Reading to him, embracing him when he sobbed, offering sage advice. None of the discipline or punishment that a father might see it as his place to impose, but Darcy had always calmly said things to Elizabeth that made it easier for her to bear disappointing George when she felt the need to place George in a corner or put him in his room for an hour before being allowed to have dinner.
“Don’t you want me to be happy?” George asked.
Something about the way the four-year-old spoke and looked reminded her of the boy’s father. “Never, never,” Elizabeth said sharply, “try to convince a person to do something against their principles or their interest for your own sake.”
George wailed.
Elizabeth took a deep breath and let it out. She then sat back down and laid herself out flat against the sand while looking up at the blue sky. The gulls swooped overhead.
George letGeorgianapick him up and comfort him. “But I wanna,” he wailed.
It was unclear to Elizabeth just what George wanted. To cry? To have a papa? To follow his father’s footsteps by convincing people in general to act against their best interest for his sake?
“You must let Lizzy think,” Georgiana said reasonably. “She’s like my brother. She likes to think matters through before making important decisions.”
Elizabeth laughed. That hardly matched her own image of herself, and she rather thought her view of herself as impulsive and a bit stupid matched the truth far more clearly than what Georgiana had just described.
She supposed that it was accurate enough about Mr. Darcy, except, of course, in the case of important decisions, like whether to kill someone in a duel, or whether to then marry their widow.
If she acted on impulse, without giving it any more thought what would she do?
Marry him.
At the thought she was filled with a glorious delight. Something like the trumpeting of angels sounded in her head.
A flash of a vision of them curled together intimately. She could at last run her hand over his skin, at least once the wound had fully closed and healed.
Heat flashed through Elizabeth’s body.
She wanted him.
Well. So that was why she hesitated. She wouldnotlet lascivious stupidity draw her into marriage again.
“Oh, my. He’s asleep,” Georgiana said. “I cannot carry him like this for long.”
“Really? He scarcely ever naps anymore.”
Elizabeth stood up and together they slowly lowered George into the sand. He curled up, his hair instantly filled with sand.
Elizabeth smiled at him.
“What do you think,” Elizabeth asked Georgiana as they both looked at the child.
“He looks too peaceful to wake. I left the footman on the promenade, at the top of the cliff—you see him there, and—”
“No, no. About your brother’s proposal.”
“Oh, it is so very romantic!Hehas made a sensible choice, unlike me. Of course you do not have any money, but no one could imagine that you are a fortune hunter. Even Cousin Richard does not think so.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Even Cousin Richard?”
“Oh, I know he would have at first, when he first came. Hethenhad counselled me to be cautious about you, and to not trust you. He was sure you had some scheme afoot, and—”
“You mean,” Elizabeth said laughing, “like enticing your brother into making an offer of marriage to me.”
“Cousin Richard, I am sure, did not think about anything of that sort.”
“I strongly suspect that he did.”
