“Elizabeth, would you—”
“No, no.” Elizabeth waved a grinning finger in front of him. “I am the woman without mercy, giving my knightly lover a task he must complete. We must complete the half hour, before you might ask anything. Though I now can promise that I intend to reply favourably.”
“Teasing woman.”
“My mother again would consider me insane.”
“No, no,” Darcy replied seriously. “I suspect that if you wished to press a breach of promise suit, what we have already spoken would be sufficient.”
“Lord! What a lawyerly thing to say at such a time!” Elizabeth giggled. “I do love you, but you have an odd notion of the romantic.”
Darcy grinned widely back, suffused, he thought, with more happiness than he had ever felt before. “You love me?”
She boldly kissed him once more.
Chapter Sixteen
Elizabeth rose from sleep the next day with a rather confused sense of time, and she was not sure, until she studied the location of the sun, that itwasmorning.
She had — foolishly — offered to sleep on a cot bed brought into Jane’s room, next to both Jane and the old crib that Lady Catherine had brought down. The plan had been that she might be able to attend to Jane’s needs and pick up the baby to offer to Jane when she woke. Thus, Elizabeth would spare all the servants the necessity of staying up the whole night.
Bennet slept a great deal, but he also woke irregularly, sobbing and sticking his tongue out in that adorable way that very young infants indicated their desire to suckle. Again, and again. Each time Elizabeth would be awake for the best part of an hour before finally falling to sleep once more — and then being woken again after a seeming instant to repeat the whole.
But that was not what Elizabeth thought about once she realized that the day had begun.
A huge grin spread over her face.
Breakfast time had already passed, and Jane slept comfortably in the bed next to her.
A servant sat in a rocking chair in the room next to the bed, holding the tiny little baby — it was strangehowmuch smaller Bennet was than Emily, even though Emily was still not a whole two years old.
They increased in size so, so quickly.
Despite her defects, Lady Catherine had provided a steady and sensible presence during the birth, and she also showed a great deal of kindness in eagerly seeing to all of the needs of Jane’s that she might attend to.
Elizabeth rose and stretched her shoulders and after nodding to the servant headed out.
She found Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam still in the breakfast room. Colonel Fitzwilliam was deep in a newspaper, while Darcy sat on a windowsill leafing through a book. Emily sat at the table holding a half-eaten lemon tart, the filling smeared on her face, a little in her hair, and all of it everywhere over her clothes.
“Oh my, what a mess,” Elizabeth said, approaching the girl.
“Tart,” Emily replied and held the pastry up for Elizabeth to examine.
Elizabeth sniffed theatrically. “It looks delicious.”
“Deli!” Emily replied and took a big bite.
“She used to require that all present partake of whatever she ate,” Darcy said, “but in her present elderly state, Miss Emily has become convert to the radical notion that often it is best that everyone has their own food.”
Elizabeth laughed.
She noticed the way Darcy looked at her, seriously, but with a complete happiness that made him yet more handsome.
“The most unexpected thing she has ever done was the time she put a piece of bread in my mouth, made me chew it, and then stuck her fingers into my mouth to examine it afterwards,” Darcy said.
“That is grotesque.” Colonel Fitzwilliam put down his newspaper. “Why did you permit her the liberty?”
Darcy shrugged. “It pleased her to do so, and no harm was done.”
