Page 43 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
“And the climbing? Actual trees? With branches?”
“A Bramley. Miss Bennet climbed, and I caught the apples.”
“Magnificent.” Bingley’s expression brightened likea boy who discovered that the world is more entertaining than he had supposed. “Darcy, your sister has been having adventures while we supervised dirt. We have chosen poorly.”
Georgiana’s flush deepened at his praise, and she reached for his arm with the easy affection of a girl who had known him since childhood—the way one touches a favorite uncle, warm and unselfconscious and innocent of how the gesture might appear to a young woman sitting very still by the fire.
I glanced at Jane Bennet. Her smile was precisely where it had been, but her expression had dimmed. She had seen Georgiana’s enthusiastic response to a man she was comfortable with, but instead of seeing a younger sister’s affections, she saw a young woman of seventeen.
Bingley continued his interest. “And you can simply eat wild garlic? Without ceremony? Straight from the ground?” And then my sister launched into an uncharacteristic explanation of the differences between thyme and sage with an animation I had not heard from her since the flour incident, and watching them together, I felt a discomfort I could not immediately place.
Could Bingley, no doubt due to Caroline’s encouragement, have turned his attention to my sister, with her Darcy pedigree and access to the finest circles of society?
I dismissed the thought as uncharitable. Bingley was my closest friend. His character was sound, his intentions honorable, and his interest in Jane Bennet was clear to everyone in the room except, apparently, Jane herself.
And yet the arithmetic persisted, unwelcome and unbidden: thirty thousand pounds against no dowry at all. A man might smile at an angel and still marry the fortune.
I was disgusted with myself for thinking it and unable to stop.
“Brother.” Georgiana watched me with the careful attention of a girl reading the weather. “Mrs. Bennet has invited us to stay for luncheon. The cook has prepared rabbit pie.”
“Rabbit pie!” Bingley, who had never met a meal he did not greetwith enthusiasm, was already looking toward the kitchen with the expression of a man who had received news of an inheritance. “Darcy, we cannot possibly refuse rabbit pie. It would be an insult to the household.”
“We have imposed sufficiently?—”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Bennet from the doorway, arriving with the precise timing I was beginning to associate with this household. “Mr. Darcy, we have rabbit pie enough for the regiment, and your sister has been promised a portion. I do not break promises to guests, however unexpected.”
“Please, Fitzwilliam.” Georgiana’s voice was soft, but the want in it was not. This was not a request sanctioned by the programme. This was a girl who had spent a morning being fed and fussed over and taught to climb trees, and who was asking to keep it for one more hour.
I looked at Elizabeth. Naturally, she was watching me decide. Her expression carried neither plea nor challenge—only a certainty that I would choose correctly, which was more unsettling than either, because it assumed I was capable of the choice she would have made.
“We would be honored,” I said, and Georgiana’s smile, the real one, the one that belonged to the girl with the plait and not the one manufactured for drawing rooms, broke across her face so swiftly that I felt it in my chest.
Bingley settled beside Jane near the fire, and they fell into conversation with the gentle, unhurried quality of two people who had a great deal to say. Jane’s earlier stillness softened by degrees—not fully, not recklessly, but enough that I could see the warmth returning to her face in careful increments, like a woman testing the ice before committing her weight.
Georgiana returned to the bench with Mary, and the Haydn resumed.
And across the room, Elizabeth sat with Cinnamon, who had returned from the kitchen with damp whiskers and thesatisfied air of a cat who had visited her dish, and who now climbed into her mistress’s lap and turned twice before settling with her face toward me—which I refused to interpret as meaningful, because interpreting the facial orientation of a cat was not the activity of a rational man.
Elizabeth scratched behind Cinnamon’s ear and looked at me, and I looked at her, and neither of us looked away. In my pocket, my fingers found the green silk ribbon, the frayed edge catching against my thumb—a lady’s private thing, muddied and soft, that a gentleman had no business keeping and no intention of returning.
