Page 67 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
“I had entrusted Georgiana to the care of a companion…”
Elizabeth waited. She did not prod or push—she never pushed, that was the infuriating and extraordinary thing, she openeda door and stood beside it, and the standing-beside was an invitation so gentle that declining it felt like cowardice.
“It was two years ago.” I pressed my lips tight, and Cinnamon, sensing my tension, squirmed, so I let her down. “There had been a flood in Pemberley. The dam broke, and the mill house washed away.”
Those fine eyebrows of hers lifted, but she did not inquire or comment, giving me the space I needed.
“I sent Georgiana to Ramsgate, to our usual beachside stay without me. She was only fifteen…” I trailed off.
“Mr. Darcy, you need not expose your wound.” Her touch on my arm was light. “You hinted as much—that Georgiana required the confidence of her decisions and the discernment and ability to form her opinions and judgments.”
“Yes…” I took comfort in that brief touch, too quickly removed. “That is the scope of it. She needs the strength you possess.”
“I understand my role. To skirmish in the drawing room, thrust and parry with words, to defend and argue, because a woman with her dowry has to be equipped, and you believed I was the right person to prepare her for battle.”
“Exactly, I hired you to challenge her. The arguments were a bonus.” The involuntary chuckle surprised me. “And today, when she informed Bingley that his word as a sportsman was worth four points out of eleven and was not a strong negotiating position—that was the finest piece of oratory I have heard thus far.”
“She was rathermagnificent.I did not know whether you approved of the battledore incident or whether you were composing a letter of termination.”
“I would compose a letter begging you to stay on through the next season, but that would be unfair to you. Miss Elizabeth, you have always been a guest, not in my employ, and perhaps I had spoken too hastily, and your mother had engineered this arrangement to remind me not to speak hastily.”
“To vex you, I’m sure.” Elizabeth’s lips quirked. “As I, too, agreedto the contract for that very purpose. Make no mistake, we did not need the payment.”
I closed my eyes, nodding. Of course, that had been her motive, and that of her mother. To teach me a lesson against categorizing people.
“Then I accept your vexing, Miss Elizabeth, because you are exactly the person Georgiana needs to teach her to trust her own judgment.”
“By throwing apples at pigs and skipping across boundary streams?”
“Yes.” My gaze locked with hers, involuntarily, unable to look away. “I cannot guard her forever. She turns eighteen in the spring, and she will enter society. She will meet men who smile.” My voice dropped, and I let it, because the kitchen could hold what the drawing room could not. “And she must be able to read the smiles that mean something from the smiles that are designed to extract something. You are teaching her that. Not through instruction but through apple-throwing and battledore accusations and the radical practice of asking a girl what she wants and then listening when she answers.”
“The word you used for that in the drawing room wascompetent,” Elizabeth said, and the corner of her mouth moved, and the movement was the most welcome sight in the kitchen because it meant the wall between us—the professional, contractual one—had come down by a brick, and the brick was lying on the floor between us, and neither of us was picking it up.
“I acknowledged the insufficiency of that word.”
“You did, and you are forgiven, but only because the biscuits require my attention more than your vocabulary.”
I watched her move to the oven, and the watching was the kind that I had stopped pretending was professional. She opened the iron door, and the heat bloomed into the kitchen, carrying ginger and butter. With the grace of experience, she pulled thetray with her hands wrapped in a cloth, bare forearms turned toward the light, and set it on the table.
Examining the golden circles with the critical eye of a woman assessing her own work, she picked one up, turned it over, blew on it, and held it out to me.
“Has the master of Pemberley ever eaten a biscuit in a kitchen?”
“I have eaten biscuits in many rooms.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“The answer is no.” I took the biscuit. It was hot on my palm, but nothing like the heat of standing so close to such a remarkable woman.
I blew on the biscuit and tried the words. “Quite adequate…” blew again, “remarkable…” blew more steam from the biscuit, “magnificent, that was your word, wasn’t it?”
She nodded, eyes intent as if her entire measure lay in my tasting of her biscuit.
I blew again. “How about extraordinary? What you did with Georgiana…” one more puff, “or perhaps simply sisterly. Like an elder sister she has never had.”
Her cheeks bloomed, pinking, and a smile brightened her face. “I have always had Jane. She is the one constant in my life, more so than my parents.”
“Yes, she is.” I bit into the biscuit.
