He left, and the house settled into the hush that follows the departure of an unexpected squall. I sat in my chair with my cold tea and told myself that nothing had changed, that the man who knelt on a carpet to show a child how to hold a tortoise was the same man who stood behind a curtain watching my sister walk away in heartbreak. I did not intend to soften simply because a proud man happened to look less proud with a tortoise in his hands and a two-year-old clinging to his boot.
I did not intend to soften one bit.
“Well,” said Mrs. Gardiner, folding her hands in her lap with an expression that promised a thorough accounting. “Would either of you care to tell me who Mr. Darcy actually is?”
From the garden, clear and unconcerned with any complication the adult world might furnish, Rose’s voice rang through the open window: “Sir Bertram, I am going to teach you everything.”
CHAPTER THREE
PRETEXT TO CALL
Darcy
A baskingstone does not constitute an emergency.
Naturally, I knew this. Bertram had lorded over that stone for thirty years, basking in the Pemberley kitchen garden whenever the Derbyshire sun deigned to appear. He had survived two days at Gracechurch Street without so much as a sulk. He would survive twenty more, or fifty, or the rest of a life that looked set to outlast the lot of us.
I bundled the stone in a cloth, tossed it in a basket with a shallow dish and a page of care instructions wrung from my father’s old gardener, and told my coachman to take me to Cheapside.
It was Friday. Two days since I had stood in Mrs. Gardiner’s drawing room and discovered that the world contained rather more Miss Bennets than I had been prepared for. Two days during which I had refused Caroline’s invitation to discuss Miss Audley, dined alone at my club, and thought of precisely nothing except a woman whose dark eyes that missed nothing and pardoned less.
The stone was a pretext, a way to gain entrance, although I did not need to convince myself that there were individuals I wished to visit on Gracechurch Street.
The maid let me in and showed me through to the garden without ceremony. Mrs. Gardiner stood at the back door, trimming the rosemary bush.
“Mr. Darcy! What a pleasant surprise.” She set down her secateurs and smiled. “Though I confess I was half-expecting you. My husband said you might call again before long.”
“I must apologize for calling unannounced. I realized after Wednesday that I had neglected to bring Bertram’s basking stone. He has used it for thirty years, and I thought the transition might be easier if he had something familiar.”
“How very thoughtful. Though I must tell you, Bertram appears to be adjusting with remarkable composure. The children have been spoiling him dreadfully.” She gestured toward the far end of the garden. “He is holding court, as you can see.”
The Gracechurch Street garden was small but clever: a south wall catching the sun, a square of lawn, a bare fruit tree promising summer shade for any tortoise with patience. Bertram had been installed in a sheltered corner on earth the children had cleared, surrounded by offerings—strawberry tops, a saucer of water, a dandelion with most of its roots still clinging. He looked more content than I had any right to expect.
And kneeling beside him, sleeves pushed past her elbows, helping Samuel arrange a ring of flat stones into what appeared to be a fortification of some ambition, was Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
She hadn’t noticed me. Samuel, self-appointed chief architect, directed her with the gravity of a man twice his age. She laughed—unguarded, almost soft. Alice sketched, and Rosedraped a daisy chain over Bertram’s shell. Clearly Bertram did not require my interference.
Then Elizabeth looked up, and the smile vanished. She stood, brushing soil from her hands, and regarded me across the garden path as if I were an unexpected invoice.
“Mr. Darcy. Again.”
“Miss Elizabeth.”
“You are very attentive to your tortoise’s welfare. One might think you had parted with a child rather than a creature of sixty years.”
“Bertram’s basking stone. He has used it for thirty years. I thought he might miss it.”
“Forgive me. I did not mean to diminish the bond between a gentleman and his tortoise.” She wiped her hands on her apron, and I should not have looked, but the streak of dirt on her chin and the curls escaping their pins held my gaze. She had a way of appearing more alive in this garden with dirt on her sleeves than any woman in any ballroom in the whole of London.
“Mr. Darcy!” Samuel abandoned his fortification and planted himself before me. “Sir Bertram ate six strawberry tops yesterday, and Alice has been writing it down. He also dug a hole, which Rose says proves he has feelings. She says I owe her a penny, which I do not think is fair because feeling things and digging holes are not the same.”
“They may be more closely related than you suppose,” I said, kneeling beside the boy to place the basking stone. I set it in the sunniest patch of cleared earth, tilted slightly as Bertram preferred. The old tortoise extended his head and regarded the stone with unmistakable recognition. He moved toward it with the unhurried certainty of a creature returning to something familiar.
“He knows it,” Alice said softly. “He remembers.”
“He has a very good memory,” I said. “Better than most men’s.”
“Better than yours?” Rose asked, squinting at me with the unblinking directness of a four-year-old who has not yet learned that some questions are impolite.
