“Oh Papa!” She chuckled. “But that is just as he used to be.”
“Do you mean a devil? If so, then I assure you, he is fully restored to you.”
She leaned her head against my arm and sighed, echoing my own deep contentment. After a moment, she lifted her face and looked at me appraisingly. “Tell me what you will not tell Jane about our father.”
“He is violently in love with my sister’s companion.”
“What? No. He cannot be!”
“You may believe that if you like, Elizabeth.”
“And does she return his regard?”
“Increasingly. He is capable of making her laugh, of listening to her with the intensity of interest that is his considerable gift, and when that fails, he has only to hint at some frailty to elicit the lady’s compassion. And, if that were not bad enough, he has become a fatherly figure to my sister and makes himself so agreeable to her that Mrs Annesley cannot help but look upon him with admiration for his kindness. Did I not tell you he is a devil?”
She briefly resorted to her handkerchief to hear such sweet accounts of her father, and said, “For better or worse, he sounds fully recovered, and oh, how glad that makes me! But really, Mr Darcy, I have never heard more shocking news. Are we to have a new mama? You might have tried to be a better chaperon.”
“I was too busy thinking of how I could steal his daughter’s heart while he was otherwise occupied. Have I managed it, my sweet Xanthippe?”
“You may not insult me by referring to me as a notorious shrew and expect me to feed your vanity, sir. I fell, I admit, but reluctantly and with the bitterest resentment. How dare you make me so miserable, so tormented with such feelings of loss and of longing while trying to be happy for my sister.You,Mr Darcy, not my sainted Papa, are the devil.”
“Is that so?” I laughed. She had given me permission to act the part assigned to me, and like any self-respecting devil, I kissed her far longer and with a great deal more erotic indulgence than I ought to have.
Only when she shivered, from pleasure, a chill, or both, did I think to return us to Longbourn. Poor Bandit’s tail dragged low to the ground, and on the stoop, I said to Elizabeth, “We are, the three of us, as wet and cold as the day we met.”
“I see you have worn old boots this time,” she murmured. “Will you speak to Jane?”
“If you would like.”
“This is the most missish thing I have ever said, but I believe I would like to lie down for half an hour. I wept too hard, I am far too happy, and you have put me through a horrible ordeal, Mr Darcy.”
“You would not have wanted me to engage your interest in the usual manner, would you? Poetry and parlour visits, sighing over your stitches, and?—”
“Hush,” she said, putting a gloved finger on my lips. “Such insipid courtship would have disgusted me.”
“I am sorry you suffered, Elizabeth. But why did you want me to prolong my visit?”
She shrugged. “I wished you to come to the point with my sister so I could extinguish all hope. I thought I would die of pining for you.”
“Truly, I did not know you had come to care for me.But you must own that you put me through worse. What was I to think when I left here at the holidays without a single look from you?”
“I was trying to douse my passion for you, sir,” she said coldly, prompting me to steal a kiss to warm her lips.
She pulled away and said with the hint of a smile, “Enough! I am frozen and befuddled into allowing liberties and confessing things I never should. Might you take Jane’s poor dog to the kitchen?”
