A young woman’s voice came faintly from below. “Down here!”
They descended through the below-stairs passage and into the cellar. The air grew cold and earthy, touched with river damp. At the bottom, Darcy saw Susan Thompson first and stopped in surprise. For one disorienting moment, Derbyshire and London seemed to collide. Darcy remembered Susie Thompson as Mrs. Reynolds’s niece, a capable girl from Lambton who had once visited Pemberley’s housekeeper and been recommended for service elsewhere.
Before he could ask how she came to be in Gracechurch Street, Mr. Philips pushed past him.
“What on earth has happened?” the attorney demanded. “John came to tell me you had found some sort of hidden door, and by the time I reached the house, he had lost you entirely! Lizzy, what have you done to yourself?”
Only then did Darcy see the young lady.
She stood near an open trap door in the cellar floor, her gown streaked with mud, one shoe nearly black, and a lantern set beside her. Dark curls had escaped from whatever arrangement had once confined them, and there was a smear of dirt upon one cheek. She looked as though she had been wrestling with the Thames and had not entirely lost.
“I have made an examination,” she said.
“You have made yourself look as though you were dragged through the river.”
“That was not my intention.”
Mr. Philips strode toward her, irritation and fear mingling in his voice. “Were you down there? Tell me you did not climb into some unknown hole beneath a flooded cellar without waiting for me.”
The young lady winced. “I would prefer not to tell you that.”
“Elizabeth!”
“But look.” In her eagerness, she thrust out her hand too quickly. Something small and bright slipped from her muddy fingers, struck the stone floor with a clear ringing sound, and rolled toward Mr. Philips’s boot.
“Oh!” She dropped at once to retrieve it, apparently more mortified by her clumsiness than by the scolding. The object had settled into a crack between two stones, and she tugged off one worn working-glove to pry it free.
Darcy descended the last steps instinctively, as though to help, but she had already closed her fingers around it and risen.
For one suspended instant, he found himself looking directly into the finest pair of eyes he had ever seen.
They were bright despite the dim cellar, lively despite exhaustion, and so startlingly expressive that Darcy forgot, quite absurdly, why he had come down the stairs at all. Her face was not conventionally perfect. There was mud upon it, for one thing. Yet the intelligence in her gaze, the color high in her cheeks, and the breathless mixture of embarrassment, defiance, and triumph made her arresting in a way no polished London beauty had ever been.
Behind her, Susie spied him for the first time and let out a little gasp.
“Mr. Darcy!”
Chapter 10
For one suspended instant, Darcy forgot why he had come to Gracechurch Street at all.
The young woman before him was not beautiful in the polished London fashion. No careful arrangement of curls framed her face. No silk gown flattered her figure. No jewels gleamed at her throat. She was covered in mud, her hem damp and stained, one working-glove hanging half from her wrist, and a streak of dirt lay boldly across one cheek. By every rule of society, she ought to have looked ridiculous.
She did not.
Her eyes arrested him first. They were dark, bright, and full of intelligence, with a lively expression that seemed entirely at odds with the exhaustion around her. Her cheeks were flushed from exertion, her lips parted slightly as though she had been caught between triumph and embarrassment, and the hand clenched around whatever she had rescued from the cellar floor trembled only a little.
Darcy realized, with some dismay, that he was staring.
He looked away at once.
She was almost certainly connected to Mr. Gardiner’s household or business. A tradesman’s daughter, perhaps, or some young relation brought in to assist after the tragedy. Thatthought ought to have steadied him. Instead, it struck him as a shame, which was absurd. He had met her in a cellar, covered in river mud. It was hardly the sort of introduction that merited personal regret.
Yet regret came all the same.
“Mr. Darcy!” the housekeeper repeated, still staring at him in astonishment. “I had no notion you were in London.”
He searched his memory. “Susie, is it not? Mrs. Reynolds’ niece.”
