She sighed and continued fidgeting with her frayed, grey gloves. Which were clean, at least. Mary and Kitty would not have it any other way. At the moment, they were the only ones providing any kind of income for the six Bennet ladies by working as washerwomen, under false names, naturally, because they still had some semblance of dignity.
She was hoping, though, that this day’s excursion to the work agent would provide her with employment and the opportunity to contribute to the family’s meagre coffers. She knew she could never find a position in a wealthy house of the goodton. Lydia had made sure of that.
Elizabeth had accepted it. After the elopement and everything that followed, she lost the ability to feel angry at her sister. She had put her head down to find ways for them to survive. Today was a madcap attempt in which desperation drove her. Maybe someone would overcome the fact that she had only her genteel breeding to offer, and one single reference, coming from her uncle Gardiner.
Certainly, in the small hours of the night, sometimes bitterness would surface, the memories of what ifs, and most important, what was next. All of them haunted her.
She felt her eyebrow lifting.What if.What if she had accepted that proposal seven years ago at Charlotte’s parlour? She would have beenhiswife, a grand mistress of a grand estate, and her family would not live in a two-bedroom—grey—townhouse, in the cheapest respectable neighbourhood of London.
But then again, he deserved it. That arrogant, infuriating man insulted her, and he absolutely deserved the set down and the cutting remarks she offered back. She sighed. Too bad that retribution was not enough to buy coal.
The door opened and the clerk motioned to Miss Lawson next to her to enter. Elizabeth sent an encouraging smile to the young lady, and continued to fidget with her gloves, finding to her dismay one single thread of the seam having come loose. She would need to mend that.
And then, the air in the waiting room changed with a new presence. Someone came through the open door from the corridor, and she heard his boots skidding to a halt. The immobilising of said person was so abrupt that she looked up, puzzled. She was met with the most unexpected,unwelcome sight. She had conjured Mr Darcy with her thoughts.Thank you, universe. Can I now conjure a hole in the floor? It does not have to be too big, only enough to swallow me whole.
Her stomach dropped to the floor.
Mr Darcy was staring at her as though she were a ghost. Which, she supposed, was fair. She probably looked like one. Seven years of poverty had a way of taking the colour out of a person, and she had never been the sort of beauty that survived on bone structure alone. She had been the sort that relied on wit, good health and a decent meal, and two of those three had been in short supply lately.
“Miss Elizabeth.” His voice cracked on the second syllable. She had forgotten how low it was. Or she had made herself forget, the way she had made herself forget a great many things that served no practical purpose.
Her stomach had relocated somewhere near her ankles, but her legs, God bless them, were already pushing her to stand. She would not have this conversation sitting down. She would not have this conversation at all, if the universe had any decency left, but it evidently did not, so she would at least have it on her feet.
“Mr Darcy.” She was quietly impressed with herself. Two words, perfectly steady, delivered with perfect composure, under the circumstances. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
It was not a pleasure, and they both knew it. But the forms had to be observed, even in a work agency full of grey wool and thwarted hope, because they were English and that was how things were done.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. She recognised the expression—it was the same he had worn seven years ago in Charlotte’s parlour. The one that meant he had a great deal to say and no earthly idea how to say it. Back then, she had found it infuriating. Now, she found it merely exhausting.
The other women on the bench were watching. Of course they were. They had been sitting in this room long enough to have memorised each other’s shoe buckles. The arrival of a gentleman in a coat that cost more than their combined annual wages was the most interesting thing that had happened to them. Their eyes moved from Mr Darcy to Elizabeth and back again with curiosity. They had nothing left to lose and therefore nothing to prevent them from staring, so why not?
“I—” He stopped. Swallowed. Started again. He had a particular stiffness which revealed he was actively forcing his thoughts into single file. “I did not expect to find you here.”
“No,” Elizabeth agreed. “I imagine you did not.”
The silence which followed was several years long.
It was Mr Darcy who broke it, because Elizabeth had decided she would rather die than speak first, and she was fairly confident she could outlast him. She had outlasted worse things than silence.
“I am here to place an advertisement.” He enunciated the words carefully, each one taken from a shelf and inspected before being placed in the sentence. “I am in need of a governess for my daughter.”
His daughter. She had known, of course—Charlotte’s letters, infrequent and cautious as they were, had carriedthe essential facts across the years. The marriage to Miss de Bourgh, a scarce three weeks after his proposal to Elizabeth. The death of his wife and the child she left behind. She had stored it all away in the part of her mind where she kept things that were none of her business and ought to stay that way.
“Her previous governess departed a fortnight ago to follow her new husband to Harrow,” he continued. “I have come from Derbyshire specifically to find a replacement. The local options were—” He looked down at his hat in his hands. “Insufficient.”
So this was why he was in a registry office on Conduit Street. His child needed someone and he would not settle for anything less than the best.
“I am here seeking employment, Mr Darcy,” she said, because there was no point in dancing around the matter. Dancing required energy and shoes without holes in them, and she was short on both. “Not out of idle pursuit, but to support my family. As you may be aware, we are in a predicament.” She lifted her chin in defiance.
“Miss Elizabeth, I—” He stopped. Swallowed hard and started again. “I wonder whether you might consider... that is to say... I believe your qualifications would be—”
He was floundering. Fitzwilliam Darcy, master of Pemberley, ten thousand a year, was attempting to offer her a position and unable to complete the sentence. Under different circumstances, Elizabeth might have found this entertaining. Under these circumstances, she found it agonising, because every second he spent fumbling was asecond in which the other women on the bench were sharpening their claws.
And sharpen they did.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” said the woman in the brown bonnet, who had been sitting at the far end and who had evidently decided that if Providence was going to drop a wealthy employer into the room, she was not about to let him leave with someone else. “I have ten years’ experience and excellent references from Lady Farnham’s household.”
“I speak French, sir,” offered the woman beside her urgently, playing her best and only card. “And Italian. I hold a certificate from—”