Georgiana sat up, satisfied. “Now, shall we begin with—”
A fire alarm began shrieking.
“Oh, bollocks,” Darcy muttered. “Maggie.”
They rushed toward the kitchen as a unit, following increasingly thick smoke and the sound of Maggie’s voice raised in what sounded like heated negotiation with an uncooperative oven.
“It’s not supposed to do that!” the housekeeper was saying when they arrived. She stood before the Aga, oven mitts raised defensively, while something that might once have been a breakfast casserole smouldered ominously behind glass. “The Aga man said it was fixed!”
Darcy moved to open the windows while Elizabeth grabbed a tea towel and began fanning the smoke away from the shrieking detector. Georgiana joined her, waving a towel in the direction of the windows and doing no good at all.
“What were you cooking?” Elizabeth asked, peering at the charred remains of what might have been eggs and cheese and . . . bread?
“A Christmas strata,” Maggie said with a sigh.
“We’ll call the Aga man after Christmas,” Darcy said. “In the meantime, there is plenty of food here. Why don’t you sit down and let me makeyousomething?”
Maggie took this as a personal affront, and Darcy backed away, his hands held out before him and a smile on his lips. “I concede,” he told her, and his housekeeper huffed.
“You had better.Iwill make the breakfast.”
In the meantime, Elizabeth was able to make herself useful for perhaps the first time since arriving at Pemberley, scraping and soaking the original strata pan while Darcy helped clear the room of smoke. There was something comforting about working alongside him, even in emergency management mode.
“I’ve never heard of a Christmas strata,” she said as she scrubbed.
“It’s American,” Darcy said. “Maggie saw it on a cooking show some years back, and it was such a success that we’ve added it to our traditions.”
“Ina Garten,” Mrs. Reynold added as she set a carton of eggs on the worktop. “She’s my favourite of the chefs on the telly.”
“Right,” Georgiana announced when the kitchen no longer resembled a disaster zone. “Back to presents.”
Attempt number two at the morning’s civilized present exchange lasted approximately five minutes before Georgiana developed an urgent need for something from the coat cupboard upstairs.
“My reading glasses,” she explained, looking remarkably innocent for someone who was twenty-two and had, Elizabeth suspected, perfect vision. “I think I left them in the pocket of my jacket. William, would you fetch them for me?”
“What, your legs don’t work now?”
“I’m trying to arrange all of this.” Georgiana waved her hands over the presents.
Darcy rolled his eyes, and Elizabeth wanted to laugh. “I’ll come with you so that Georgiana can create whatever ambush she has in mind next.”
“Excellent decision,” Georgiana said.
The coat cupboard was small. Smaller, Elizabeth realized, than she’d remembered from yesterday. Not quite large enough for two people to stand in front of without bumping into each other, which was precisely what happened when she and Darcy both reached for Georgiana’s jacket.
“Sorry,” he said, not moving away. His hand was still extended toward the coat hook, effectively bracketing her against the wall, and Elizabeth was having thoughts that were inappropriate for a cupboard at nine in the morning on Christmas Day.
“Actually,” Georgiana called from the bottom of the stairs, “I think they might be in the hall cupboard instead.”
The hall cupboard was even smaller.
“She’s doing this on purpose,” Elizabeth murmured.
“Undeniably,” he agreed, sounding amused rather than annoyed. “She’s been reading too many romance novels.”
“Are we going to call her out on it?”
“After we don’t find these fictional glasses she’s lost? I don’t know,” he said, giving her a quick kiss and then pulling back. His eyes lingered on her lips. “Perhaps we should take advantage instead.”
