“He preyed on her, and she wilfully ignored every warning, but I should have done better.” He went round and round in his mind, wondering what he might have said to her in Scotland to persuade her. He ought to have ignored Mrs Younge and dragged her from Ramsgate the instant he knew Wickham was there.
“No one could have anticipated how badly Georgiana wanted to avoid being paraded about for a husband, or how desperate she was to feel like she was special to a man.”
“Do you really think so?” he asked.
Elizabeth started under his direct question and dropped her eyes to her work. “I can only guess. She is rather shy. Regardless, it was her choice, her failure, not yours.”
She was intent on whatever it was she was making. It grew late, and she must want to finish whatever she was working on. Darcy felt weary as well, and he stopped pacing to sit across from Elizabeth.
“Georgiana is now a lost cause, a casualty,” he said while staring into the low fire. “And we are here to show the world thatyouare not. Your acceptance is not a certain thing, after all, however well you are doing thus far. I cannot show her and her husband any approval. It would diminish our own characters.”
“Is it not honourable also to aid your sister, no matter what she has done?”
He felt her hint in her tone. “Actions prove integrity,” he said carefully. “I do not condone vice, and not even for Georgiana’s comfort would I admit them to my home or support them. I want her away from that man, and giving her money does not serve that end. Wickham will never be satisfied if he thinks he can come to me for aid.He would bleed us dry for his own entertainment while keeping her in poverty.”
Elizabeth looked down at her work, exhaling a slow breath. Did she disapprove? Or was she afraid her new husband was unyielding?
“You must think me dull, I am afraid,” he finally said. This entire affair made him feel much older than his twenty-seven years.
“No,” she insisted, snapping her head back up to look at him. “You are a man of conviction.” She met his eye, and he believed her. “You are a little serious, reserved,” she added with a smile. “Not dull.”
He returned her smile, enjoying her approval, and noticed she was sewing shirtsleeves.
“Are those for me?” he cried. “I thought my valet sent them out to a seamstress?”
She laughed. “Who is to make and mend the family’s wardrobe now that there is a lady of the house? All the body work now falls to me. Fortunately for you, I am a neat worker.”
Why did it feel strangely intimate for her to make his shirts? “But do you care for such work?”
“Well, I do like to be industrious,” she drawled, and he knew a tease was coming. “But I believe I would teach you to handle a needle if I could, and make you help yourself.”
“I do not think I could gather a collar and set it in the right place to save my life. I can at least read to you while you do.”
“Would you?” she asked hopefully. “I haveSelf Control, fromyourlibrary.” She pointed to a table. “A ribbon marks the page, if you do not mind reading it again?”
He sighed exaggeratingly and lifted his eyes, and Elizabeth laughed as he retrieved the book. “Do you not enjoy books of information, travelogues, poetry, anything else?”
“I will read every travelogue Pemberley has, but I thought you said you appreciated novels?”
“I do. I just think this one is too fanciful to be enjoyable. The situations are all improbable, no matter how good the moral is.”
“Oh, I agree with you,” she said in her arch way. “But I still want to finish it.”
He read two chapters while she sat at her work. As time passed, henoticed how she grew more attentive to him rather than the shirt. At first he was amused, then gratified by seeing how she gradually slackened in the needlework.
The shirtsleeve fell from her hand while she sat motionless over it, her gaze fixed on his face.
Darcy felt a heat creep up his neck as his chest tightened. What would it feel like to have Elizabeth look at him with that rapt attention, that adoring look, and have it be because she felt something deeper for him than respect or friendship? Her slightly opened mouth and bright-eyed look brought to mind all manner of things it was too soon to think about.
He felt her gaze fixed on him for minutes as he finished the page, making his heart race away, till the attraction drew his own gaze upon her, and he closed the book. The air felt heavy with his own longing, but he could not know what she felt.
“It was kind of you to read to me,” she whispered.
The charm was broken. “I do not need your gratitude for reading to you while you make my shirts.”
“You read very well, even if you dislike the book. Every character and description came alive.” She put away her things and avoided his eye. “I am glad you did not want to read aloud something like Fordyce.”
He threw her a look. “Do you need much correcting?”
