“It’s the most thoughtful present I’ve ever received."
Elizabeth’s smile was sweet and hopeful. “You’re not just being polite?”
“No,” Darcy replied. It was wonderfully soft, if somewhat irregularly shaped, and when he buried his nose in it, he could detect the scent of Elizabeth’s perfume.
Elizabeth stepped close and took the scarf to loop it around his neck. Her fingers skimmed the rough edge of his jaw as she settled the knit; he stilled, eyes on hers. She caught his hand as she smoothed the end through the wrap and, before she let go, pressed a quick kiss to his knuckles. “There,” she murmured, tucking the last tail flat against his chest. “Now it’s yours.” She blushed a little and stepped back. “You don’t have to wear it in public.”
“I plan to wear it everywhere,” Darcy assured her, and was surprised to realise he meant it. The thought of his colleagues’ surprise when he appeared in the City wearing a wobbly handmade scarf was rather appealing.
For a moment, they looked at each other across the elegant morning room, and Darcy felt that familiar sense of vertigo that always accompanied his deeper moments with Elizabeth.
“Right then.” He cleared his throat and stood up. “My turn, I suppose.”
He retrieved the elegantly wrapped package from the side table, noting how professional it looked compared to Elizabeth’s charmingly homey effort. The black paper was sharp and crisp, the silver ribbon precisely tied. But it looked, he thought, like exactly the present one ought to give to one’s girlfriend of three months.
“For you,” he said, presenting it with a small flourish.
Elizabeth took the box with obvious delight, shaking it gently beside her ear. “Not too heavy,” she observed. “And beautifully wrapped. Very mysterious.”
She unwrapped it with considerably less ceremony than Darcy had shown her present, tearing through the paper with enthusiasm. When she lifted the headphones from their box, her expression went through several rapid changes.
“Oh. Oh, these are . . . my goodness, these are very expensive, aren’t they?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he told her. “I thought, given how much trouble you have with noise in your flat, with the neighbours and the traffic and, well, Waffles . . . they might help you concentrate on your work.”
Elizabeth turned the headphones over in her hands, examining them. “How do you switch between modes?” she asked, lifting the cup to her ear. He showed her; she nodded as if filing away useful intelligence. “Very clever.” She set them back in the box. “They’re lovely. Thank you.”
“I researched them extensively,” Darcy replied, pleased to explain his reasoning. “The noise cancellation is supposed to be exceptional. You’ll be able to work in complete silence, without any distractions whatsoever.”
“Complete silence,” Elizabeth repeated, holding the earphones in her hands. “Excellent.”
“I know how much the noise bothers you,” he pressed on, warming to his theme. “Just last week you mentioned having to escape to the library to find peace and quiet. With these, you could have that same tranquillity anywhere.”
Elizabeth put them over her ears for a moment and then removed them. She nodded slowly. Smiled. “Thank you.” She leaned over to place a kiss on his lips, and he felt a good deal of relief.
They spent the late morning walking through Pemberley’s grounds, with Waffles charging ahead to investigate every interesting smell while Athena trotted along beside them. Elizabeth seemed cheerful, exclaiming over the frost-covered gardens and asking about the history of various buildings, making him laugh with stories about her family’s Christmas traditions.
“Darcy?” Elizabeth’s voice cut through his brooding. “You’ve gone very quiet. Is everything all right?”
They were sitting on a bench overlooking the lake, watching Waffles try to make friends with a wildly unimpressed family of ducks. Athena lay at their feet, occasionally lifting her head to watch Waffles.
“Just thinking.”
“Dangerous pastime,” Elizabeth said, her eyes searching his face with a perceptive attention that always made him feel a bit transparent.
There was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, a subtle shift in the atmosphere between them since the present exchange. Elizabeth was smiling, but there was a caution to her responses that hadn’t been there earlier.
“Tell me about your family’s Christmas traditions,” he said, watching Waffles, who had decided the ducks were beneath his notice and was now parading about with what he appeared to regard as the best stick he had ever found. He took it over to Athena, who was less impressed.
Elizabeth shrugged. “Oh, the usual. Mum starts planning Christmas dinner in October and then panics every year that she’s forgotten something crucial. Dad disappears into his study with a bottle of whisky and appears only for meals and to offer unhelpful commentary. Jane tries to mediate everyone’s various neuroses, Mary drags us all to midnight mass, and Lydia and Kitty have a tradition of wrapping their presents approximately ten minutes before they’re due to be opened.”
“And you?” Darcy asked, genuinely curious. In all their conversations about family, Elizabeth rarely talked about her own role in the Bennet dynamics.
“I regularly end up as Mum’s errand girl and Dad’s audience,” Elizabeth smiled. “And I make the Christmas pudding, because I’m the only one other than my mother and Jane who can be trusted not to set the kitchen on fire.”
Darcy tried to picture Elizabeth in her parents’ kitchen, making a Christmas pudding. The image was domestic and warm, unlike the formal Christmas celebrations of his childhood.
“What about you?” Elizabeth asked. “What was Christmas like growing up here?”
