Page 118 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

“You cannot come up,” said Master Edward Gardiner. “Not without the word.”

Darcy had surrendered his coat to the manservant already. He stood in the entry hall of the Gardiners’ home with his hat in one hand, a grown man once again stopped by a sentry whose head did not clear the newel post. A grey and white kitten sat on the stair above the boy and stared at him without blinking.

“I was not aware there was a word,” Darcy said.

“There is always a word. Lord Nelson knows it.” Edward gathered the kitten to his chest. “You have to say it or you are a spy.”

It was a female cat, but Darcy thought it impolitic to mention it if he wished to be granted entry.

“And how,” Darcy asked the boy gravely, “is a man to learn the word, if no one will tell it to him?”

Master Edward considered this difficulty. “You may have three guesses.”

“Derbyshire.”

“No.”

“Lambton.”

“No, and that is two.”

A step sounded on the landing above them, and Miss Elizabeth appeared long enough to point at the cat.

Darcy looked at the kitten, who looked back at him. “Lord Nelson,” he said.

The boy’s mouth fell open in outrage and delight. “How did you know?”

“A man who means to take a house must first learn the name of its admiral.”

The boy stepped aside, and Darcy climbed the stairs and entered the small parlour.

There was mending in a basket, a globe with a dent in Africa, and crayon drawings on the wall. It was nothing like his own home, where he had spent so much of the winter, and he suspected he would like it better than any room in London.

Miss Elizabeth stood by the window with a letter in her hand, and she was laughing at him, though she had the courtesy to do it quietly.

“I see you have breached the defences,” she said.

“With your help. He will raise the toll tomorrow.”

“He always does. Yesterday my uncle was made to carry the kitten up himself, and this morning, the toll was a barley sugar.” She folded the letter away. “I begin to think Edward the shrewdest negotiator in the family.”

“Then I shall take care not to let him discover how much I am willing to pay.”

His mother, unlike Master Edward, had been given no opportunity to negotiate at all. Darcy had told his mother to do nothing, and she had not. Though she complained that such restraint was ruinous to her reputation, Darcy thought that his management of his own affairs would do her no lasting harm.

As a result, Darcy had merely knocked at the Gardiners’ door because he wished to see Miss Elizabeth, and a small boy had admitted him in exchange for a correctly guessed password.

After an entire winter of schemes, misunderstandings, and rooms in which he had found himself near Miss Elizabeth without being able to converse with her, the simplicity of it was a blessing.

Mrs. Gardiner entered the parlour with the smallest Gardiner, little Davey, on her hip and greeted Darcy without ceremony. She had apparently decided that a gentleman who had announced his intention to call every morning might as well be treated as one of the family.

Darcy could not be more pleased.

“You will forgive the disorder, Mr. Darcy,” she said, though she plainly expected no forgiveness. “We are a household at war. My husband informs me that the terms of peace are extortionate.”

“By next week,” Miss Elizabeth said with a laugh, “he will be charging admission.”

“I shall make certain to bring coins,” Darcy said.