14. Man and Boy Both #2
Thomas giggled—a rare, delightful sound—and thrust General Sidney toward her. “You hold.”
“I should be honored to hold General Sidney.” Elizabeth accepted the soldier and placed him with the horse in her arms. “I shall guard him with my life until his troops require his command.”
This apparently satisfied Thomas’s requirements, because he returned to his remaining soldiers and began what appeared to be a complex reorganization involving moving the entire regiment three inches to the left for reasons known only to himself.
Elizabeth watched him, something warm and complicated unfurling in her chest. This child—so serious, so precise, so particular—was nothing like his father.
Wickham had been all charm and easy warmth, a man who could make every gentleman feel his dearest friend and every lady feel singularly noticed and appreciated.
His son, by contrast, was a brooding creature, requiring patience and a careful rationing of attention.
Elizabeth had learned not to coax him when he was out of sorts, but to set a toy within reach and assume an air of studied indifference.
She had even perfected the art of an exaggerated yawn, followed by a pointed closing of the eyes and a most unladylike snore.
He likely took after his mother. Lady Amelia must have been a woman of strong character to produce such a child.
“Speaking of Sidney,” she said aloud, “the actual Sidney. I hope he has been well fed in my absence. I should hate for him to waste away while I have been languishing with fever.”
“Hannah has been tending to him,” Darcy assured her. “With rather more dedication than I might have expected. She has named his enclosure ‘Sidney’s Palace’ and decorated it with what I believe are meant to be curtains.”
“Of course she has.” Elizabeth laughed. “Hannah names everything. I expect by month’s end she will have christened every spider in Pemberley and composed a genealogy for each.”
Thomas tugged at Elizabeth’s hand. “Lizba, want Sidney.”
“Ah, so General Sidney must survey his troops.” She relinquished the largest soldier. “Do they meet with his approval?”
“No!” Thomas swept his hand in a wide arc, knocking down all of the men while squealing with laughter.
Elizabeth’s gaze met Darcy’s, sharing a moment of delight. Perhaps the child had some of Wickham’s recklessness after all.
Darcy picked up a soldier. “Well, now that you have made a mess of your regiment, perhaps it is time to put them back in their box. Lizba needs to rest.”
“No!” Thomas arched his back against Elizabeth and looked up with those dark, solemn eyes. “Want real Sidney.”
“You want to visit the real Sidney? The snail?”
Thomas nodded vigorously. “Want. Now.”
“I am afraid Sidney is sleeping, but I promise you, the very moment I am well enough to venture outside, we shall collect him and bring him to visit you properly.” Elizabeth smoothed a curl from Thomas’s forehead. “Would you like that?”
“Yes.” Thomas considered this promise with the gravity it deserved. Then he added, “Now?”
“Not quite now, my love. Soon. Very soon.”
Thomas’s lower lip began to tremble in the particular way that suggested protest was imminent. Elizabeth braced herself for the wail, but Darcy intervened. “Thomas. What did we discuss about patience?”
The lip continued to tremble. “Want Sidney now.”
“Sidney is sleeping. We do not wake our friends when they are sleeping.”
Thomas glared at his uncle with the full force of two-year-old outrage, clearly weighing the merits of tantrum versus compliance. Elizabeth held her breath.
“Later,” Thomas said at last. “Want biscuit.”
“That I can certainly manage,” Elizabeth said, reaching for the tea tray and her uneaten biscuit.
His chubby hands closed around the biscuit, and he sat back against Elizabeth, content.
She stroked his hair, marveling at the silk of it, the warmth of his small body pressed so trustingly against her side.
He finished his biscuit, his eyes growing heavy-lidded, drifting into the deep, relaxed sleep of a child who feels completely safe.
He trusts me, she thought, and the realization brought a complicated joy. This child, who has lost so much, who has every reason to guard himself, trusts me.
She looked up to find Darcy watching them, and the expression on his face made her breath falter. It was not the careful composure he usually wore. It was something rawer, more desperate—the hunger of a man who was seeing something he had wanted for a very long time.
A man who loved his nephew deeply, beyond duty or obligation; her proud, reserved, complicated Mr. Darcy, who had taken in his brother’s forsaken child and raised him with a devotion that could not be mistaken. Whatever faults Fitzwilliam Darcy might possess, a cold heart was not among them.
“You are very good with him,” she said softly.
Gratitude flickered across Darcy’s face. “He makes it easy.”
“I rather think he makes it difficult, and you make it look easy,” Elizabeth corrected gently, smiling. “That is not the same thing at all.”
Darcy held her gaze for a long moment, and Elizabeth had the strangest sense that he wanted to say something—something important, something that pressed against his careful composure like water against a dam.
“You should rest,” he said instead. “Both of you, it seems.”
He gestured toward Thomas, who had indeed fallen asleep against Elizabeth’s side, his thumb in his mouth, and Captain the wooden horse clutched in his other hand. General Sidney lay abandoned among the soldiers, awaiting the return of his commander.
“I hate to wake him,” Elizabeth whispered.
“Then do not.” Darcy’s voice was soft. “I shall return for him in an hour. Let him sleep.”
He leaned over and kissed the boy on the forehead, and then, surprising Elizabeth, he pressed a tender kiss on her cheek. With a serious but steady look, as if afraid to disturb a fragile peace, he backed out of the room; his eyes remained fixed on Elizabeth until the door closed between them.
She lay back against the pillows, one arm around Thomas, and stared at the ceiling with its crack that resembled Mr. Collins.
I am falling in love with them, the thought arrived, clear and undeniable. It was neither welcome nor unwelcome; it simply existed. Both of them—man and boy. And I do not know what to do if George Wickham returns to claim his son…
She sincerely wished George would find a wife in India and never again darken Pemberley’s doorstep. Yet as she gazed at the inscrutable crack in the ceiling, she could not help but fear that the cards would, in time, fall down and claim this fragile and precious peace.
At least Longbourn lived another day, she told the crack in the ceiling. It only stared down at her, patient and incomprehensible, keeping its own counsel as cracks have done since the beginning of time.