Lydia guffawed, loud and unladylike. “La! What a joke! No wonder you have decided you must like him—you can hardly escape his society now!”
She ought to be able to. Mr Tucker had promised that he would only ask her to visit the house when its residents were sure to be out. If only Mr Gardiner had not accepted Lord Saye’s invitation to the picnic on her behalf, she would be able to avoid Mr Darcy and all his relations for the rest of the summer. Alas, her uncle had been quite taken with the notion of a picnic on the beach and had agreed before she could think of a good excuse.
She did not tell Lydia about the outing; she only smiled and let her sister’s teasing run long. The last thing she wanted was to bring along her most unruly relation to substantiate every criticism Mr Darcy had ever made about her family. No, she would go with her aunt and uncle, for whom there was no need to blush, and hold her head high.
And not think about Mr Darcy’s muscles at all.
“Patcham is really not so far away, Saye,” Fitzwilliam said. “You ought to consider it—for Georgiana’s sake, if nothing else.”
Looking back along the Promenade over his shoulder to where his sister walked with her companion, Darcy thought again of her tears at breakfast as she begged to remain in Brighton. “Fitzwilliam is right,” he said regardless. “Imagine if she had been injured and not Doyle.”
They had been informed that morning that Doyle, Georgiana’s maid, had been laid low by a splinter in an unmentionable region that had begun to fester.
“Are we even sure we have been told the true nature of the girl’s complaint?” Saye quibbled. “Goodness knows women wear enough layers to vex the most determined seducer. I would not have thought a mere splinter capable of going through them without some force applied.”
“Who is to say her skirts were an immediate impediment at the time of injury?” Fitzwilliam said with a lascivious grin.
Saye matched it with a suggestive smirk of his own. “Or what sort of wood it was that impaled her? But even if it is true, a servant’s putrid arse cheek is no reason for our entire party to up sticks and move out to the wilds of the Sussex countryside.”
Darcy looked out to sea and gritted his teeth. There was no talking to Saye; he was utterly impervious to reason. No matter how vehemently his cousin denied it, however, the house was still far from safe, let alone comfortable. Everything that was fixed seemed to reveal something else that was in need of repair, and their presence was clearly a hindrance to the renovation. Even without the complication of unwelcome tenants,it was an ambitious project; he was frankly amazed Elizabeth had taken it on rather than sell it.
With a small, private smile, he acknowledged that was not true. Selling it was what he would have done. That Elizabeth had been undaunted by the project ought not to amaze him at all, for she possessed courage that at times verged on imprudence. And she clearly had the workmen wrapped around her little finger.
Mullens, the hulking great oaf who ought by rights to have been laid off on the first day, had been kept on in an apparent act of kindness. In doing so, Elizabeth had earned his unwavering loyalty, and he had become her de facto security. He hefted his bulk around however was necessary to ensure that no work was carried out which she had not authorised—not even at Saye’s imperious whinging. Tucker obviously had a deep respect for Elizabeth, and despite his much-trumpeted subservience to Saye, Darcy had more than once seen him enact Elizabeth’s instructions on the quiet. And—present chaos in the house notwithstanding—Elizabeth’s instructions were clearly going to produce something exquisite when the work was done.
Darcy wondered whether it was wrong that he should feel proud of a woman who had emphatically disdained the very notion of his good opinion. He could not help it; she truly was atour de force. It was a struggle to keep from dwelling on how well she would have managed the household at Pemberley, but such thoughts only brought with them an all too familiar sense of despondency. He had lost his chance with her—and hammered another nail into the coffin of his hopes with his imbecilic accusation of being a kept woman. He meant to apologise again for that this afternoon,though he harboured serious doubts as to whether she would even come to the picnic, for she clearly would rather never see him again. Her plea for them to move to the Patcham house proved as much.
“No, I must insist,” he said firmly. “We should move, and we should do it soon.”
Saye threw his arms in the air, which drew a yelp from Florizel, who was being borne on a cushion in the arms of a footman next to him. “How can you say that when you are on the cusp of rapprochement with Miss Bennet?”
“I am on the cusp of nothing but to make a thorough cake of myself.”
“You are confusing making cake with eating it.” With a pointed look at Darcy’s stomach, Saye added, “And we all know you have been doing far too much of that of late.”
“Leave off, Saye,” Fitzwilliam warned. “’Tis a more serious matter than warrants your prattle.”
“How so?”
With a pitying glance at Darcy, he replied, “He really loved her. Do not make sport of his misery simply because you cannot comprehend feeling affection for anyone but yourself.”
“But I feel such agreataffection for myself, surely I am best placed to understand.”
Fitzwilliam stepped close to his brother and said something in a low voice. Darcy did not hear the exact words, but whatever it was induced Saye’s complexion to darken alarmingly, and with a curt gesture to the footman to keep pace, he stalked away along the Promenade.
“Pay him no heed,” Fitzwilliam said quietly.
“I rarely do,” Darcy replied.
After a few moments’ silence, his cousin said, “I have a question, though. Do you want a rapprochement with Miss Bennet? There was a time, not long after she refused you, when you thought you had made a lucky escape.”
“Yes. I have been trying to convince myself of that ever since, but seeing her here, I…” He laughed wryly. “She has a power over me of which I ought to be ashamed, but I cannot bring myself to be. I would jump at the chance to win back her good opinion, but I have made another hash of it.”
“She agreed to come today—that must be a good sign. She would not come if she hated you.”
“She might. Not many people can withstand your brother’s powers of persuasion. Besides, we do not know yet that shewillcome.”
When they arrived a few minutes later at the spot on the beach where Saye’s men had dug out a level platform and arranged blankets and parasols for their picnic, Elizabeth was there. Darcy felt a surge of resentment upon seeing her, for she was standing, looking as handsome as ever and supremely happy, in deep conversation with Mr Hartham.
