Mrs Bennet opened her mouth, then thought better of it. She narrowed her eyes. “What are the terms?”
Elizabeth laid them out. Room and board, a half-day per week. The household would remove to Pemberley for the summer. A carriage would collect her tomorrow morning at eight.
“And the salary?” Mrs Bennet asked what everyone was burning to ask but did not, out of politeness.
“Eighty pounds per annum.”
She said it without hesitation, without a flicker, without so much as a glance at Jane. Eighty pounds. The rest she would keep. Twenty pounds a year, until there was enough for a modest dowry. Jane deserved a future outside of this kitchen and this slow, patient diminishing.
“Eighty pounds!” Mrs Bennet’s eyes went wide. “Eighty pounds, for a governess? Lizzy, that is... “
“Very generous, Mamma. Yes. Mr Darcy was insistent.”
“Well.” Mrs Bennet sat back in her chair. “Well. It seems Mr Darcy’s manners have improved considerably nowadays.”
Jane reached across the table and took Elizabeth’s hand but said nothing.
Mary, who had been silent throughout, spoke. “Pemberley has one of the finest private libraries in England.”
Elizabeth met her sister’s eyes and, for the first time that day, smiled without it hurting.
“Yes, Mary. I know.”
Three
Darcy left Miss Elizabeth and turned east on Conduit Street.
The distance to Grosvenor Street was not above a quarter of an hour, so he had seen no need for a carriage. He was thankful for that, because now he could move as fast as he liked without raising eyebrows in his wake. He strode at a punishing pace, trying to analyse whether what he had just done was either extraordinarily stupid or clever.Stupid, he decided. Whether it was the good kind or the catastrophic kind of stupid was yet to be determined.
He had hired Elizabeth Bennet.
He had gone out this morning to place an advertisement at a respectable agency. A simple errand—governess wanted, patient temperament, able to endure relentless interrogation by a six-year-old with no respect for conversational boundaries—and he had been rather pleased with the efficiency of the plan.
And then he saw her. His plan had caught fire, and he had stood there watching it burn.
He turned onto New Bond Street. The pavement was busy—carriages, shoppers, a woman with a lapdog under herarm—and he wove through them with his head down and his stride long.
Lord Ashworth was crossing from the other side of the street.
Darcy saw the familiar gait—the leisurely, well-fed saunter of a man who had never once been in a hurry—and his stomach dropped. Ashworth was a talker. Twenty minutes on the weather, fifteen on his horses, another ten on whatever bill was creeping through Parliament, and Darcy did not have a single civil sentence in him. Not now. Not with his pulse still hammering and his mind still circling the image of her hands wrapped around a teacup.
He veered left. Sharply, without grace, directly into the recessed doorway of a tailor’s shop on the corner of Grafton Street. He stared at the window display—a bolt of midnight-blue superfine, and a pair of ivory gloves arranged on a stand. He held very still, feigning intense absorption. He had urgent sartorial business, it seemed.
Ashworth’s footsteps passed behind him. There was a pause—had he been spotted?—then the footsteps continued, unhurried, receding into the noise of the street.
Darcy exhaled.
And then he noticed his own face.
The glass was not a mirror, but it did the job well enough. The bolt of blue fabric served as a dark backdrop, and there he was—reflected, unmistakable, and entirely undone. His colour was high, a flush spreading from his collar to his jaw. His chest was rising and falling too quickly. His cravat, which had been tied this morning by his valet, was now slightly askew, tugged loose by a hand he did notremember raising. His eyes were too bright. The man who looked back at him could have been running, or fighting, or doing both at once, and the quiet street and the tailor’s window made a liar of both explanations.
What have I done?
The question hit him squarely in the chest with the force of a delayed blow. He gripped the window ledge with one hand—the wood was smooth, sun-warmed, absurdly real beneath his fingers.
He had offered one hundred pounds a year to a woman who had asked for fifty. He had done so all in the space of a single cup of tea. The calm, measured tone of his voice had been the most accomplished performance of his life, because underneath it his blood had been roaring.
She could not have refused. Not with a family to feed and her sisters depending on her. He had made her an offer so generous it was a trap, and they had both known it. She had accepted with a dignity that put him to shame.