She closed her mouth.
“Yes, sir. I shall see to it directly.”
“Thank you, Mrs Hatfield. That will be all.”
She curtsied and withdrew. Darcy waited until the door was fully closed, then dropped his head into his hands. This was not the behaviour of a rational man. This was not the behaviour of a responsible employer maintaining professional boundaries.
This was the behaviour of a man who had held Elizabeth Bennet in his arms while she wept, and who had felt the shape of her grief press against his chest. He had understood, in that moment, that there was nothing he would not do for her.Nothing. The house was the beginning. The provisions were the beginning. He would have bought every house on The Polygon and endowed every charitable foundation in London if it would have taken the shadows from beneath her eyes.
He could not tell her he loved her. He could not court her, and he could not cross the distance between employer and suitor without becoming the sort of man he despised.
But he could do this.
He rose from his desk and straightened his coat, striving for perfect command of himself.
He found Georgiana in the drawing room, which was not unusual. She was surrounded by fabric, which was also not unusual. She was accompanied by a small, sharp-eyed Frenchwoman wielding a measuring tape and an expression of supreme artistic authority, and this was new.
“Brother!” Georgiana emerged from behind a wall of silk. “You remember Madame Delacroix?”
He did not remember Madame Delacroix, because he had never met her before. He bowed anyway.
“Madame is fitting my trousseau,” Georgiana explained. She was flushed with excitement. She had been choosing between ivory and cream for the past two hours and considered both options life-altering. “We are selecting gowns for the honeymoon in Bath, Brother. I shall need muslins.”
“You shall get whatever you wish.” He said it absently, because his mind had already moved from Georgiana’s trousseau to a different wardrobe entirely, and the thought had arrived fully formed, which meant it had been forming for days without his permission.
“Georgiana, since Madame Delacroix is already here—” He paused and arranged his face to convey that he had just had a perfectly spontaneous idea that had not been keepinghim awake for the better part of a week. “I wonder whether she might also take measurements for Miss Bennet.”
Georgiana’s hands stilled on the silk.
“Miss Bennet will be required to escort Anne to church on Sundays and to your wedding in June. She represents the Darcy household, and she cannot be seen in—” He stopped himself. He had been about to say the same grey dress she has worn every day since she arrived. The specificity of that observation would have betrayed a degree of attention that no employer should possess regarding his governess’s wardrobe. “She will need appropriate attire.”
Georgiana regarded him, her expression carefully neutral, but clearly trying very hard not to smile.
“I was thinking the same thing, actually. I simply did not wish to overstep.” She tilted her head. “How many gowns were you envisioning?”
“I leave the particulars to your judgement. A day dress. An evening dress. Something suitable for the wedding. Whatever is appropriate.”
“And you would like me to present this to Miss Bennet as—?”
“A requirement. For the proper representation of the household. She is to understand that the gowns are provided as part of her position, not as—” He searched for the word. “Charity.”
“A uniform, essentially.”
“If you wish to call it that.”
Georgiana nodded slowly. Madame Delacroix had been following this exchange with shrewd attention. She haddressed half the ladies of the ton and she understood the subtext of every fitting, but said nothing.
Darcy turned to leave. He made it three steps towards the door. Then he stopped.
He should not say what he was about to say. There was absolutely no reason for him to say it. Elizabeth needed gowns for public appearances. That was the scope of the commission. Gowns. Outer garments. The parts of a woman’s wardrobe that were visible to the world and entirely within the purview of an employer’s concern.
He turned back.
His ears were already burning. He could feel the heat spreading from his collar to his jaw, the same traitorous flush that had betrayed him at every moment when his body decided to announce what his mouth would not.
“Georgiana.”
She raised an eyebrow.