Her goddaughter’s dog. The dog that had planted itself between Elizabeth and the doorway, its hackles raised and its torn ear at attention, was a four-legged declaration that strangers bearing legal documents and complicated histories were not welcome, thank you very much, regardless of their tailoring or credentials.
“You wish me to arrange transport for seven people and a dog. Is that all?”
“I also require ladies’ maids. Engage two, from the agency on Bond Street—competent, discreet, and not easily shocked, as I suspect the younger Bennets will test all three qualities. Mr. Bennet will require a valet, though I imagine he will resist the imposition. And the house must be prepared—bedrooms aired, linens changed, fires laid, and the kitchen provisioned for seven additional persons of varying appetites. I have been feeding one old woman and a cook for the better part of four decades.”
“You are describing a week’s work.”
“Three days for a man of energy and efficiency, both of which you possess in abundance when properly motivated. You managed my canal shares through the panic of oh-nine. Surely, you can manage linen, a barouche, and a terrier.”
“The terrier,” Darcy said, “bit me.”
“Then you have already been introduced. You will naturally have occasion to call once the family is settled, in your capacity as trustee. To review the financial arrangements and ensure everything is in order.”
The requirement to call on Elizabeth, wrapped so graciously as a professional obligation, landed with the weight of an anvil dropped over his toes.
“Naturally.”
“Good.” She opened the book to the page marked by a ribbon, signaling that she’d drawn the information and blood she required. “This Elizabeth Bennet, the one you barely know, and yet describe with so much liveliness. Your mother would have liked her, I think.”
Darcy stood, his hand gripping the doorframe. His mother had always admired women who spoke their minds and weren’t afraid to be inconvenient, much like her friendship with Lady Sophia.
She would not have liked how her son had proposed to such a woman. That he had upheld the Darcy standards. His reluctant affections for her were, as he’d declared:Against my will, against my reason, against my character.
“Good night, Lady Sophia.”
“Good night, Fitzwilliam. Do try to sleep. You have several days’ work ahead of you. Mrs. Bennet will have questions about the linen cupboards, and Nettle will require a cushion. I suggest something sturdy.”
He walked back to his townhouse—Number Thirty-Four Grosvenor Street, which shared a wall with Number Thirty-Three, which was Lady Sophia’s—correction: which was, as of this afternoon, Elizabeth Bennet’s. Thirty steps exactly, not that he counted, too close or not close enough.
She is not easily managed,he had told Lady Sophia.
This was, he reflected, the single most comprehensive understatement he had produced in twenty-eight years of determined understatement, and he had a great deal of competition for the title.
CHAPTER THREE
AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN
Elizabeth did not believein manna falling from heaven, and she certainly didn’t believe in it being hand-delivered by the most disagreeable man in England. Daughters of dukes did not scatter their worldly goods upon country nobodies without a clause or obligation. The papers were with her father, so she fled up the stairs to elude her mother’s loud and possibly premature celebration.
Her father remained skeptical, and Elizabeth shared his caution. She would not believe in London townhouses or Derbyshire estates until she had smelled the soot of the one and walked the boundaries of the other. The entire affair felt like an elaborate jest, yet Darcy’s participation suggested a grim reality. Surely, the man was too serious and reserved for theatrical pranks.
Downstairs, Mrs. Bennet’s voice continued its ascent through the floorboards like damp through old plaster.
“Fifteen thousand a year. Hill, did you hear? And a house on Grosvenor Street. An estate in Derbyshire. Bellwood Park, was it? Oh, I am beside myself with pleasure. Thank God, Lizzy did not marry that dour Mr. Darcy and his pittance of only tenthousand. Mr. Bennet! Mr. Bennet! We must strike for London before the woman recovers her senses! Hill! My salts!”
Elizabeth closed her bedroom door, leaning against it with her back. Nettle hopped onto the quilt, tilting her head with a look of pointed inquiry.
“Nettle, this is mad,” she said aloud, and the terrier’s tail wagged in sympathy. “A stranger has decided to bankrupt herself in favor of a woman she has never met, based on a family line so remote it borders on the mythological. It is either a miracle or a very expensive trap.”
The dog offered no insight.
She stared at the stranger in the mirror—the sole beneficiary of aninter vivosgift. Her hands were shaking, her pallor was pale, her thoughts in a tangle. Darcy had not looked pleased with his errand of distributing the news. And Nettle had bitten him.
Plucking the pins from her hair, she shook her curls loose. The news was too heavy to carry in a formal coiffure. No doubt her father was already huddled with Uncle Philips, dissecting the documents for the inevitable catch. By the next day, this entire scheme could be exposed as either an elaborate hoax or a scheme designed to lure her family to London.
Or it could be a plot to kidnap ladies of good breeding by using sudden wealth as bait. But why would Mr. Darcy be involved in such a thing? It made no sense.
His explanatory letter was securely tucked into her pocket. She knew the opening by heart:Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you.
