Rose went straight up to Bingley and asked, “Did you know Sir Bertram before he was a knight?”
“I most certainly did,” Bingley said happily. “When he was a mere squire living at Mr. Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire, and he was a very distinguished resident.”
“Why did Mr. Darcy give him to us?” Alice asked, taking the handkerchief I fetched to wipe the stain off her drawing.
“Because every tortoise needs children to draw pictures, give him strawberries, and build forts and castles.” Bingley’s smile was as natural as a babbling brook. And then, watching them, the way he spoke to my little cousins and Jane’s expression of dreamy warmth, it struck me. If Jane married Bingley?—
The thought arrived without permission, enormous and terrifying and radiant with possibility. If Jane married Bingley, then Bingley would be my brother. Darcy was Bingley’s closest friend, and I would see him at dinners and holidays and christenings and long summer visits at Netherfield or Pemberley, and he would bethere, in my life, close enough to argue with and laugh at and stand beside at galleries. I might have a chance to know him better.
But the companion thought came too, cold and corrective: Darcy might be present in my life the way a brother’s friend is present—a man who would bow at family gatherings and ask after my health and remember how I took my tea but never once look at me the way Bingley looked at Jane, as the most beautiful woman in any room.
I turned away from the happy group kneeling on my aunt’s carpet talking about tortoise digestion, sleeping habits, and whether he could be trained to jump, knowing that I would have to sit across a dinner table from Fitzwilliam Darcy for years and years and watch him be courteous and proper and friendly and never more, never closer, nevermine?—
After all, who wanted a second daughter who was neither pretty nor gracious, whose tongue was sharper than her features and whose eyes missed nothing? No matter the dress, I wouldnever be admired beside Jane. In that moment, I decided it would have been far more convenient if the youngest had been the family beauty than for the eldest to claim that distinction.
I needed to breathe. I needed to govern myself. I needed to stop staring at the line of his jaw when he tilted his head to answer Rose’s question about whether Sir Bertram dreamed.
“All creatures dream,” he told her. “I expect he dreams of a field full of dandelions and not a single gardener in sight.”
Rose considered this. “Does he dream of us?”
“I am certain of it.”
“Then he will never be lonely.” She patted Bertram’s shell with the absolute confidence of a child who has decided the world is kind, and Darcy looked up from the carpet and caught my eye. I don’t know if anything passed between us, but I felt the jolt inside of me, and when I looked over at Jane, I knew she had seen it too.
“Mrs. Gardiner,” my sister said. “The day is quite warm for March, isn’t it? Perhaps the children would enjoy a walk to Gunter’s. Lizzy, might you join us?”
“Certainly.” I seized the suggestion as one seizes a rope thrown to a drowning woman, because the drawing room had grown too warm and too full of suggestions I wasn’t prepared to consider.
“Gunter’s!” Bingley sprang to his feet. “What a capital idea. Miss Bennet, I am told they do a very creditable strawberry ice. Darcy, you must come. You have that look about you, the one that says you are about to invent an excuse to leave, and I absolutely forbid it.”
Darcy rose to his feet with Sir Bertram’s cape still dangling from his fingers. “I was not inventing an excuse.”
“Then we shall make an expedition out of it,” Bingley said, and of course, the children jumped up and down, scurrying for mittens and pelisses. Sir Bertram was carried back to his gardenwith a supply of strawberry tops by way of apology for the snub. And I was tying the ribbon of Rose’s bonnet when I felt, rather than saw, Darcy cross the room to stand at my side.
“Miss Elizabeth, pray tell, what flavor do you prefer?” asking me as if we were spies for the Foreign Office.
I usually had opinions. In fact, I had too many opinions about ices, but my tongue tied up, so I simply said, “You may choose, or guess.”
At that, the children chimed in, arguing and begging me to concur with their opinions, which ranged from pistachio, my favorite, to lemon and chocolate, with Thomas insisting on strawberry.
“Strawberry it is.” I picked up the two-year-old and planted a kiss on his cheek.
“I want a strawberry ice for Sir Bertram!” Rose announced, and was firmly informed by Samuel that tortoises do not eat ices, which prompted a serious debate about the dietary preferences of knights that carried us through the hallway and out the front door.
The walk to Gunter’s was short, but our party rearranged itself with the inevitability of spilled tea. Bingley and Jane led the way, Rose skipping between them. Mrs. Gardiner trailed with Thomas perched on her hip, Alice sketching as she walked—a feat that defied logic but not Alice. Samuel darted everywhere, narrating Sir Bertram’s imaginary cavalry charge through Cheapside.
And Darcy and I walked together, because the party had arranged itself that way, and because neither of us moved to alter the arrangement.
“You did not need to come today,” I said softly.
“No.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because Bingley’s cravat would not have survived the journey without supervision.” He cast me a glance, the corner of his mouth twitching. “And because I wished to see if Sir Bertram had mastered the jump.”
“Sir Bertram’s jumping remains strictly theoretical.”
