He kissed her slowly, then kissed his way down her neck. “That’s just because I wouldn’t?—”
“Mummy, how many planets are there?” Sandra burst in with Georgiana, and he and Elizabeth broke apart. Sandra waved her tablet as she came into the kitchen, with Georgiana following behind. She must have been playing a trivia game with Georgiana on their walk home.
“Nine—no, eight now,” Elizabeth corrected.
Darcy thought for a moment. “Are there not seven?”
“Aunt Georgiana said seven too,” Sandra cried.
“You only had seven?” Elizabeth asked him.
“A better question is, how did you lose one?”
“When I was young there were nine, but the last one, Pluto, got demoted.”
“Herschel’s planet was the seventh and final planet. He called it George’s Star, after the king.”
“No, Daddy!” Sandra said, laughing. “The seventh is Uranus, then Neptune. No one’s heard of Herschel.”
He pretended to be affronted. “He was the most famous astronomer of the eighteenth century. He discovered that planet not by looking at the sky like the ancients, but with a telescope.”
“Mummy, can we play outside?” Sandra was not suitably impressed with that technological marvel.
“Sure, honey. Go change out of your uniform.” Elizabeth patted him on the shoulder and said, “And I’m sure that was a very remarkable achievement for the time.”
He gave her a look and said quietly, tilting his head toward his sister, who had moved to the sofa, “Should we tell her about space exploration and satellites?”
She shook her head and murmured, “She already knows about airplanes from Mrs Reynolds, at least in theory. Let’s not add to her stress. She’s not like you, eager to embrace every new concept. Some people don’t need to be in command of everything.”
Darcy saw his sister had her back to them now, and he lightly ran a hand up Elizabeth’s thigh just under her skirt. “I think you like me being in command,” he said in a low voice and with a heavy look.
Elizabeth turned pink, but her pupils went wide and she bit her lower lip.
“Mummy?” Sandra cried as his daughter ran up to them, dressed in her play clothes. “What if there are no other kids out there?”
Elizabeth instantly switched from seductress to devoted mother. “Then you and I are going to play! Am I going to be the pirate invader again?” she asked, waving her arm as if she held an imaginary sword.
“That was last time. We’re done with pirates. This time will be totally different!”
Sandra hugged him and Georgiana goodbye, and then Elizabeth took her outside to where there was a play park and a climbing frame. There were often children visiting the grounds, and she was bound to find a playmate in a local child or a tourist. Elizabeth would only have to play make-believe for a while before Sandra recruited an army of children to join her.
“Sandra is so confident, and so loving as well,” said Georgiana when they were alone. Before two weeks ago, he would have avoided being alone with his sister. They had become more open with one another, and getting to knowone another as adults. His sister had more humour than he remembered, and was less fearful of acting wrong than the seventeen-year-old he had left behind.
“Sandra is naturally like that.” It amazed him how much a child’s personality was set at birth. He had thought he would have more influence over his child’s disposition, but he was more like an editor in her story than its writer.
Georgiana fidgeted with her fingers. “If Sandra was born two hundred years ago, I fear her exuberance would be…”
“Stifled?” he supplied.
“I was going to say redirected.”
Another reason to be glad his daughter lived here. Her life was safer in general, and she had options before her that his sister could not comprehend. “What is Fitzwilliam’s little girl like?”
“Affectionate, like Sandra, but quieter. She is not chatty like her father. She is not as active as Sandra, but she is not shy. In her appearance, Louisa takes after her mother. She plays rather quietly, but perhaps that will change when she has a brother or a sister.”
“Fitzwilliam wrote about being a father to his little girl. It sounded like he spoils her, but I suppose all fathers want to indulge their daughters.”
“Mine did. And I think my ancillary one indulged me even more,” she added with a bashful smile.
