“Would it please you if dinner was served at six, Mrs Darcy?” Mrs Reynolds enquired.
“It would please me better if it were served at five,” Mr Darcy replied. “Our breakfast was abysmal.”
Mrs Darcy regarded her husband with obvious amusement, but he either did not notice or chose to ignore it, turning instead to speak to Mr Barnaby and Mr Maltravers. Miss Darcy excused herself to change, and Mrs Annesley went with her, leaving Mrs Reynolds alone with the new mistress.
“We have been here but a few minutes, and already we are making more work for you,” said the latter. “You will wish us gone again by morning.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. We are all hopeful Mr Darcy will choose to be here more often now. Pemberley is never quite the same when he is away from home.”
“He is well liked, then?”
“Oh, yes! The best landlord, the best master that ever lived.”
Mrs Darcy’s eyes flashed with something Mrs Reynolds did not recognise but which rendered the young lady uncommonly pretty. “I understand you have known him for many years.”
“Aye, ma’am, since he was four.”
“And never had a cross word from him in your life, I imagine?”
“Never!” she answered proudly. “But then, I have always observed that they who are good-natured when children are good-natured when they grow up.”
This further animated Mrs Darcy’s countenance. “Washe good-natured as a boy?”
The master cast his wife a rather suspicious look then, but he continued in his conversation with the men, so Mrs Reynolds continued hers with the mistress. “He was, ma’am. The sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the world.”
Mrs Darcy broke into a dazzling smile and even laughed a little. “It is as much to your credit as his that you speak so highly of him, Mrs Reynolds.”
“I say no more than the truth,” she demurred, feeling suddenly foolish to be recommending the lady’s own husband to her.
“Indeed, and the truth often bears repeating,” Mrs Darcy replied with an enigmatic smile.
“If you are ready, then?”
The housekeeper jumped slightly at Mr Darcy’s interruption, though the mistress seemed not in the least startled and answered very equably that she was. She took his arm, and as one, they turned to ascend the grand staircase, so easy together that they looked for all the world as though they had done it every day of their lives thus far.
“Slow down! You are going too fast for me to see anything!” Elizabeth said, laughing as Darcy all but dragged her through a maze of splendid rooms.
He did not reply. She began to think he might be displeased in some way when he abruptly pulled her sideways through a door. She had barely time to deduce the room must be his bedchamber before he had torn off his coat, plucked her from her feet, thrown her onto his bed and planted himself firmly atop her.
“What are you about?” she cried.
“I could ask the same of you,” he replied, leaning to kiss her neck. “You cannot pretend ignorance with me, wife. I well know how you look when you are being sly.” He peppered kisses across her breastbone. “What mischief were you up to just now?”
Elizabeth bit her lip, chagrined to have been discovered teasing the housekeeper and too distracted by Darcy’s wandering tongue to think of how she might explain it in a favourable light.
He lifted his head to look at her. “You will not tell me?”
His eyes danced with a playfulness she had never seen there before, and the slight curl of his lips gave him such an appearance of rakishness she wondered with some relish how he intended to extract her secret from her. She gave him a smirk of her own. “I think not.”
He raised an eyebrow. Unhurriedly, he lifted her arms above her head and pinned them there with one hand then smoothed the other down her side. His head he lowered until their lips almost touched—then he took her utterly and completely by surprise by digging his fingers into her side and mercilessly tickling her. She shrieked and bucked beneath him, laughing in astonishment. The illustrious and stately Mr Darcy surely did notticklepeople! She implored him to stop.
“Not until you share your joke.”
He moved his excruciating touch to under her arm, provoking her to squeal and writhe anew.
“Very well! I yield! It was Mr Bingley’s fault! Pray, desist!”
He did and squinted at her dubiously. “Bingley?”
