Within minutes of this resolution forming, it was tried. The carriage drew up to a queue, and she felt the ageing springs give way as William bounced down from the back. His steps crunched on the gravelled earth, and she heard him paying the driver. He opened her door and greeted her with an expression that threatened to rob her of breath. There was a boyish delight there, a flickering of the youth he must have suppressed long ago, but kindling beneath it was something fuller, richer, and simmering with flavours of the forbidden.
Elizabeth paused, her lips parted as she surveyed him with eyes opened to a new depth of awareness, and the back of her neck prickled. His chest swelled proudly, and with one hand he gestured toward the Thames River, while the other crossed over his abdomen in a stately bow.
“Miss Elizabeth, Vauxhall Gardens await.”
Chapter nineteen
It was well into the middle of the afternoon when Edward Gardiner returned to his warehouse desk. This day had decidedly not gone as intended! He felt like a winded racehorse who had a heat yet to run. Wearily, he tugged his pocket watch forth to stare at its face and shook his head.
“Haskins,” he signalled to his clerk as the man walked by, “will you have a note sent to my house, please? I am afraid I must disappoint Mrs Gardiner and my nieces this evening. I ought to send word, although they likely already expect it by now.”
“Sir, Mrs Gardiner has already sent word here for you. There is a note on your desk from her. Oh! And Miss Elizabeth called while you were out.”
“Lizzy? Why would she have come here?” he wondered, turning to find his wife’s note.
“She did not say, sir, but it seemed to be some business connected with one of your household servants.”
“How strange!” he murmured, then his fingers tore into the sealed paper. He had not read more than two lines before he groaned audibly, and in the tones of a man in genuine pain.
“Sir?” Haskins stepped back into the room in concern. “Are you unwell?”
He glanced up, barely suppressing a grimace. “As well as a man with an infested household can be.”
“Infested! Sir, I know of an excellent rat catcher. He set my mother’s house right last winter. Would you like me to send for him?”
“Unfortunately, it is quite a different sort of rodent which has installed itself at my residence. I think I no longer regret the additional hours this shipment crisis has required of me. But my poor wife and nieces!”
Haskins looked politely unconscious of his employer’s musings. He knew nothing of what Mr Gardiner might have meant, and so he went on about his tasks as if nothing were amiss until his attention was called back again.
“What is this?” Gardiner had reached the bottom of his note and looked up to Haskins in confusion. “What time did Miss Elizabeth call?”
“I am not certain, sir… I believe it was just before eleven. Half ten, perhaps?”
Gardiner stared at his note, his features pinched. “And she had one of my servants with her?”
“Yes, sir, a strong-looking footman. I am sure she was quite safe, sir.”
“Oh, it is not that. Mrs Gardiner said Lizzy had left the house, and that I should try to keep her busy here for the remainder of the day, for she would spare her some of the company at home. But you say she left directly when she learned I was out?”
Haskins frowned in thought. “I believe so, sir. She may perhaps have sought the newest book shipment in the warehouse before she left. You know how she indulges that enjoyment upon each visit. Perhaps one of the stock boys might have seen her.”
Gardiner turned the note over, scratching his head. “No, more than likely she returned to the house directly. When did this note arrive?”
“Not ten minutes after she, sir, I am quite certain of it. Perhaps she passed the messenger on her way.”
Gardiner grunted and tossed the note to the side, then drew a stack of invoices into its place. “Yes, I am sure that is it. Poor Lizzy! Stuck all day with such a disagreeable fellow. It is a pity I could do nothing to get her out of the house this evening.”
“Have you never been on the water before?” Darcy was watching his feminine companion in some amusement. The barge which was to carry them across the Thames was met with equal parts delight and trepidation, and once aboard, she had secured the hand railing as if her very life depended upon its stability.
She offered him a guilty smile. “Only small fishing boats, in shallow streams. I have always found them somewhat unreliable, even when piloted by skilled hands.”
“And you find this craft to be less seaworthy than they?”
“Oh, I should think not, but the water here is deep and unfamiliar. Let me accustom myself to the rocking below my feet before I let go this railing, then, I promise, I shall enjoy the crossing.” She closed her eyes then, as if she were insisting upon absolute silence during this moment of reflection and composition. Her fingers gripped and readjusted themselves on the rail, and her shoulders rose and fell in deep, rhythmic breaths. After a moment, her eyes cautiously blinked open.
“Better?” he asked, helpless to keep the laughing smile from his face. She possessed all the seriousness of a sage when she chose, and then the mercurial capacity to will it away at an instant’s notice. He had never known anyone more intriguing, and it was all artless sincerity on her part. It would be a long while before he tired of her company.
She ignored his question, perhaps because of the playful note in his voice when he had asked it. Instead, she was slowly stretching her frame, standing taller and daring to throw back her head slightly to admire the sky and trees lining the river. There was a lithe, graceful quality to her bearing—almost as a dancer in repose, or a yearling stallion just discovering his own charisma. Darcy sensed that strange magnetism again, the longing to savour and indulge, to discover and claim….
