Page 17 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
I did not say any of this. I said, instead, the sortof thing that elder brothers say when they have lost an argument and lack the grace to admit it, “Because I am asking you to trust my judgment.”
Georgiana regarded me with an expression that suggested my judgment was not the currency it had been.
“I shall be civil to Miss Bennet, since you require it. But I shall not pretend to be grateful.” She turned and ascended the remaining stairs with the dignified grace of our late mother.
I would not continue my unwanted admonition. She had no parents to guide her, and I, her only brother, had a duty to her improvement. Nor would I invade the library where Miss Elizabeth would be reading a book with a cat on her lap. And I could not shake the look on her face when Georgiana had dismissed her so coldly. It had not been wounded pride that I had glimpsed, but careful concern.
What manner of woman responds to rudeness with such empathy?
Rather than having to answer this and other questions with an accidental encounter with the object of my every other thought, I turned to my study, or rather the study Bingley ceded to me, where I labored over his ledgers and his steward’s recommendations.
Crossing to my desk, I reached for a brandy and stopped.
There, perched in the precise center of my blotter, atop the drainage proposal I had been explaining to Bingley when Miss Elizabeth Bennet first arrived in her shabby carriage, sat her cat. Not on the floor near the desk, not on the chair beside it, but on the desk itself, regarding me with feline insouciance.
“I should have you removed.” I pretended to be cross with my hands perched on my hips.
But Cinnamon only stared at me with those amber all-seeing eyes, whiskers twitching, and I was too tired to ring for a maid to carry the creature away.
And so, I lowered myself into the leather chair opposite the desk, and we regarded each other in silent appraisal.
The sunlight through the window caught the orange of her fur,and she was, I had to concede, a handsome creature—well-proportioned, alert, with an intelligence in her gaze that reminded me, uncomfortably, of her owner.
“Your mistress,” I said, because apparently I had reached the stage of my decline where conversing with animals seemed reasonable, “is going to wonder where you are.”
Cinnamon began to purr. It filled the small study—warm, insistent, the sound of a creature satisfied with the present arrangement.
Then, with graceful deliberation, she leaped from the desk onto my lap, resettling herself with a contented curl and closed eyes, her purring intensifying.
My hand found the top of her head. I was not entirely sure when this happened.
“Your mistress,” I told her, “would be appalled.”
