A crash from behind the hedge announced that Little Tom had indeed found new ambitions. Elizabeth was on her feet before she quite knew she meant to move, rounding the rosemary to find him attempting what no two-year-old had ever successfully attempted: mounting a wooden horse no larger than his own foot.
Little Tom had Captain wedged beneath him, his small legs splayed wide, his face screwed up with the determination of a cavalry officer preparing for a charge. For one suspended moment, balance held, and then physics asserted itself. Thomas’s bottom met the ground with a solid thump, and Captain went skittering across the grass.
The wail that followed was not the screaming grief Elizabeth had heard before, not that terrible, unanswerable cry for a mother who would not come. This was outrage, pure and undiluted, the fury of a boy betrayed by his own ambitions.
Hartley started forward, but Elizabeth was already there, dropping to her knees. “Oh, what a tumble, you brave boy, but all in service of a battle.”
He was not hurt but rather insulted, his face red and wet as it turned toward her with an expression of profound accusation, as though she had personally arranged the ground to be so hard and Captain to be so small.
“I know,” Elizabeth said, gathering him onto her lap before he could decide whether to permit it. “Horses are very difficult, even wooden ones like Captain, who has only one ear and ought to know better than to throw his riders.”
The sobbing hitched and hiccuped, and Thomas looked up at her, tear-tracks streaking his cheeks, assessing whether this explanation satisfied his grievance.
“Shall we tell Captain he has behaved very badly?” Elizabeth retrieved the horse from where it had landed and set it on thegrass. “Captain, you have unseated your rider. What have you to say for yourself?”
Captain, being wooden, said nothing, and Little Tom’s lower lip jutted at the impertinence of Captain not answering his master.
“He is sorry,” Elizabeth decided. “And he promises to do better, but only that he is very small and prefers to be carried instead. Indeed, you are such a big boy, aren’t you, and that such a tiny horse may suit Sidney better.”
The child considered this, and his thumb found its way to his mouth, the storm subsiding as quickly as it had arrived. Then, with the gravity of a diplomat concluding negotiations, he took Captain from the grass and pressed him into her palm.
“You,” he said firmly. “You hold.”
Elizabeth felt her throat constrict. She had knelt in this garden every morning for almost a week, armed only with snails and perseverance, enduring shrieks, tiny fists, and the sort of suspicion reserved for highwaymen. Now, a boy scarcely dry from tears had entrusted her with his tattered horse.
“I shall hold him safe,” she said. “I promise.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied, and scrambled off her lap to toddle back toward the violets, where Sidney continued his unbothered breakfast.
Brushing grass from her knees, Elizabeth rose with Captain clutched carefully in one hand and glanced at Darcy and Georgiana. Georgiana’s hand was pressed to her heart, and Darcy wore an expression that might, if she were feeling generous, be called admiration.
“Well,” Georgiana breathed, flushing as if she’d witnessed a dramatic scene at the theatre. “That was…”
“A diplomatic victory,” Darcy said with a sparkle in his eye. “And a significant one at that.”
A warmth spread through Elizabeth’s chest, and she looked away before her face could betray her by doing something foolish, like smiling at a man she had married for practical reasons and intended to keep at a practical distance.
You are clutching a one-eared horse and sporting grass stains,she reminded herself.This is not the material from which grand romances are spun.
Her thoughts were shattered, however, by the crisp, rhythmicclatter-clatter-clatterapproaching from the direction of the drive, the unmistakable sound of pattens worn to elevate a lady’s shoes over country mud.
Hannah arrived at the garden gate, flushed and breathless. “Mrs. Darcy! Miss Duntze has come… and she brings cake!”
“Has she indeed?” Elizabeth raised an eyebrow with amusement as she returned the wooden horse to the boy.
“Seed cake, ma’am. And she is already talking.”
Callers who arrived with cake seldom brought only cake. They carried curiosity cloaked in buttercream, and Elizabeth was about to be served a generous helping, ready or not.
Prue Duntze swept through the garden gate like a Derbyshire squall that had consulted no almanac before arriving, all gusting energy and scattered purpose, her bonnet ribbons flying, her basket of seed cake thrust before her like a peace offering to gods she hoped existed. She was perhaps Elizabeth’s age, brown-haired and bright-eyed, her face constitutionally incapable of concealing a thought even when discretion might have served better.
“Mrs. Darcy! Forgive the intrusion. I know it is unconscionably early; Papa said Monday would be perfectly acceptable, Mamma declared it improper, but as we did see you at church yesterday, seated quite majestically in the Darcy pew, I came to make your acquaintance, and I have brought seed cake, because Mamma insists one must not arrive empty-handed,though I suspect the real offering is intelligence, of which I possess a surplus this morning!”
She paused for breath, taking in the tableau of Elizabeth by the wall, Georgiana on the gravel, and Little Tom clutching Captain with the fierce possessiveness of a boy who has recently won a sea battle. Her face lit up. “Oh, but this is charming! Is that the little one?”
“That is Thomas,” Darcy said, stepping forward. “He is wary of strangers, and I shall take him back to Nurse Hartley before he demonstrates his wariness in ways Miss Duntze might find memorable.”
“He bites,” Georgiana added helpfully.
