Not Quite Darcy (16 page)

Opening the door, just a few inches, she tossed them inside his room without a word. There was a moment, just a beat, then the reassuring sound of his laughter. “Thank you, Eliza. Pleasant dreams.”

In a half daze, she made her way back to her room.

Chapter Seventeen

It was long past midnight, yet William remained at his desk in the library, pale gaslight illuminating the pile of crumpled papers cluttering the surface. He bent over the paper, pen flying in inspiration.

Heaven's
brightest angel hath lost her footing

And fallen to earth at Yorkshire Upon Pudding

He winced and wadded the paper into a ball, tossing it onto the growing pile. That growing mountain of terrible verses and these newly born feelings inside his chest were a foolish wasteland and not destined to be part of his world. He had the soul of a poet, but not the pen of one.

He rubbed a hand across his forehead and began again. This time, instead of poetic nonsense, he began to write the note he'd originally intended to write. The note society insisted he write.

Eliza,

Please be so good as to meet me in the library following your time with Mother. I shall expect you at four o'clock. I remain,

Yours, 

William Brown 

The note was formal, but not too formal. It was just the right touch. It was proper, at any rate, and took the necessary steps to put their relationship in a more correct perspective. Satisfied, he went down the hall to slide it beneath her door.

Half past four found William pacing the hallway by his mother's bedchamber. Eliza's laughter carried through the door. What could they be doing in there that would cause such merriment? Was she purposefully avoiding him?

He ran his fingers through his already disheveled hair. With a sigh, he rapped twice on Mother's door, then opened it, determined to insist upon a conversation with Eliza.

The scene in his mother's room was something of a surprise, however. Mother was out of bed and sitting in an armchair near the window, smiling down on Eliza, who was seated upon the floor, arms stretched and waving about as she finished her sentence with a flurry.

The nearly forgotten sound of his mother's laughter then washed over him. He could only stare at the pair of them in wonder.

“Oh, William, I've been having the most splendid afternoon!” His mother was positively animated. “Bess has put Miss Austen on the shelf for now and has been telling me the most fantastic story.”

“Indeed, Mother. It must be quite miraculous. You're the very picture of health. I haven't seen you look so well in ages.” He folded his arms across his chest in what seemed to him a rather intimidating stance, hoping that Eliza would glance at him. She did not.

“It's not the sort of tale I'm accustomed to, but I find it strangely thrilling all the same. It's a story of a faraway land where the lovely Princess Leia is being courted by Peter Parker, who due to an unfortunate bite from an Amazonian spider, has been imbued with astonishing abilities. By day he toils at a newspaper, but by night he assists Scotland Yard.” She folded her hands in her lap and beamed a smile toward Eliza. “Thank you, Bess. This was the most enjoyable afternoon I can remember in quite some time.”

“It was my pleasure, Mrs. Brown. Perhaps tomorrow the tale can continue. I believe Princess Leia may meet a new suitor in the form of the mad pirate Jack Sparrow who will put young Mr. Parker through his paces.”

“That sounds delightful, Bessie.”

Just as Eliza brushed by him, he reached out to block her exit with a well-placed arm. “Before you go downstairs, please meet me in the library, as I requested in my note to you.”

She looked up and met his gaze, giving him a tight-lipped nod of agreement.

William smiled briefly at his mother, and followed Eliza into the next room. He immediately retreated behind the desk and sat down. It felt secure, comforting even, to have a big solid block of wood and metal as a sort of buffer between them.

She walked boldly up to where he sat and greeted him with a large, unashamed smile. Her cheeks were still red from the time spent laughing with his mother, green eyes alight with happiness. She had no damned right to look that lovely. He opened the desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper to doodle on.

“What is it, William?” Her voice was almost musical.

“Ah, well, yes. I wanted to speak to you about last evening, actually.”

She gave a heavy sigh. “We're not going to have that talk again are we? You agreed last night, no more hiding. You do remember saying that, don't you?”

“Well, yes, certainly. I remember a great many things about last night.”

“Me too.” She beamed a smile and slid around the side of the desk until she stood beside him.

She was doing that maddening thing which threw him off balance whenever he was around her. That unique quality of hers always spun his head until he completely lost track of what he'd intended to do and who he should be.

Control, my good man. It's all about self-control.

“Eliza, let me finish, please. I heard you out last evening, and I do believe that I should be given the same consideration.”

Her eyebrows rose at this, and her smile faded. She leaned her hip against the desk and looked at him with a somber expression.

“I'm sorry, William. What was it that you wanted to say?”

And so it was time for his speech. The one he'd gone over a dozen times in his head as he'd stumbled through the day. It should be rote by now. He folded his hands on the desktop, and looked directly at his knuckles, weak fool. Looking at her, he knew, would cause him to stumble along the path.

“Eliza, I do not know where it is you come from, and you remain persistent in not telling me, but one thing is clear. You do not know our ways. The ways of society and the ways in which genders and classes are intended to interact. Certain actions and interactions are appropriate and others are not. This is especially important when dealing with someone who is not in one's own class of society.”

Her silence was surprising and unnerving, and he couldn't help but to sneak a glance up at her. The expression on her face was difficult to read. As she watched him, unblinking and serious, he had to avert his eyes again. He looked back to the steady comfort of his hands and the desk, feeling a coward, but knowing what was expected of him all the same.

“Last evening you said that I should be honest with you, and I shall be. I am a man of my word. As difficult as it is for me to admit, last night was remarkable. Our time together was very, ehm, well, it was splendid and meant a great deal to me. But it can never happen again.”

“Why not?” Her tone was not angry, not hurt, but firm.

“Because people will talk. Because it's not done.”

“Why isn't it done? Because you're ashamed of something? Because I'm beneath you?”

“Good lord, no. It's not a matter of being beneath anyone. It's a matter of what people would say, how they would perceive you. My position is to guard your reputation, not sully it. A gentleman cannot take advantage of those in his employ.”

She reached out and placed her small hand atop his clasped ones. Her touch was light, yet fantastically comforting. “Did you ‘take advantage' of me last night, William?”

“No!”

“Did I ‘take advantage' of you then?”

“No. But it's not about that, Eliza. You have to understand—”

“Or perhaps you have to understand. I'm not being used, and neither are you.”

He ceased the contemplation of his hands and looked up to meet her gaze. He at least owed her that much.

She leaned over the desk, absolutely gleaming with a kind of passionate energy. It left him breathless. She seemed to flash it on every now and then. Sometimes when he passed her in the hall, or just now when she was taking care of Mother. She had a glow, an intensity that spilled forth, that dimmed everything else around her.

“How did you feel today? If what we did was wrong, why did you feel so wonderful? So confident? Why did the sky look so blue? Why did you walk down the street and wonder, each time you passed someone, if they had ever felt as absolutely alive as you feel today?”

He stared at her. “How could you possibly know?”

She smiled, radiant. “Because that's how I felt today too. If being with one another is wrong, why does it give us such joy? Why does it make me feel as though I'll burst whenever I thought of how your lips felt against mine?”

“You thought of that?”

“All day long. William, look how happy your mother was just now. That was overflow from how you made me feel. How you still make me feel.”

And William said nothing, because, after all, what could he say to that?

She moved behind his desk, and perched herself on it, seated in front of him. Her small hands rested on his shoulders. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, very softly. Just a whisper and then she was gone.

“You've done nothing but ‘be a gentleman' with me, despite what you may think. I ask for a simple favor from you, and I do believe it's something a gentleman would do. I ask for your continued honesty. Will you give that to me?”

“Eliza, you have my word. I will never have any dishonest dealings with you.”

“Then tell me, are you sorry for last night? Do you wish for us to go back to a servant-employer relationship?”

He could not find the right words for a time. The tick-tick-tick of the clock gears filled the room with a reminder that he needed to say something and yet… Her hands gently toyed with his curls. It was cheating, really. How could he find words when she did such marvelous things with her hands? When she looked at him that way?

“God's truth is that last night was the most wonderful night of my life. It was a bloody epiphany.” He reached out to stroke her cheek with the back of his fingertips. “You're all I think about, Eliza. You're in my blood, in my thoughts, and last night was more than I—”

“Eliza!” Dora's voice boomed from just outside the library door. Both Eliza and William bolted up as if propelled by small explosives. Eliza landed on the far side of the desk with a loud thud and an even louder “shit!” just as Dora opened the door.

“Oh goodness! Are you quite all right?” Dora asked, staring down at her wearing a slightly horrified expression.

Eliza remained on the floor and began to laugh.

Dora gave William a worried look. “Just when she was starting to settle in to the household. She's not talkin' about cows again, is she, sir?”

“I'm fine, Dora.” Eliza stood up and shook out her skirts.

“Well, that's a relief,” Dora said. “Mrs. MacLaughlin sent me to find you. It's nearly five o'clock and you were expected in the kitchen.

“I should go then. Perhaps we can continue this discussion later this evening, Mr. Brown?”

William nodded at Eliza, who cast him a broad smile over her shoulder as she followed Dora out of the room.

He took dinner in his mother's room that night. Their normally silent evening meal was surprisingly lively. Uncle Thomas, his mother's only brother, had mailed that afternoon and announced he was coming for a visit. Mother seemed pleased about the news and chatted about her brother between spoonfuls of cucumber soup.

When William began to assist her with the fish course, he couldn't resist commenting upon that bright flame that had lit both their lives that day.

“You seemed to have had a most enjoyable time with Eliza this afternoon,” he said.

“Eliza? Oh, do you mean our Bessie? Yes, it was most pleasant.”

He busied himself, placing more sole on her fork, but could feel her curious gaze upon him.

“William, why do you call our Bessie ‘Eliza'?”

“It's what she prefers to be called, Mother.”

“Interesting. It's strange that I wasn't made aware of this. When did this change come about?”

“Since she arrived, actually. The agency must have got the paperwork wrong.”

“How odd that she'd never mentioned it to me, but then she's a most unusual girl in many ways.”

William said nothing, guarding his expression lest he reveal a hint of his real feelings for Eliza. He offered his mother some carrots vichy, like an obedient son.

“You've noticed the girl's eccentricities as well, haven't you?” she asked.

“Well, yes.”

“I daresay Americans are quite invigorating to be near.”

He nodded noncommittally, and returned to the refuge of feeding her bites of sole, willing his cheeks not to blush.

“A girl such as Bessie couldn't help but be very appealing to any number of young men. Even men outside her class. It would be most understandable if even a reasonable, thoughtful gentleman would be drawn to such a person.”

William forced his gaze up, to meet his mother's eyes. Yes, it was perfectly clear what they were really talking about now. He'd hoped his mother had been blind to his improper attraction to Eliza. If only she knew how far gone he already was.

“She is a lovely girl. It is wonderful that she has an employer such as yourself, to guard her virtue, to protect her good name. Your father would be proud.”

He could say nothing to this. He merely nodded his agreement.

“I believe I'm finished with dinner now, son. Thank you for a pleasant evening and for your assistance.”

“Certainly, Mother. Shall I read to you this evening?”

“No, I should retire. The day's activities have quite exhausted me. I believe I should bid you good night.”

He kissed her on the forehead and opened the door to leave the room.

“I'm proud of you, William. You've been an ideal son. I do love you. I—I thought you should know that. Perhaps I don't say it often enough.”

“Mother, you say it quite often enough. And I love you too. I shall continue to strive to be worthy of your trust, of your pride in me. Good night.”

It was nearly ten when the library latch finally lifted to allow her entrance. He had tried not to watch it obsessively, torn between hope and fear. He put his book down and stood to greet her.