my wretched car refuses to start. Christmas, of all days!”
Darcy straightened. “I’ll take you to your sister’s.” It would add two hours to the day, perhaps three, but he was rearranging the schedule in his head: push departure, have Elizabeth ring Jane, account for traffic.
Mrs. Reynolds flapped both hands. “Oh, no, sir, it’s almost an hour away. I wouldn’t put you to the trouble on Christmas. I’ll just call the garage tomorrow.”
“I’ll ring someone now,” Darcy said. “Have them look at it.” The words were out before he remembered that most people with sense were at home with paper hats and gravy.
“And pay the surcharge, if you can find anyone at all?” she returned, exasperated.
“If you’d like, I could take a look.”
They both turned to Elizabeth. “You?” he asked, before he could help himself.
She grinned at him. “Me. Don’t look so skeptical. Jane and I shared a spectacularly unreliable heap when we started driving. Kept it alive with duct tape and sheer stubbornness. I got quite handy at poking about under the bonnet, especially when we had to ferry our sisters places.”
There was a world in that “had to,” but he let it pass.
Five minutes later they were at the little hatchback with the bonnet up, Mrs. Reynolds hovering as if the engine might bite, and Darcy fighting the managerial urge to fetch a professional anyway.
Elizabeth rolled up her sleeves and leaned in with an ease that made him feel unexpectedly superfluous.
“Battery looks fine,” she murmured, more to the car than to them. “Starter . . . give me a second.” She tugged one lead, then another, hands sure, expression cheerful and intent. “Ha.” A small, victorious sound. “Loose connector.”
She reseated it, checked something else with a decisive push, then straightened. He offered his handkerchief; she took it with a quick “Thanks,” leaving a neat thumbprint of graphite across the corner like a signature. “Try it now?”
Mrs. Reynolds slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and the engine caught at once, an eager, merry rumble that made the housekeeper clap her hands. “Oh, bless you, dear! You’ve saved my Christmas.” She beamed at Elizabeth, then at Darcy, as if he’d done the work himself.
He blinked. Elizabeth had fixed it. No drama, no dramatic insistence he stand back, just competence, brisk and unbothered. He had no idea he could find that so attractive.
“You’re welcome,” Elizabeth said, stepping back while the exhaust steamed the cold air. “Happy Christmas.”
Mrs. Reynolds, restored to good humour, promised faithfully to take the direct route and not to speed, waved at them both as if they were children, and disappeared down the drive.
Elizabeth looked at the handkerchief, then at her palms. “I hated that old car,” she said, dabbing without much success, “but it did teach me a useful thing: not everything needs the shop.”
Darcy found himself smiling. “I don’t know the first thing about what goes on under the bonnet. You’ll have to teach me your ways.” He indicated, with a small tilt of his head, the thin streak of grease across her jumper where her open coat had failed to protect it. “Casualty of war?”
She glanced down and sighed. “I’ll change. And wash my hands before I spread engine grease across your upholstery.”
“Use the utility sink,” he said, then heard himself and amended, “Please. The water warms faster there than upstairs.”
A quarter of an hour later she was back, coat buttoned over a green jumper he had been privately partial to since the first time he’d seen it. He tried not to sound too pleased.
They set out once more in the other direction, Waffles staggering under the important work of re-collecting the estate on his fur, Athena pretending not to know him.
Darcy matched his pace to Elizabeth’s, hands tucked into his coat pockets, reviewing the morning like a ledger: the near disaster of breakfast, presents mostly sorted, a car unexpectedly mended, a housekeeper sent on her way.
Under “unresolved,” he included a brightness to Elizabeth’s expression that didn’t quite balance.
Not a problem, not yet. Adjustment, he reminded himself.
He had felt equally foreign in the wonderful, bedlam warmth of her family’s table; she was doing the mirror exercise here.
The sensible course was patience, attention, and not mistaking a single datapoint for a trend.
On the rise before the folly, the wind lifted and sent a pale shimmer across the lake. Elizabeth turned into it, cheeks pinked, eyes clear. He had the sudden, irrational thought that if the car hadn’t started, she would have simply have willed it to life. The notion warmed him absurdly.
“Georgiana will want to say goodbye,” he said, when the chill finally pressed its case. “We should head back.”
They did, looping behind the house, Waffles circling them over and over, adding miles to his outing. When they reached the back door, Darcy glanced at Elizabeth. Her smile was easy now, unforced, the same one she’d given Maggie when the engine turned over. He liked that smile.
Soon they would be on their way to Hertfordshire, dogs wedged in the back with the presents, Maggie’s mince pies in Elizabeth’s lap, the satnav arguing with his memory of the A-roads, Charles and Jane laying an ambush of hospitality.
For now, there was the clean bite of country air, Waffles’s idiot joy, Athena’s resigned dignity, and a beautiful woman who could coax sense from engines. It felt, he thought, very much like a winning run.