“That is my worry as well.”
Emily had flipped to the middle of her book and stabbed her finger repeatedly at the image of a frog. Darcy told her, “A frog.”
“Croak. Croak,” was the girl’s reply.
“Very good imitation.” Darcy flipped the page and said to Elizabeth as he did so, “I never had the impression thatThe Monkwould be worth my time.”
“It is a novel which involves a woman, disguised as a man, who becomes a nun, who is actually a demon in the employof Lucifer himself, and all this to gain the soul of a monk via seduction, a monk who does an exceedingly poor job of bargaining when he finally sells his soul to the devil. I assure you, the time spent reading it would have given you an excellent return.”
Darcy grinned at her. If it was not for the little girl with him, that smile could have belonged to a rake who made a solemn duty of causing every untried virgin’s heart to flutter.
“No one, not the most credulous and foolish young girl — not even my sister Lydia — could confuseThe Monkfor reality.”
“You convinced me to never permit Emily to read it.”
Elizabeth laughed. “It is one of my favourite books, though it causes embarrassment to admit the preference. My preferences in literature are not refined. Judge me if you choose.”
“For finding pleasure in that which pleases you? Never,” Darcy replied. “But your father’s policy that you might read anything once you were fifteen seems too liberal to me.”
Emily flipped to a page near the beginning of the book that contained a picture of a unicorn underneath one of a rhinoceros, but she then left off her perusal of the text and turned to her father, and sobbed out, “Ap, Ap, Ap. Ap!”
Darcy reached over, ruffled her hair, and pulled from a pocket of his coat a paper bag that turned out to contain thinly sliced and peeled apples. The girl immediately left off her sobbing, and happily munched.
Elizabeth said, “That could leave enough of a mess to bother Mr. Morris.”
With a frown, looking between Emily and the table, Darcy then shrugged. “Mayhap it is rude on my part, but I would rather not hear my child shriek and sob due to an irregular interruption of her eating, and Mr. Morrishasmade a great deal of money off me today, I am sure.”
“High-handed wealthy man!” Elizabeth laughed.
“I have my own deficiencies. But upon what subject had we been speaking?”
“Novel reading,” Elizabeth replied chirpily.
“Such an evil. Novel reading.” Darcy theatrically shivered. “Greater than the vices of gambling, excessive drinking, and dancing past midnight.”
Elizabeth giggled. “And have you gained any profoundest wisdom from the books you intently studied on the rearing of the young?”
“Profoundest wisdom? No,” Darcy replied. “I made a proper survey — the most surprising was Wollstonecraft. Despite the immorality of her own conduct what shewroteis ordinary, moralistic, religious. She evinces a constant anxiety about allowing female passions to govern the behaviour of young women. Perhaps because — you have a thought on your mind from your smile.”
“Did you not fear that you would be drawn into licentious behaviour by reading a book written by such a notorious person? Is there not danger thatyoucannot perceive the difference between the text and reality?”
Darcy laughed. “I am a man, the master of my own estate, and a father. If I cannot do so we can expect no one to succeed.”
“I certainly do not,” she immediately replied. “Good sense? In a human?”
Darcy grinned. “It is not wholly impossible.”
“I have never encountered such a creature. I do not expect to—” Elizabeth sat up straighter. “You expressed a notion that I do not like. A woman is a fully rational creature, able to know her own mind, to use her own understanding. That you are a man should make no difference.”
Darcy shrugged.
“You do not agree?”
“I do not know.”
“When you look at little Emily here, you must believe that she will grow up to be as worthy as any man.”
“Worthy, yes. I wish her to have a full sense of her own value and importance, yes. But such value does not require an equality in capability, sense, or reason. When I look at the women I am surrounded with, I rarely see much… A woman who can write cogently upon matters scientific, philosophical, or logical is a rarity.”
