“Would you go out to find some people? Maybe from the inns? I cannot trust the task to Georgiana.”
This request half surprised Elizabeth. “I can. After breakfast and after we’ve changed the bandages. But why not Miss Darcy?”
Mr. Darcy frowned.
Elizabeth said, “If it is because she has shown extremely poor judgement recently, I would see that as an argument for giving her responsibilities now. She must rebuild her confidence and learn.”
The gentleman had a contemplating air.
“And I shall be off and then will return with coffee for everyone. George, do you wish to come with me to the kitchen?”
“Mr. Darcy,” her son asked, “may I stay here?”
“Of course,” he replied.
Elizabeth went to the kitchen, which still had more dirt and signs of being unkempt than she liked, but which no longer stunk like a midden.
She snacked on an apple while the water heated, not thinking about much. She ground the beans up in the small coffee mill, and then dumped them in the bottom of a cup for both herself and Mr. Darcy.
When the coffee was prepared she returned to the room.
Mr. Darcy had shifted into a more reclined position, scooted into the side of the sofa, and George had managed to curl next to him.
They read fromHistories or Tales of Past Times, Told by Mother Goose. It was the only book that Elizabeth still owned. It had been a gift from Papa for little George, and Elizabeth had not been able to bear selling it with everything else.
Mr. Darcy made a great many distinct voices for the characters, though he never spoke loudly, showing deference to his broken ribs.
Elizabeth smiled to see them together, and she handed Mr. Darcy his own mug full of coffee.
She sat down next to them, in the armchair that Miss Darcy had habitually used the preceding day. Her own coffee cleared her head and left her alert.
What next?
She could decide tomorrow. Or the day after. A wound like Mr. Darcy’s would require daily attendance for at least a month.
What sheshoulddo today was go to attend the funeral of Mr. Wickham. Even though it was not quite fashionable for a woman to attend funerals, he’d likely have no male mourners, and Elizabeth was privately certain that Mrs. Younge would be there, and something in her did not wish to leave the field to that woman.
Elizabeth let her mind wander as Darcy reached the end of the first story in George’s storybook. His impression of a young girl was passable, though odd, “What great eyes you have got!”
“It is to see the better, my child.”
His impression of a wolf was superior.
“Grandmamma, what great teeth you have got!”
“That is to eat thee up.”
Then Darcy finished in a wholly ordinary and dry voice. “And saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon poor Little Red Riding-Hood, and ate her all up—do you want me to read the moral? I always found it rather dreadful when my papa insisted on making me listen to it, even though by then I knew it by heart, and really theentertainingpart of the story is when the wolf eats up poor Little Red Riding-Hood. I think the real lesson is that one ought not be a wolf, but a hunter.”
George replied, “Mama always insists that afterwards a hunter killed the wolf and cut open his belly, and that both the grandma and Little Red Riding-Hood were in good health, except they had been rather scared.”
Darcy looked at Elizabeth with a warm smile. “Were they? That is notPerrault’svision of the story.”
Elizabeth laughed, “I do not insist that is the true story, merely a possibility.”
When George ran off to play, Darcy shuffled through the book, stopping to look at each of the illustrations. “Mrs. Wickham, you are right.”
When he did not continue immediately after saying that, Elizabeth smiled at him, and said, “Always, but upon what matter?”
