7. A Steadfast Bride #2
“I do wonder what has become of his right ear,” Elizabeth teased, the color in her cheeks giving way to something rather more mischievous.
“And his tail appears to have met a similar fate. I did not like to speculate on the cause, but I wondered whether you were in the habit of chewing your companions when they displeased you.”
The observation startled a sound out of him that was not quite a laugh but was closer than anything he had produced in some time.
“I believe the tail was lost in a cavalry engagement with the nursery cat, and the ear was sacrificed to a disagreement with the banister on the main staircase. But I cannot swear to the accuracy of either account. I was four years old and inclined to rewrite history in my own favor.”
“A tendency you have since outgrown, I am sure.”
“Entirely. I am now a model of scrupulous accuracy in all matters relating to my own conduct.”
“I am glad Captain survived his military career with most of his dignity intact,” Elizabeth said.
“I thought Thomas might appreciate a companion who has seen battle and emerged scarred but serviceable. Though I confess I am uncertain of my strategy. The nursery did not go particularly well on my first attempt, as you may recall.”
He recalled it vividly: her white face, the blood on her thumb, and the bitten-back cry she had not permitted herself to make.
She had held her ground longer than most would have managed, and she had not blamed the child for defending the only territory he understood.
That counted for something, even if the campaign had ended in retreat.
“Mrs. Darcy, I wonder if I might offer a suggestion, if you would not find it presumptuous.”
“I should find it useful, which is rather more to the point. Presume away, Mr. Darcy.”
The invitation was lightly given, but he heard something beneath it—a willingness to listen that he had not expected and was not certain he had earned.
“The nursery is Thomas’s territory. He does not receive many visitors, as you can guess, and he does not understand where his mother has gone. Hence, Hartley guards it rather fiercely, and visitors there are often viewed as intruders. It does not put the child in a receptive frame of mind.”
“Naturally.” Elizabeth’s voice softened, and he saw something shift behind her eyes—a deepening of understanding that had not been there before.
“He is still watching for her. Every footstep in the corridor, every creak of the door—some part of him still believes she might walk through it. And when the door opens, and it is not her—when it is a stranger instead, someone who does not belong to his world—he is not merely disappointed, he is bereaved all over again. My presence does not comfort him but reminds him of what he has lost.”
“You understand him better than I credited,” he said, marveling at how she not only did not blame the child for biting her hand, but for understanding the heart of the matter.
“There is a small parlor on the ground floor with French doors opening onto the garden. He does better in rooms where he can see the trees. If you were to meet him there instead, with the doors open and the garden in view, he might be more willing to consider that you are not an enemy.”
“A neutral ground, rather than his fortress.” Elizabeth nodded slowly, and he could see her turning the idea over, examining it for merit rather than dismissing it out of hand.
“That is surprisingly astute, Mr. Darcy, for a man who professes no experience with children and appears to find the whole business rather bewildering.”
“I find most things incomprehensible, Mrs. Darcy. I have simply learned to conceal it with sufficient reserve that no one thinks to question my competence.”
The admission surprised him as he was not given to self-reflection. But Elizabeth’s manner invited confession, or at least honesty, and he found himself speaking more freely than he had intended.
“Then we are well matched in our approach, for I have been concealing a myriad of shortcomings behind impertinence for the whole of my adult life. It is a surprisingly effective strategy.”
“I had not realized…” He trailed off, having made himself quite a student of her manner and character without realizing the defensive angle.
“No, I do not suppose you did, Mr. Darcy.” She angled a raised brow at him.
“One must be strategic when one is a woman without fortune navigating a world that was not designed with her convenience. But I shall let you in on the secret, since we are apparently confessing our methods to one another—the impertinence is also genuine. The strategy merely provides a respectable excuse for indulging it.”
He felt a charge between them, as if the conversation had nudged them into new territory, or at least to its edge.
The breakfast table had been all ceremony and awkwardness; this, at last, felt like a true conversation, an intimacy he had simultaneously yearned for but held far away with his customary reserve.
“This afternoon, then,” Elizabeth said. “The small parlor with the garden doors open, and a one-eared horse as my ambassador. I shall attempt diplomacy, and Thomas shall determine whether I am worth the risk of trust.”
“I believe the question is rather whether you shall determine Thomas is worth the risk of your remaining thumb.”
She turned to look at him, warmth crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Why, Mr. Darcy, I do believe you are jesting. I had not thought you capable of it.”
“I am capable of a great many things, Mrs. Darcy, when sufficiently provoked. You must not tell anyone, as I have a reputation for gravity to maintain.”
“Your secret is safe with me.” She held his gaze, almost challenging.
“But I should tell you, before I go inside—I am remarkably difficult to be rid of, once I have decided to stay. It is one of my few genuine accomplishments, and I have had a great deal of practice in the art of outlasting those who would prefer I disappear, even if he is a determined biter of thumbs.”
“I do not wish you to depart, Mrs. Darcy.”
The words escaped—too revealing. But Elizabeth did not seem discomfited; she merely regarded him with mild bemusement, and then smiled—a small, private smile that was neither the public one nor the guarded one, but something new.
“Then we are fortunate,” she said, “for you shall find me quite steadfast, with no mind to retreat.”
She rose, brushed the stone dust from her skirts, and went inside to prepare for her afternoon campaign.
Darcy lingered on the step, watching the shadows shift across the lawn as the sun angled westward, thinking not of Duntze’s warning or the registry that might yet unravel everything, but of the woman who had walked through his door as if she had always belonged.
He recalled, with a vividness that caught him off guard, another afternoon and another woman moving through a garden—Elizabeth at Netherfield, gathering Michaelmas daisies for her sister’s sickroom, her dark hair escaping its pins in the autumn wind.
He had watched her from Bingley’s study window, a floor above and a world apart, and when she looked up—not at him, but at the sky, checking for rain—his heart had tumbled in his chest and refused to right itself.
He had not gone down to her, but had turned away, retreating to his correspondence. He had told himself that whatever had stirred in him was nothing that required attention. That was his way with her from the beginning—to observe, to be struck, and to withdraw.
And she was here now, inside his house, preparing to win over a child who did not want her with a battered wooden horse and a determination that did not know when to quit.
And he was sitting on his own front step in the springtime breeze, thinking of daisies, wooden horses, and the sound of her voice promising she had no intention of leaving, and wondered if the habit might be worth breaking.