“Name? Whatever are you talking ab—”
“I’m talking about you not being so saintly as you would have the rest of us think. I saw how your eyes lit up, and your teeth started grinding when I brought up that burglar! Tell me the truth. Have you had an encounter with him?”
“No!” I scoffed. That was true. I’d had afew… ‘encounters’ with him. “And anyway, why would I hide something like that? The scoundrel! He ought to be hung by his fancy boots and flogged until his curly hair turns straight. I’ve no sympathy for him.”
“Oh, yes,” Charlotte agreed. “I can see that.”
“And another thing! Why would I like a man who would go around kissing someone like Mildred Purvis? She has to be forty years of age!”
“I hear men appreciate a woman who knows how to kiss back.” Charlotte shrugged and donned a wicked grin. “But that’s only hearsay. By the by, I never heard that this burglar had curly hair. Now thatisa useful bit of information, is it not? Are his curls tight and frizzy, or the loose, luxurious sort? Were they cropped short or long and tousled?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I think I hear your mother calling.”
Charlotte laughed and gathered her skirts to stand. “Very well. I expect a full report, just in case anyone tries to break into Longbourn. Be sure to guard the silver, Lizzy.”
I shook my head as she collected her hat and went out. The little Jezebel! I’d never any notion that Charlotte Lucas could be… well, so much like Lydia. If she only knew what this thief who so fascinated her was really like! Why, he was…
He was…
I leaned against the side of the sofa, knotted my fingers around my knee, and gazed at the ceiling. Hewaspretty scrumptious. In a wicked, terrible sort of way. Handsome as a devil, sweet as one of Hill’s sugary confections. And he smelled like a walk in the woods after the spring rain. Glorious!
He thought far too well of himself, but he had probably been told all his life how charming and perfect he was. Arrogant seemed like a good word for him. Prideful, certainly.
But he hadn’tseemeddishonest. I always prided myself on judging characters, and I hadn’t sensed that in him, though hewasa thief. At least he admitted it. Ah, well, I had thought he had better sense than to go out and kiss Mildred Purvis, too. I wanted to spit the taste of his lips off of my own, but it was too late for that.
I had a stupid crush on a burglar.
Darcy
“Thank heaven you’re back so quickly! I need someone in his right mind.”
My cousin, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, strolled into my study without even bothering to be announced. Dobbs had standing instructions just to let Richard pass, and my cousin took full advantage of the arrangement whenever it suited him.
I pushed aside the letter I had been trying—unsuccessfully—to write. “Richard. I thought you were at Rosings.”
“Was, my good fellow. And still might have been, were it not for Lady Catherine’s bad temper.”
“How so? Tea?”
“I—yes, please—I nearly chased my poor carriage horses out of the drive just to get away from her. Egad, the woman is ambitious. Did you know she never even paid Elgin for that marble she got from him?”
I was in the midst of summoning Dobbs, but at that, I turned around, incredulous. “What? How?”
Richard shrugged. “She gave him a letter saying she would pay once it passed muster with Carruthers, but she never paid the man. Poor fellow is barely keeping a roof over his head, and she cheated him straight up. And got high and mighty with me when I called her on it.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. So that was why you left in such haste.”
“No, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t. She caught wind that Father is in league with a certain highness to cut her out of her little hobby, and she drove me out of Rosings for a spy.”
I snorted. “Which is precisely what you were.”
“Yes, but she did not have to toss my dinner goblet in my face. She’s lucky she isn’t a man, or else I’d… I say, is that what I think it is?”
I glanced over my shoulder at the vase sitting on the end table in the corner. “I purchased that yesterday. There is a merchant here in London by the name of Gardiner. The earl told me of him. When I went to see him and asked about certain antiquities, he showed me that.”
Richard walked over to the vase and lifted it to look inside at the details of the clay. “Amphora. What do you think? Fifth century?”
I got up to follow him over to the vase. “It appears to be. Perhaps sixth.”
