“Twenty-four.”
“My, what a gap.”
“Do not remind me. I feel positively elderly.”
“I shall fetch a parasol and some laudanum.”
He gave her a long, flat look. “I am amazed no one has murdered you yet.”
“Oh, they have tried. But I am very quick.”
Their eyes met then—really met—and for a second, neither of them smiled. Something else hovered between them. Curiosity. Appraisal. A sudden, shared awareness of proximity.
Elizabeth glanced away first.
“You do know that this picnic is my favorite scandal in months.”
Darcy grunted. “That says very little for your recent social calendar.”
“True. But I am not often seated with someone who looks so funereal. Tell me—” she turned back to him, brow raised— “do you always dress like a gothic novel, or is today special?”
He paused.
Something in his posture shifted—not embarrassed, not wounded, exactly, but quiet.
“My father died last October.”
She drew in a breath. “Oh.”
“And I—” he went on, slowly, “have not yet felt inclined to swap black for grey. I never liked grey, anyway, but less now.”
She nodded once. “You do not have to explain.”
“But you asked.”
She bit her lip. “That is true.”
He shifted again, as if to reach for something that was not there. “He was the best man I knew. Impossible. Proud. Generous in ways no one expected or understood. He taught me everything I am, and I still fail to meet it.”
Elizabeth did not know what she had expected. Something colder, maybe. Something polite. Instead, he gave her a truth that felt quietly worn, like a stone turned over in his palm too many times.
“I am sorry,” she said, and this time, she meant it.
He nodded, once.
Then, after a moment: “And your parents?”
She hesitated, just for a breath. “Oh, they are... lively.”
He waited.
“My mother thinks I am too proud to be married and too plain to be proud. And my father—” she broke off, then smiled, a little too brightly. “He thinks I am funny.”
Silence again—but not the same silence. It had softened, as if the edges of their jokes had dulled.
Then he said, “If I must be made a spectacle, I suppose I am glad it was an irreverent sprite from Hertfordshire and not Lady Millet’s nieces.”
She raised her brows. “A compliment?”
