Page 68 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
The ginger hit first. Not the polite, measured ginger of a biscuit baked by a cook who follows recipes, but a fierce, deliberate, slightly combative ginger that tasted like the evening had felt—intense and unapologetic, like the woman who had been told her methods were inadequate and her presence constituted an infestation, who had gone to the kitchen and put it all somewhere useful.
“Thereisrather a lot of ginger,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Was that intentional?”
“Everything was intentional, Mr. Darcy.”
I took another bite, the ginger was excellent, and the biscuit wasthe first honest thing offered to me since the drawing room. The burn in the roof of my mouth was still better than any polished confections Caroline Bingley served as conversation.
And then Elizabeth’s gaze fell to my mouth, a movement she didn’t seem to register until after it happened. I caught it because I was already observing her every detail. That observation sent a jolt through my chest, unrelated to ginger. I attributed it entirely to the firelight on her cheekbone, the flour dusting her jaw, and the fact that she stood mere inches away, in a warm kitchen, holding a tray of biscuits she’d baked with an angry spirit. And I wanted?—
I wanted to brush the flour from her cheek, and I wanted to… But I did not touch her. My hand moved, the kind of movement that was converted into reaching for a second biscuit… from a plate held in front of her chest.
“You already have quite a lot of sisters,” I said, which was not the sentence I had been constructing.
“We Bennets are known for our sisterhood.” She held out another biscuit from her own hand, and her fingers were warm from the tray. “We can always absorb another one.”
“Georgiana would be pleased.” I took the third biscuit, and she did not immediately release it, and the interval lasted exactly long enough for us both to be fully aware of it. “As am I.”
I held her gaze, and I could not look away. And yet, this arrangement between us could not last. I had purchased my sister a companion, as an object lesson from her mother, a contract, and a six-month term. And because she was my sister’s companion, I could not…
Heat flushed my face, and I blew the steam of the third biscuit from my lips.
I took a fourth biscuit.
The ginger was still not a sufficient distraction.
“You have gone very quiet, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth said, watching me with the attention she gave to things she intendedto understand, whether they wished to be understood or not. “That is either the ginger or a thought you do not intend to share.”
“I find myself wishing,” I began, and stopped, because the sentence had three possible endings, and two of them would have altered the course of the evening in ways I was not prepared to manage. I chose the third, the safest, the one that revealed the shape of the thought without exposing its interior. “I find myself wishing that the circumstances of our acquaintance were different. That you were here as Georgiana’s friend rather than by arrangement. You deserve to be here by choice, not by contract.”
The words landed in the kitchen with a weight that surprised me, because I had intended them as a minor observation and they had arrived as something closer to a confession.
“I am here by choice, Mr. Darcy,” she said, and her voice was steady. “The contract is the mechanism. The choice is mine. I chose to come, and I chose to stay. Neither of those decisions was made under duress, whatever Miss Bingley may imply about my tenacity.”
She held my gaze, and in the holding was a courage I could not match, because Elizabeth had just told me, in the clearest language the kitchen would permit, that she was not here for the wages.
And, being the dunce that I was, I had no idea what to do about it. I had devised a plan to keep my sister safe, and it had led this woman to my home. She, in turn, brought warmth, fury, ginger biscuits, and a cat that showed no respect for boundaries. Now, the very mechanism I had created to protect Georgiana had become the obstacle between myself and the only person I?—
I took a fifth biscuit.
If I were ever to have a son, I should drill into him the necessity of choosing his words with care, especially around a remarkable woman possessing a pair of very fine eyes.
