Page 52 of A Searing Acquaintance
Darcy grimaced. Elizabeth looked quizzically at him and then at Charles, who sat down next to Jane and put his arm around her. “Marc Michaud runs Darcy’s companies in Europe,” Charles explained in an irritated tone. “He’s hosting a garden party on Sunday. Caroline decided to skip it and come here. I wonder if she held a gun to Herb’s head to get them out here tonight.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened.His ‘companies in Europe’?
“How’d she get herself invited to his party, anyway?” Charles grumbled.
Darcy looked miserable. “She ingratiated herself with Marc’s wife. Adalyn loves theater, and Caroline has connections with a ticket agent.” He pulled out his phone, clicked a few buttons, and stared at the screen. “The car’s fixed.”
“You can’t leave now,” Charles protested. “All for one and one for all, right?”
Elizabeth, looking at the group slumped around the fire pit, stifled a giggle. All eyes fell to her, and she cleared her throat. “Sorry.”
“What is it, missy? What’s so funny?” Jane demanded.
“Well, besides the fact that you and Charles look like sad, wet bunnies, it’s the sweetly serendipitous soundtrack. Listen.”
“…but the fever’s gonna catch you when the bitch gets back…” Elton John’s voice chugged out of the speakers.
Charles burst out laughing. “I truly am a brilliant deejay. Master of mix tapes.”
Jane shivered. “You know she’s going to head out here soon.”
Darcy looked up from his phone. “Sorry. If I hadn’t canceled on Marc’s party, she wouldn’t be here. I should greet them, hmm?” He looked mournfully at Charles.
“Absolutely not,” Charles snapped. “I’m the host here. Go to bed, or go hide in your study. You’ve had a long day. And remember to lock your door.”
Darcy shook his head. “It’s not that bad, but I appreciate the reprieve. And it has been a rather long day. I’ll just duck into my study and do some e-mails.” He looked at Elizabeth, and his voice softened. “Have you seen the house? Please make use of the library. I’m afraid the books get a bit lonely asmostof my guests”— he shot Charles an amused glance—“neglect to darken its doorways.”
Elizabeth thanked him and watched him wander into the house.The unknowable, continually surprising Mr. Darcy.
“I won’t let my sister chase him out of his own house,” Charles said flatly.
“I need a shower,” Jane murmured.
“Same,” said Charles. “Hey, Liz, thanks for being here this weekend. We need you on our team.” He waggled his eyebrows.
He looks like a half-drowned Pepe Le Pew.Elizabeth blushed and waved them away before heading off to explore the library. It was quiet, the silence broken only by the sound of waves lapping the beach drifting in through the open windows. The walls were lined with shelves teeming with books. She walked along them, peering at titles. Art books, histories, biographies, Hemingway and Lessing, Balzac and Chandler, Irish poets, and every author she could think of from 1800 through 2000 or so. She ran a finger across the spines. Nothing too recent, she realized. Elizabeth pulled out one of her own favorites, John Cheever’s short stories. “Property of A. E. Fitzwilliam” was written by hand on the inside cover. She held it a little more carefully.
Elizabeth’s gaze traveled to the fireplace, stacked with logs and ready for cold-weather use. The shelves around it held photographs. She moved closer and stared at the black and white pictures of the Darcy family. A smiling toddler holding a conch next to his ear. The same wavy-haired boy, older and solemn, wearing a school blazer and standing beside a ruddy-faced man in his fifties. A beautiful, dark-eyed woman holding a baby. A gangly adolescent and a little girl half-buried in a pile of leaves. A gap-toothed ballerina with a puppy beside her.
Elizabeth closed her eyes.Was blind but now I see. She knew two of those faces: Fitzwilliam and Coco. But she felt like an intruder seeing bits of Darcy’s family and his history, things he hadn’t shared with her. But hehadurged her to go to the library, right? He knew she’d see this.Maybe he wants me to see him. She smiled.He has his mother’s eyes and his father’s hair. Her eyes stung when she looked again at Georgiana, her existence finally made real. She wished for the umpteenth time to remember exactly what Darcy had told her about his sister—about the accident.Could I be more stupid and insensitive?He’d been so sweet: sharing his house, his mother’s music, his sense of humor. And now, this room. He was revealing parts of himself to her. Did he want her to do the same?
Book still in hand, Elizabeth sank down into one of the sofas andstared out the window at the moon. Darcy was right. No one else wandered in. No one at all.
The object of her thoughts stayed hunkered down in his study, staring unseeing at his laptop, his attention instead focused on the events of the past six or seven hours. Elizabeth had been quiet, rather subdued, but then she’d begun talking, smiling, and laughing, and he could swear that she had enjoyed his company. At the very least, she hadn’t avoided him. She’d called him by his first name. They’d been of like mind on music and on Jane and Charles. It had been nice and less awkward than he’d anticipated after…everything.
It might have been easier if he hadn’t looked at her. Earlier, he’d been stunned by her beauty in shorts and T-shirt, summer freckles sprinkled across her nose. But, wearing a simple sundress, she’d been absolutely breathtaking in the moonlight. He’d felt like a fish out of water, gulping for breath and stumbling over his words, especially when he’d noticed one dress strap kept slipping off her shoulder. But Elizabeth hadn’t seemed to notice his clumsy behavior, or at least she hadn’t teased him about it. He sank down in his chair and tried to decide whether that was a good sign.
He had two more days with her here under his roof. But first, he had to make it through tonight. He was grateful he didn’t know in which bedroom she was sleeping.
Elizabeth stared at her toes and wondered why her expensive pedicure lasted less than a week. She could not have been less comfortable had she been a fly on the wall, buzzing about to avoid a swatter and rolled-up magazines.
Caroline and Louisa, both clad in designer cover-ups and swooping sunhats to protect their porcelain skin, had their lips set in matching sneers. Elizabeth wondered briefly whether they always looked that way or had surgical procedures to achieve those matching pouty-lipped expressions. They seemed to think of themselves as social anthropologists, picking through the actions and words of the Bennet and Gardiner clans for proof of their own intellectual and fashionsuperiority. Admittedly, it hadn’t taken long for the redheaded twins to strike gold.
The Kowalski-Bennet family’s late-morning arrival from Queens helped spur the end of Charles the Wicked and his Pirate Wars, Part One. Charles and Uncle Joe had each commandeered a raft, a Bennet sister, and a preteen first mate. Elizabeth was happy to escape Caroline’s company, but she pitied Darcy, who had been kind enough—or perhaps wary enough—to volunteer as lifeguard and referee, only to be saddled with Caroline and her pithy commentary. Elizabeth, floating on the waves with Uncle Joe and Ava, was amused to see Darcy keep an oversized water cannon with him on the pier. Charles—his bare chest and arms bedecked with anchor tattoos drawn by the kids—was a frequent target for “seafaring infractions of the pirate code.” She rather hoped Caroline might suffer an accidental splash or two.
With less amusement, she noticed that Darcy kept his T-shirt on. Elizabeth remembered his scars; he had pulled away when she’d asked about them. Was he self-conscious? Shy of the sun? Cautious about her family’s reaction? She glanced down at the long thin scar on her ankle and shin.Can’t hide that. A blast of water to her neck and the squeals of her newly arriving stepsisters brought her back to reality—quickly. As she watched Aunt Maddie escort the Kowalski-Bennet family into the house, she worried that, just when everything seemed comfortable, the real shit storm would commence.
Charles’s experience with the array of water guns and Alex’s dead-eyed aim finally took out Ava and Elizabeth, who dove overboard to escape the onslaught. It was a sacrifice Elizabeth was ready to make; she couldn’t allow her stepsisters to be alone with the Bingley twins. After lifting Ava up to Darcy, soaking him in the process, she headed for shore, waving off his assistance. Seeing him in a wet T-shirt was too tempting a distraction.
