“How do you do, Miss Bennet.” It was not a question but a pronouncement. Anne had decided to engage, and she was doing so on her own terms.
She turned two drawings towards Elizabeth. “This is Muffin.” She pointed to the brown oval with four legs, two dots, and a fork-like protrusion from its back. “And this is a potato.” She pointed to the second drawing—a simple brown oval. “Alice said they are the same. They are NOT the same.”
Elizabeth studied both portraits with the gravity they deserved. She glanced between them, tilting her head one way, then the other.
“I see clear differences, Miss Darcy. The potato has no eyes, for one. And Muffin has a tail, which potatoes do not. The likeness is superficial at best.” She straightened. “Alice was mistaken.”
Anne turned to Alice, triumphant. Alice rolled her eyes. Mr Darcy’s mouth pressed into a line that was fighting very hard not to be a smile.
Anne beamed at Elizabeth. The assessment was over. Elizabeth had been weighed, measured, and found acceptable. “This is Muffin.” She seized the wooden horse from the table and held it out. The paint was worn, the legs slightly uneven, one ear chipped. It had been loved hard and long, and it showed. “My Papa made him for me. He carved him when I was a baby, because he was waiting for me to grow up so he could give him to me.”
Elizabeth’s chest tightened. She turned the wooden horse in her hands—the rough grain of the wood, the uneven legs, the careful attention in every imperfect detail.This had been carved by a man who did not know how to carve, for a child who could not yet hold it. She glanced at him. Mr Darcy was still there, his arms folded across his chest, and the tips of his ears were crimson.
Yes, Mr Darcy. Your secret is out. You are not good at crafts. Who would have thought it.
She returned Muffin to Anne with appropriate ceremony.
Anne clutched the horse to her chest. Then she fixed Elizabeth with her direct, unguarded gaze. She was about to ask the only question that mattered.
“Will you marry and leave me?”
Mr Darcy unfolded his arms and took half a step forward.
Elizabeth held the child’s gaze. “I have no such plans, Miss Darcy. You may rest assured that I shall be right here beside you, until the day you are out in society and the diamond of the first water.”
Anne’s nose wrinkled. “What is a diamond of the first water?”
“It means every young man in England will want to dance with you.”
Anne considered this. “Will they have horses?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Very well. You may stay until then.”
Mr Darcy made a sound—a cough, or possibly a laugh strangled at birth. Elizabeth did not turn to confirm which.
Mr Darcy excused himself, saying that he would send Mrs Hatfield to help her settle. True enough, the good lady appeared shortly after.
“If you will follow me, Miss Bennet. Your chamber is just along here.”
She led her two doors down from the nursery. She opened the door and stepped aside. Elizabeth entered, and smiled. The room itself was not large, nor grand. It was a governess’s room, not a guest suite, and it made no pretence of being otherwise. But it was clean, warm and private. Each of those three words carried a weight that Mrs Hatfield could not have understood and Elizabeth would not have explained.
In the middle of it there was a bed, with a proper frame and a mattress that did not sag in the middle, dressed in white linen so crisp it could have been pressed that morning. There was a washstand with a basin and pitcher, both unchipped. A writing desk was positioned beneath the window, where the light would fall on the page in the afternoon. A small bookshelf and a wardrobe of dark oak. The curtains matched each other, lined and whole, without a single patch.
Elizabeth stood in the centre and did not move.
In Somers Town, she shared a bed with Jane. The mattress was stuffed with horsehair that had long since given up any structural ambition. The washbasin had a crack that left a small puddle on the floor every morning. The window faced a wall, and the curtains were thick, serviceable, and patched.
She ran her hand along the bedspread. The cotton was smooth and cool beneath her fingers.
All of this, I could have been mistress of.
She shut the thought down. It was not useful. It bought nothing and it changed nothing.
She unpacked, which did not take long. Her possessions occupied one carpet bag—two dresses, a shawl, a nightgown, her brush, a bar of soap, and a slim volume of Shakespeare. Mary had pressed it into her hands at the door this morning with the fierce instruction to “keep your mind sharp, Lizzy, or I shall never forgive you.” The wardrobe received these offerings and stood gaping, cavernous, the empty space an accusation louder than the furnished room.
She checked her reflection in the small looking glass above the washstand and pinched colour into her cheeks, because vanity was dead but professionalism was not.