Page 97 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE YES I SAVED
Elizabeth
I tried notto think about Fitzwilliam Darcy appearing at our door to demand the return of his sister, and I did not share Georgiana’s assurance that her brother had been listening, observing, and would come to the right conclusions. He was watchful, yes, and I almost giggled picturing a Darcy owl perched on the tree at night. Silent wings swooping over an unsuspecting mouse.
As to her claim that he loved me? As if it were self-evident? I shook my head as I smelled my hands, still scented with lavender soap. Sweet Georgiana was a seventeen-year-old girl, and having two sisters of that age, they imagined gentlemen falling in love with ladies all year round.
“Lizzy,” Mama’s voice rose from outside the guest room. “Come make yourself useful, and stop pestering Miss Darcy with questions. Let the poor dear rest.”
I shrugged at Georgiana, who had settled on a settee, still wrapped in a blanket over Lydia’s thickest nightdress.
“Go, Lizzy, I shall be well.”
“Yes, Georgie, for you shall be Georgie from now on as I am Lizzy to you.” I dotted a kiss on her forehead. “I shall bring broth and tea. Will you be wanting anything else?”
“Only let me know when my brother arrives, because arrive he will. He will find me missing without a note, and if he’s truly the wise owl we think he is, he will know where I went.”
“I believe so, yes.”
“He will be frightened, and he will be very wet, and your mother will insist on towels.”
I almost smiled as I turned into the corridor. The almost was the problem since Georgiana told me the truth—about another man who smiled too much, about Darcy’s fear and Caroline’s exploitation. It was Ramsgate, the locked room inside a locked man, and Georgiana had given me a key.
The key did not make the door easy to open. That was the thing nobody told you about understanding a man’s worst moment—the understanding did not dissolve the anger; it complicated the anger, layered it with compassion that had no proper place to sit, and the compassion and the anger shared the same chair in my heart, and neither would yield to the other.
I descended to find Jane sitting in the drawing room with her composure intact. She had relaxed enough to read, no doubt anticipating Bingley’s arrival.
The clock on the mantel ticked away the minutes.
“She will be warm enough,” Mama said, sweeping in from the stairs. “Hill is bringing broth, and Lydia has donated her thickest nightdress, a sacrifice she has announced to the household no fewer than three times in the last quarter-hour.”
“It is a very fine nightdress,” Lydia called from the corridor. “And Georgiana should know it cost four shillings, which is more than Kitty’s.”
“Lydia. To the kitchen.”
“But Mama, I was only?—“
“Kitchen. And take the biscuits out of the oven before they burn. Mrs. Hill has her hands full.”
Lydia retreated with the noisy compliance of a girl who wished her obedience noted and appreciated, dragging Kitty in her wake. The drawing room settled into the weighted silence of a household bracing for something it could feel approaching but could not yet name.
A half hour later, Georgiana joined me in the drawing room, her cheeks once again rosy and her hair dried, but let down. I hadn’t bothered to pin my hair, and I realized with a belated consternation that my sleeves were damp and my skirts wrinkled, and I couldn’t do anything because the knock came. Not a polite knock, but the pounding of a man who could not breathe properly until he had ascertained his beloved sister was safe.
“Hill will answer,” Mama said calmly, not looking up from the embroidery she was not actually stitching.
Every head in the room turned toward the corridor. Even Cinnamon lifted her chin from Georgiana’s knee.
Hill’s voice, muffled by the passage, said, “Good evening, sir.”
And then his voice. “Good evening. I apologize for the intrusion. I am here for my sister.”
Georgiana rose, and Cinnamon streaked toward the entrance hall. Mama caught Georgiana’s arm, but no one minded Cinnamon. Papa stepped from his library, no doubt having heard the commotion.
The drawing room door opened, and Hill announced, “Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, ma’am.”
The first thing I saw was water. Darcy’s coat was drenched, his hair plastering that errant curl to his forehead, his boots leaving dark prints on Mama’s carpet. He looked nothing like the man who had stood at the Meryton Assembly in pristine evening clothes. This was the man who had gotten on a horse and ridden three miles through a November storm because someone he loved was outin it, and the looking undid something in my chest that I had been holding together with considerable effort.
