Saye came and sat next to him on the stairs. “She did not appear to me to be noticing any paunch. I have certainly never seen a woman gaze so dreamily at a pot belly before.”
“Does nothing escape your notice?”
“Nothing at all,” Saye remarked cheerily. “I would strongly suggest you repeat the exercise at my picnic. Perhaps we might play cricket, and you can trip into the sea?”
“There will be no cricket on this beach—it is all pebbles and steeply inclined to boot.”
“Well then maybe her parasol will fly away, and you will be forced into the waves to retrieve it. Do not be defeatist.”
Darcy rolled his eyes. “Mrs Wiggins has not even arrived, and you already have a picnic for her to plan.”
“It will be splendid, I assure you,” Saye said. “Just do your best to abstain from accusing Miss Bennet of prostitution, and I daresay you may end up on improved terms.”
12
Elizabeth sat in the window seat, wondering what Lord Saye’s objection to trees could possibly be. She would have been hard-pressed to choose between the views from her bedchamber here, at the Millhouses’, and her own house on Marine Parade. Both the sea and the wooded hillside were majestic in their own way—although at the present moment, the woods were claiming a rather unfair advantage.
There had been, for the last several minutes, a most athletic gentleman running up and down the hill at the edge of the tree line. He was exercising in only his breeches, stockings, and a shirt, no doubt believing himself to be unobserved. She would have felt guilty for watching except that she had come to think of it asherlittle patch of woodland and thus satisfied herself that he was the intruder, not she the voyeur. In any case, she was disinclined to fault him for his informal attire; any more layers would surely have constrained his activity.
And my enjoyment of his figure, she thought, though she blushed furiously for thinking it. It was only that thesight of this stranger in his shirtsleeves had reminded her of Mr Darcy in his, and the physique of neither was likely to leave a girl displeased.
“What are you smiling at?”
Elizabeth jumped as the door was thrown open and her sister came marching across the room to see for herself what was so diverting. She came to her feet to forestall her, certain that, armed with the truth that she had been ogling a man, Lydia would never let the matter drop. “I did not know you meant to call.”
Lydia changed course and flopped onto the bed instead. “Yes, well, Harriet is indisposed, and there was nothing else to do. I thought I might as well. What have you been up to?”
“Oh, not much,” Elizabeth lied as she settled on the bed next to her sister. “Work on the house has slowed since the summer leaseholder arrived early, but Mr Tucker has things well in hand.”
Never much interested in anything that did not directly affect her, Lydia yawned dramatically and changed the subject. “You will never guess what everyone is saying about poor Wickham. According to Colonel Forster, he ran up debts of hundreds of pounds in Meryton. And Harriet told me he was caught kissing the butcher’s daughter—and more than kissing the blacksmith’s niece.”
Elizabeth pursed her lips. “I am not surprised, for I have heard other tales which make me certain he is capable of that and worse.”
“I do not think he deserves to be censured for it. I am sure he would have paid his debts if he had not been sent off to Newcastle so suddenly. And what harm can a kiss do?”
“Unimaginable harm! It is no joke, Lydia,” Elizabethadded when her sister scoffed at the idea. “Mr Wickham might have escaped unscathed, but even the rumour of a kiss can ruin a young woman’s prospects forever.”
Aware that she was thinking of Miss Darcy over and above any of the girls in Meryton, she retreated from the subject before she said something she ought not to. “As for his debts, I expect he was hoping Miss King would settle them, before her uncle saw what he was about and put a stop to it.”
“If Mr Darcy had given him the position he was owed, he would not have had to take credit from anyone to begin with.”
“Mr Darcy gave him everything to which he was entitled and more,” Elizabeth snapped, then regretted it, for it made Lydia peer at her searchingly.
“You have changed your tune. I thought you hated Mr Darcy.”
“I never hated him. I did not like him very well at first, but?—”
“You despised him, and you made sure we all knew it! What has changed?”
Everything!Elizabeth wanted to say, but she held her tongue. After all, whathadchanged? He was still proud and disagreeable, as he had proved when he accused her of being a kept woman. Yet he had also told her that he loved her, and more recently, that he thought she was beautiful. He had admitted to being jealous of other men in her society. Such things ought not to affect a person’s opinion—she had made the mistake of overlooking Mr Wickham’s faults because he had flattered her. But unlike Mr Wickham, Mr Darcy had never tried to deny the defects in his character, and his flattery was of the oddest sort—rarely bestowed andinvariably couched in censure. It made it more worth the earning somehow.
But they were not engaged, so in truth, all that had changed was that, rather too late to be of any use, she was coming to think better of him.
And his physique.
She pushed herself to her feet, wishing vehemently that the memory of his wet shirt clinging to his muscular arms would cease popping into her head.
“What has changed is that he is my new tenant,” she said brusquely.
