The ringing crack of the voice wholly silenced the conversation across the room. Lady Catherine spilled the wine on herself as she shouted.
The harsh features of the woman’s face stood out. Lady Catherine was all angles and planes; her face may have once been handsome, and it was still imposing. She sat tall, burgundy dripping down the lace of her collar.
A thoroughly pitiable display.
Elizabeth had not known that it was possible to both despise and grieve for a person at once.
“I am done here.” Lady Catherine rose. She grabbed her cane. In the times before, Elizabeth had never seen her need to lean on it. The old woman shook it at everyone. “You all are to go home. Begone now.”
Chapter Twelve
“Lalalalala.” Emily Darcy waited a proper time, a whole five seconds, staring out the carriage window, to see if her demand was listened to before turning to her father and Colonel Fitzwilliam and exclaiming again, more insistently, “Lalala.”
“No, darling,” Darcy replied. “We can walk when we reach Rosings. That will not, I judge, be more than thirty minutes.”
Emily imperiously pointed at the door, “Dow, lalalalala.”
“My apologies, dearest, but we would be unkind to the horses if we stopped them when they have already got an excellent stride.”
“Lalalalala.”
There were tears in her voice, and Darcy had to resist the urge to tell the coachman to stop the carriage, reason and sense be damned, his daughter wanted a walk.
“No, darling. Here, you might look at this book again.”
The girl refused the proffered book but perceiving that her wholly reasonable demands were not to be met by her wholly unreasonable father, she settled herself onto the velvet seat cushion and swung her legs back and forth intently.
“Are you certain,” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked, “that she meant she wished for a walk? I suspect she merely exercises her vocal cords.”
Darcy sighed. “I am certain.”
“How odd. It sounds nothing like ‘walk’. Or ‘out’, nor any other word that might correspond to the notion.”
“She often has determined her own private word for various things. In this case, I believe the source of the term is that Nell would oft say, ‘lalalala, let’s go walk’ before they headed outside.”
Hearing this, Emily left off her satisfied, and increasingly energetic, swinging of her legs, and said, “Lalalalala,” and grabbed at the handle of the carriage.
Fortunately, the door was sufficiently difficult to operate that there was no chance, Darcy thought, of the girl managing to open the door whilst they rushed along at more than ten miles an hour. Despite this Dacy pulled her hand back from the door.
She looked at him with her sad eyes and heart-shaped face that looked both so much like his mother’s and like Anne’s. “Papa, Papa. Lalalalala. Toge.”
“Yes, you want us to walk together. We will as soon as we arrive.” The ride from London was not actually very long, but the poor girl had nearly reached the end of her patience.
“It pleases me,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “to see that you are still absurdly dedicated to keeping that little creature endlessly happy.”
Darcy raised his eyebrows.
“Do not glare atme. You have determined to be a mother, and a mother you are. A cross between the female of the chicken species, and that of the lion.”
“Monstrous strange hybrid,” was Darcy’s reply.
Emily let out a growl upon hearing the magic wordlion.
“Very good, Em-Em,” Darcy said. “That is what a lion sounds like.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughingly asked the girl, “Can you tell me what a snake sounds like?”
The reply was a disgruntled stare.
