Page 36 of Mr. Darcy Forgot I Said No

"The upside-down one. It had better light."

She laughs, and looks up at me. "You are not at all what I expected, Mr. Darcy."

"What did you expect?"

"I expected you to tell me how many rooms it has."

"Two hundred and eight," I say. "Thirty of them are bedchambers. Eleven are never used."

"There it is."

"You asked."

"I did not. I asked what it was like." Her mouth curves. "Go on. Tell me about the trout."

"How do you know there are trout?"

"There is a lake. There are always trout. And you are a man. You have been dying to tell me about the trout this quarter of an hour."

I tell her about the trout.

***

On Thursday, I talk about my parents.

This I do not intend either. We are walking under the limes, where the light comes through green, and she asks me whether I remember my mother, and before I have decided whether to answer, I am answering.

"She was very tall," I say. "Taller than my father. She used to laugh about it. She had a way of standing in a doorway that made you feel the room had been waiting for her. My aunt thinks she was a great beauty. She was not, I think. Her nose was too long, and so is mine. But she was the cleverest person I ever knew."

"Until?" says Miss Bennet.

I look down at her. "Until what?"

"Until you met someone cleverer. You said ever knew. It sounded like a sentence that had been interrupted."

I am silent a moment. Then I say, "Yes. It was."

She looks away, quickly, across the park. The ribbon of her bonnet moves in the breeze.

"She died when I was twelve," I go on, more quietly. "Georgiana was not a year old. My father never quite—" I stop. "He was a good man. Generous. Too generous, sometimes, to people who did not deserve it. He taught me to be just. He did not teach me to be easy. He did not know how, himself, after she was gone."

"And so you never learned."

"I learned to be correct," I say. "It is not the same thing. It is a good deal colder."

Her hand tightens on my arm, just for a moment. It is so slight I might have imagined it. I did not imagine it.

***

On Friday, I talk about Georgiana.

She is sixteen. She is shy, much shier than I was, and plays the pianoforte better than anyone I have ever heard, and is afraid of strangers, and of horses, and of thunder, and of disappointing me, which is the one fear I would most like to cure her of.

"You will love her," I say. "She will be terrified of you for a week. And then she will follow you about like a duckling. You will be the sister she has always wanted."

"And what if she does not like me?"

"She will like you. You will make her laugh. Nobody makes her laugh." I hesitate. The gravel crunches under our feet. "Miss Bennet. There is something about my sister I have never told anyone. Something that happened last summer, at Ramsgate. I think—I think you ought to know it, before you meet her, so that you will understand why she is as she is."