Page 30 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
CHAPTER TEN
A GENTLEMAN’S TOPOGRAPHY
Darcy
There aremoments in a man’s life where everything he believed about the order of things shatters, and he is left holding his hat like a fool.
I had offered my arm to the wrong woman. This was not a matter of opinion. Miss Bingley had turned her ankle. Miss Elizabeth had her chin up and had said, quite clearly, that she required nothing from me. And yet, I gave her my arm while the injured lady angling for my heroism dispelled any gentlemanly notion I might have held.
Having my younger sister notice was beyond mortifying.Take his arm; he won’t bite.
What had compelled my sweet, innocent sister to tease so? Had she been reading those Gothic romances I disapproved of?
I’d have to have a word with Miss Bennet—and she’d said later, not never. So I retreated to the privacy of Netherfield’s library because the library did not judge, and I did not wish to stand in the corridor listening to the sounds of bath water.
What I had not anticipated was the library’s unfortunate placementdirectly beneath her bedchamber instead. Still, it was a refuge from the drawing room and the sounds of Caroline Bingley being assisted to a bath while howling for a draught to relieve her pain.
And so, I stared at a diagram depicting various strategies for crop rotations and thought of Elizabeth Bennet, a slip of a lady, barely over five feet tall, bearing the weight of Caroline Bingley across a Hertfordshire field.
That she was stubborn, provincial, and devastatingly competent was undeniable. But what unsettled me was the realization that these very qualities, which I had initially dismissed as unbecoming for a gentlewoman, now stirred something within me that I dared not name.
Miss Bennet managed everything.
My sister’s words. Georgiana, who for two days had barely spoken three consecutive sentences to anyone, had delivered a clean, factual account of the morning’s events with a composure I had not seen from her since before—since Ramsgate. She had not looked for approval but had spoken with admiration.
My quiet, careful, porcelain-composed sister, who had not teased anyone in my hearing since she was fourteen, had looked at Elizabeth Bennet and told her to take my arm with the casual authority of a girl who had decided that her brother’s dignity was less important than a muddy woman’s exhaustion.
I set the brandy snifter down and crossed to the bookshelves where Cinnamon had vanished behind a collection of sermons. Bending to replace one of the unread agricultural tracts, I decided to search the wall for a mouse hole or larger—perhaps made by rats. Several pamphlets bore the telltale signs of nibbling, and as I pushed them aside, I uncovered a collection of Gothic romances, their covers dog-eared and pages mottled with mold.
And I discovered the passageway—large enough for a cat—behind the novels and a complete set of Gibbon’sDecline and Fall.
I was thumbing through the lurid novels when the floorboards above creaked, and I knew it was Elizabethbecause at some point I had memorized the patter of her step, firmer than Georgiana’s, quicker and more furtive ones.
This, I decided upon draining the rest of my brandy, was not the activity of a rational man—indeed, one who procured Miss Bennet for the betterment of his sister’s programme.
I opened the closest pamphlet and stared at a diagram of turnip yields without absorbing a single figure, and I was still staring at it twenty minutes later when she walked in through the open doorway—for I was not a man to close doors in other people’s houses.
Elizabeth had bathed, and her hair wasn’t quite dry, although pinned. Her face was clean and flushed from the hot water, and she came into the room with a brisk purpose.
“Mr. Darcy.” Her eyes found the brandy snifter, the crinkled pamphlet, and me—in that order. “I did not expect to find the library occupied at this hour.”
“The desk is at your disposal,” I said, rising, because breeding is a reflex and reflexes do not consult the brain.
“You needn’t rise every time I enter a room, Mr. Darcy. You will develop a very peculiar knee condition.”
“I shall endeavor to suffer it with dignity.”
She almost smiled, turning it into a scowl as she crossed to the desk. “I came to write my father.”
I remained standing, unsure why I would be interested in her correspondence.
“As per the contract drawn up by your uncle Philips, you have full access to the library and may use the quills, inkwell, and papers. Should you require a messenger, you may ring Mrs. Nicholls.”
“How exceedingly generous,” she remarked, opening the inkwell. “For a guest in another man’s house, you have a remarkably thorough knowledge of its provisions. Do you also manage Mr. Bingley’s wine cellar and stable rotations, or only the stationery and the drainage of his western fields?”
“I merely endeavor to assist Bingley should he decide topurchase Netherfield. The former tenant seemed to have neglected the necessary maintenance. Surely, there is no harm in aiding a friend.”
“Do you also consider turnip yields part of Bingley’s improvement programme?” She gestured to the pamphlet that I had left upside down.
