Elizabeth smiled faintly despite herself. She’d called her sister earlier to vent all her worries. Jane was the type who made gluten-free Christmas cookies and had her shopping done by October, each present wrapped with mathematical precision and adorned with ribbons that never dared to wrinkle. Elizabeth typically treated Christmas like one of her writing deadlines, with panic, caffeine, and the hope of last-minute miracles. Just with more tinsel.
Jane had been with Charles for over ten months now, which in relationship terms made her practically married. They’d moved in together recently, and from what Elizabeth could tell, it suited them. Charles would come home from his job at the marketing company to find Jane had somehow transformed their IKEA furniture into something that belonged in an interior design magazine. Jane would return after seeing patients in the office in their back garden to find Charles had cooked dinner and only set off the smoke alarm twice.
They made it look easy. Natural. Like their lives had been designed to slot together, two pieces of the same puzzle.
Elizabeth picked up the scarf again, squinting at the uneven rows in the lamplight. The problem wasn’t just that her knitting was rubbish. It was that this felt like some sort of test. Three months was a proper milestone, long enough to have moved past casual dating but not quite long enough to call for expensive presents or grand gestures. It was the relationship equivalent of that awkward stage where you’re no longer a teenager but not quite an adult either.
And to add to that, what was she to buy for someone who had everything? Because Darcy quite literally did. The man owned a flat in Belgravia bigger than most people’s houses. He drove a classic Aston Martin that was older than Elizabeth. His watch cost more than she made in three months, and he wore a different one every few days with the casual indifference ofsomeone who’d never had to check their bank balance before making a purchase.
Who even still wore a watch, unless it counted your steps and alerted you to incoming texts?
Darcy. Darcy did.
But more than that, he was . . . careful. Measured. Everything about Darcy was considered, from his name to the way he spoke and the way he dressed. Even the way he’d courted her, with an old-fashioned deliberateness that belonged in a different century.
He’d kissed her for the first time three weeks after they’d met, on a crisp October evening as they walked along the South Bank after dinner. Not because the mood struck him or in some moment of passion, but because he’d stopped walking, turned to face her, and said, “Elizabeth, I’d very much like to kiss you now, if that’s all right.”
Who asked permission to kiss someone these days? Who used phrases like “if that’s all right” without a trace of irony?
William Darcy, that's who.
But William Darcy was also the man who remembered that she took her coffee black with one sugar, who switched sides of the pavement so he was always walking closest to the road, who once spent twenty minutes at dinner listening to her rant about her landlord’s refusal to fix the boiler and then somehow arranged for a repair man to turn up the next day without telling her and wouldn’t let her pay.
The same William Darcy who definitely didn’t need a homemade scarf knitted by someone who didn’t know the difference between a cast-on and a cast-off.
Elizabeth groaned and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Why couldn’t I just buy him cologne like a normal girlfriend?”
From the dog bed came a half-hearted thump of Waffles’s tail.
“That was a rhetorical question,” she informed him, but reached over to scratch behind his ears anyway. His fur was warm and soft, grounding her in the way that only her crazy dog could manage.
The truth was, she’dtriedthe normal girlfriend approach first. She’d spent a Saturday afternoon trudging through Bond Street, staring at window displays full of watches and cufflinks and leather goods. She’d even ventured into Harrods, where a shop assistant had looked her up and down with a disdain usually reserved for people who put pineapple on pizza.
She happened tolikepineapple on pizza.
“Are you looking for anything particular?” the woman had asked in a tone that suggested Elizabeth’s presence was quite particular enough.
“Something for my boyfriend,” Elizabeth had managed. “For Christmas.”
“Certainly. What’s your budget?”
Elizabeth had mumbled something about “reasonable” and “not too extravagant,” which had been met with a smile that told her reasonable wasn’t a word that existed in this postcode.
She’d fled before she could embarrass herself further, but not before glimpsing a price tag that had made her laugh out loud. Four hundred pounds for a scarf. A scarf that was beautiful, admittedly, but still just a long bit of fabric designed to keep someone’s neck warm.
That’s when the knitting idea had struck her. Personal. Thoughtful. Practical. How hard could it be?
Elizabeth had never been crafty. Her idea of handmade might involve assembling IKEA furniture with Jane or, on ambitious days, trying to follow a YouTube tutorial for braiding her hair. But surely knitting was just repetitive movements, right? Like learning to type, but with yarn instead of letters.
She’d bought supplies, watched seventeen YouTube videos, and started with what the cheerful woman on the screen had promised was “a simple project perfect for beginners.” That had been three weeks ago. The scarf was now roughly two-thirds finished. It was less a scarf and more a three-week argument with yarn, though at least it was apersonalargument.
But the thought that Elizabeth kept coming back to, that made her pick up the needles every evening despite the mounting evidence that she had no business attempting handicrafts: Darcy didn’t need perfect. In fact, perfect seemed to be something he had enough of already.
What he didn’t have was someone who cared enough to spend three weeks swearing at knitting needles for him. Someone who’d noted the colour of his eyes. Someone who’d rather give him something terrible but heartfelt than something expensive but careful.
She blew out a breath and hoped she hadn’t gotthatwrong.
Her phone rang, Jane’s photo flashing on the screen looking radiant. She was still in her little studio office, sitting in front of the garden window.
