“When I was a boy. She used to hug me if I hurt myself.”
“There you are, then.”
He stood silently for a moment or two longer then said, quietly, “Very well. I shall read the blasted letters if it will please you.”
She did laugh then. “I do not want you to read them to please me. I am very grateful to Mrs Reynolds, but it was not me she doted on for four-and-twenty years.”
“Why are you so determined to convince me of her esteem?”
She smiled tenderly and took his hands. “I could not prevent your house from crumbling. I know not how to organise a renovation. Apparently, I cannot even be mistress without significant assistance. But I can, and I do, understand you. I can see quite clearly that Mrs Reynolds’s actions distressed you, and it pleases me that I can do something to ease your pain.”
“I did not marry you because I wanted you to fix things for me, despite everything I have brought to this marriage being in need of repair.”
“AllIhave brought to this marriage is my dreaded compassion. Will you not let me put it to some better use than vexing your aunt?”
He rolled his eyes but allowed her to lead him to her bedroom and station him on her chaise longue while she retrieved the correspondence from her drawer and began explaining to him her aunt Wallis’s strange method of naming things. Much the same as when she first read it all, they both ended up on the floor with open letters strewn about them.
“I would never have believed Wickham would settle for so little.” Darcy was leaning against the chaise, reading Mrs Wallis’s most recent express. He looked up sharply and added, “No offence to your sister.”
“None of us could understand why he married her, either. I am sure if his debts had not been quite so pressing, and had a mysterious benefactor not appeared just at that moment offering immediate relief, he might have waited for a more lucrative match.”
“Impatience always was his greatest weakness, after greed.”
“And Mrs Reynolds had apparently saved hundreds of pounds. It was a good offer. Although, it seems to have been the goldsmith’s idea that some of the money was given by way of a down payment on their rent, to prevent Wickham gambling it.”
“And the licence bond?”
“There cannot have been one, but they must have known my father would never contest the marriage. In truth, it was a remarkably cunning scheme.”
“Yet you approve of her?”
“I could not but approve of anyone who thought so highly of you that they would make themselves destitute in your defence. But I am probably biased.”
He smiled and reached for her hand, tugging her closer so he could kiss it. Unbalanced, Elizabeth squawked and fell sideways, her eyes alighting on one of her aunt’s more diverting letters as she did. She held it out for him and had sat up and turned to search for another when he exclaimed, “I was ‘Starch?’”
She snorted inelegantly with laughter. “’Tis better than being named for a dairy cow.”
“Is it?”
“Would you hate me if I told you I came up with that name?”
He regarded her for a moment before reaching to grab her waist and slide her back towards him. “No,” he said against her lips. “As long as you never stop smiling at me like that.” He kissed her until she admonished him to attend to the task.
Snatching up the first letter her hand touched, Elizabeth lay back on the floor parallel to his legs and crossed her ankles on the chaise behind him. “This one says ‘Agnes, you must stop feeding The Cherub biscuits or he will get fat, and there is nothing worse than a fat little lord, taking tithes from hungry villagers’. Mrs Reynolds spoiled you rotten! No wonder you disliked Mrs Lovell at first. She did not give you any biscuits.”
“Mrs Wallis has a way with words,” he said dryly.
Elizabeth agreed with a laugh and picked up another letter. “What is this about you not being in your own portrait?”
Darcy smirked, though he looked very much as though he was trying not to. “I hated the thought of sitting for it. The artist was a swaggering fop. I told Wickham I would settle his debts if he dressed as me and sat for it in my place. It was two weeks before anyone noticed.”
“I thought disguise of every sort was your abhorrence!”
“Youth must be my defence—I was but sixteen.”
“Anyway, it was not two weeks beforeanyonenoticed. It says here, ‘You ought to tell someone what he is up to, Agnes, for it will only make his punishment worse if it goes on too long. It does not matter how ill he likes being looked at—he had better get used to it if he is turning out as handsome as you say’.”
Darcy looked vaguely disgusted, which diverted her, then interrupted her mirth by reading his own letter.
