The tears came without warning, sliding down her cheeks, warm and silent. She tried to suppress them by holding her breath, only to choke on a sob. And she kept her hands busy piling blocks. Thomas did not notice, too absorbed with his walls and towers. But Harley, sensing her sadness, abandoned his rag cat and padded over to put his nose in her hand.
She scratched his ears with trembling fingers. “Good boy. Good, ridiculous boy.”
He licked her wrist and then, apparently satisfied that his duty was discharged, turned his attention to the ribbon trailing from her sleeve. Within moments, he had it in his teeth, tugging with the determination of a puppy who believed all ribbons existed solely for his destruction. The fabric tore with a soft rip, and Harley retreated triumphantly with his prize.
Elizabeth let him have it. What was one more casualty, when all she had not dared to want had already been taken?
And then, Thomas reached for her, his small face puckered with concern. “Lizba sad?”
“A little,” she admitted.
“Why sad?” He patted her with a jam-sticky hand. “Harley bad?”
A laugh escaped her—watery, ragged, but genuine. “No, darling. Harley is not bad. I am sad about something else entirely.”
Thomas considered this, then reached into his pinafore pocket and extracted a somewhat mangled biscuit. He thrust it toward her with the air of a physician prescribing a sovereign remedy.
“Biscuit make better.”
Elizabeth accepted it. What choice had she? The biscuit, bearing the unmistakable signs of long residence in a small boy’s pocket—nibbled, linty, and adorned with a generous helping of dog hair—rested in her palm like a rare jewel.
“Thank you, Thomas.”
“Eat,” he instructed. “Make sad go away.”
“Oh, Thomas, thank you.” She took a small nibble and gave it back to him. “Lizba better.”
He smiled at her, shy and fleeting, the very image of his father when he believed himself unobserved.
Darcy’s son. The thought circled again. A serious, solid boy—the living evidence of an indiscretion Darcy spent years concealing. And then she remembered Meryton—the arrogant, proud man who’d looked down on her family. Who had come to her with a proposal that saved her family.
She had made her sacrifice and fancied herself clever for it. She had even kept a journal, dutifully recording every observation, constructing her little theories with the zeal of a natural philosopher, and congratulating herself on insights that proved entirely false.
And she had told her sister she was falling in love with him. All the while, he had been lying.
“Lizba still sad?” Thomas climbed into her lap, abandoning his blocks. He pressed his small body against hers and patted her face with both hands, smearing stickiness across her cheek. “No cry. Thomas here.”
She gathered him close, his downy hair brushing her cheek as he leaned in with the same quiet steadfastness his father had shown during her illness. The tears came faster, for she remembered Darcy sitting by her side, reading softly, pressing a kiss to her brow when he believed her asleep, watching her with those same grave, yearning eyes—so dark, so full of sorrow and longing.
Thomas swiped a grubby hand across her eyes, and she could only blink and smile, noticing how much he resembled his father—especially in the way he regarded her, as if she were some wounded creature in need of rescue.
“More biscuit?” he asked, pressing the crumbly, damp biscuit.
“No, thank you. One biscuit is quite sufficient for the level of humiliation I am presently experiencing.”
“Why?” he asked as he devoured the rest of his saved biscuit.
“I have been spectacularly stupid,” she said ruefully. “Your father must have laughed himself sick every time I theorized about poor, devoted Darcy and his unrequited love for Lady Amelia. I constructed an entire Gothic romance in which he was the noble, ignored hero, pining away for a woman who chose his brother. I very nearly pitied him. I was prepared to comfort him.”
“Da come?” Thomas asked, craning his neck toward the door.
Elizabeth’s stomach tightened. “Not tonight, I think.”
“Why?”
Because I cannot look at him without seeing every falsehood mapped across his face. Because my anger is such that I might say something unforgivable. Because if I must endure thatdesperate, pleading expression once more, I may be driven to strike him—or worse, to kiss him—and I am not at all sure which would be the greater humiliation.
“Because Da sleeping,” she said aloud.
