Page 101

And then she released her to address her husband, who looked at her as if she were still the miracle he could not quite believe in.

“Mrs. Darcy.” He bowed. His eyes said something considerably less formal.

“Mr. Darcy. You are late.”

“I am precisely on time. Your birthday does not begin until I arrive.”

“That is the most arrogant thing you have ever said to me, and the competition is formidable.” She grasped his hand. “Come in. We have dolls, settlements, and a mother in magnificent form. You have arrived at exactly the wrong moment.”

“I have never yet arrived at the right one,” Darcy said. “I am learning to make the best of it.”

“Mr. Darcy!” Mrs. Bennet fluttered from her chair. “What a delightful surprise! We did not expect you until tomorrow at the earliest. Hill! Hill, we shall need more tea and the good biscuits. Miss Darcy, how well you look! Traveling becomes you. Unlike myself, who cannot endure a carriage above three miles without my nerves staging a full rebellion.”

“Mrs. Bennet.” Darcy bowed with the grave courtesy that still made Elizabeth want to laugh. “Mr. Bennet. I apologize for our early arrival. Georgiana was most insistent that we not miss a moment of Mrs. Darcy’s birthday.”

“And you have not!” Lydia waved her doll triumphantly. “Look what Uncle Henry left us. Mine has rubies, and it’s better than Lizzy’s. But Uncle Henry left Lizzy everything, and she has divided it six ways. She’s keeping Bexley House though, but she promised to have the best balls in London.”

“Indeed she will.” Darcy looked at Elizabeth with such warmth that it nearly melted the floorboards beneath his boots.

“Mr. Darcy, look at my doll.” Kitty wedged herself between Lydia and Elizabeth. “She has pearls, and Mary tells me that Jesus searched for a pearl of great price, and that I am one of the treasures.”

“Indeed you are.” Darcy gave her younger sister an indulgent look. “And what do you have there, Miss Mary?”

Mary took a deep, gathering breath, no doubt to deliver a sufficiently pious reply when Mrs. Bennet shrieked.

“Look, Lizzy, there is a letter in the trunk addressed to Mr. Darcy. In my brother-in-law’s hand. Why on earth would Henry leave a letter for my son-in-law in a trunk of dolls?”

Mr. Bennet looked up from his volume of Greek tragedies. “Doubtless to explain the terrifying anatomy of porcelain infants, my dear, or perhaps to warn him that six Bennet women in a single family is a punishment usually reserved for the Spanish Inquisition.”

Darcy took the proffered letter, turning it over in his large hand, his brows drawing together in genuine perplexity. “I have not the least inclination,” he confessed, shrugging.

“Well, open it,” Georgiana urged. “Uncle Bexley always kept a ledger of our eccentricities. It is likely just a final piece of advice on how to manage us.”

He broke the seal and opened it, reading silently until his eyes widened, and a corner of his mouth lifted.

“Read it, then!” Mrs. Bennet flapped her hand impatiently. “We have not got all day. The tea is going cold.”

And so, Darcy cleared his throat, straightened his posture, and with a wicked grin on his face, read in a most solemn tone.

Sir, if you are reading this, my niece is not your wife. The marriage did not take place by midnight on Lady Day, whether because you refused, she refused, or some failure of the arrangement I could not foresee.

You have walked off with everything—the promissory notes, the accumulated interest, the properties, the timber yards and the shipping concerns—and my nieces have nothing but a porcelain doll to show for their uncle’s life’s work.

I confess I had counted on your honor. Your father was a man of principle, and I believed his son would prove no different. It appears I guessed wrong. Or maybe you exerted yourself to woo my niece, and she proved utterly impervious to your breed of charm.

I hope you are happy with your fortune, Mr. Darcy. I hope you remember, when you count your quarterly income, that a tradesman from Meryton built it, loved your father like a brother, and hoped—foolishly, it seems—that his son might prove worthy of my niece, Elizabeth.

I am sorry to have troubled you. I had hoped you would marry her. She is the best of them, and you will not meet her like again, and I should have liked very much to have been at the wedding.

—Henry Bennet, called Horatio Bexley in matters of business

P.S.—Be kind to my nieces. They will have nothing but dolls now.

Elizabeth looked up at Darcy. His face resembled one she had once mistaken for pride or coldness, but she now recognized it as emotion held tightly in check.

“He gambled on your honor,” she said.

“No,” he said, taking her hand and pressing it to his lips. “He gambled on my love, and he won.”