Page 77 of Till Death Us Do Part: Book 2
“Mrs Thorne, if I promisenot to court you,would you allow me the privilege of a dance? Think of the advantages of our respective widowhood. We could sit in this corner and talk allnight, and nobody would bat an eye. We could dance three sets, go out on the balcony alone, I could escort you home. We are unconstrained in our freedom. We should take maximal advantage of it.”
Amanda laughed, glad to see the gentleman had taken her rejection well. In fact, it was not really a rejection so much as a correction, but still it could have gone much worse. If he was even entertaining ideas, it must have stung at least a little.
“I suppose if I will dance with a boy without a single hair on his chin, I can manage one with you.”
“I assure you madam—I can grow an absolutely ferocious beard if necessary.”
With a laugh, she marked him for a set on her dance card. Ever the greedy boy, he asked for another, to which she reluctantly agreed, under the proviso that he dance several sets with other ladies during the night—since he needed the practise.
With the dances organised, she took the man around to introduce him to people she thought might be useful to him.
As they approached Mr Lymington, Darcy casually mentioned, “I was considering investing in his business, but have not finished my investigations.”
Mrs Thorne dragged him to a stop and said sharply, “Pray, do not! He has a reputation ofalmostmaking the next big something or other, but I do not believe he ever delivers. He is very clever at stringing investors along like a trout on a hook, though.”
“I thank you for the advice. Perhaps, you could comment on the other investments I am considering?”
“Of course, bring them to the shop,” she said, just before they were interrupted by a young man who had asked for the next set.
Darcy watched her go, then sought out a young lady he had asked for a set after Mrs Thorne introduced them. She was a good dancer, and an engaging conversationist. Darcy thought,not for the first time, that there was a knack to these things, and he had mostly wasted the first decade of his adulthood looking over his shoulder and being afraid. The young lady was not someone who harboured aspirations towards being the Mistress of Pemberley. In fact, she gladly (though probably incorrectly) asserted that she could not place Derbyshire within fifty miles on an unmarked map.
When his set with Mrs Thorne came, they had both recovered from their earlier disagreement and went to the floor quite happily.
The dance was, by pure coincidence, one extremely familiar to him, etched in his memory for ever. For just a few minutes, in the middle of a quadrille, he found himself almost stepping out of his own body to look at it from another angle. Whether it was the song, the dance, Amanda and Elizabeth’s obvious similarities, her light and pleasing dancing style, or the assembly hall he could not say—but for half a minute, he felt as if he were all alone in the room with his partner, dancing to their own music, unfazed by their companions.
It was absolutely sublime.
27.The Crate
“Ah, Mr Darcy, you are right on time. Grab the crowbar—assuming you know how to use one, or we can find a book with instructions somewhere.”
Darcy laughed. “Good morning to you as well, Mrs Thorne. I am well, and my health is excellent. The weather is fine, and the roads look exactly as they did the last time we discussed them. In response to your query, I can assure you that I am a gentleman farmer, where the key word isfarmer. My father ensured that I learned every piece, every corner, and every job on our estate.”
“Was there ayesor anosomewhere in that diatribe?” she asked, then straightened up from staring at a wooden crate on the floor, smiled, and made a curtsey fit for a duke.
“Indeed, there was a subtleyesin there. I can relieve you of your present difficulty. What is in the box, if I may ask?”
“I have no idea, and at the rate you are moving, I likely never will.”
With a laugh, Darcy went to the storeroom for the required crowbar, shaking his head and chuckling all the way. The month since his dances with Mrs Thorne had been half-enjoyable and half-confusing. The lady always had a quality that he could not quite put a name to. She was reticent or guarded most of the time, but then she would momentarily become playful, as in the present circumstance. He suspected that playful was much closer to her natural state than the reticent face she showed him, but he could not prove it.
Darcy’s best theory to explain Mrs Amanda Thorne so far—and he had given it considerable thought—was thathe reminded heras much of her former husband asshe reminded himof his former wife. He wondered if the two deceased spouses would be for ever a shadow, standing between any real understanding with the admittedly enchanting widow.
He had even spent a good week trying on the idea that Mrs Thornewas actually Elizabeth.Was it possible? He had only known his wife for six weeks, five years earlier. It was a grand total of less than a dozen common social gatherings, four days in the same house where she spent most of her time with her sister, one ball, one wedding, and one extremely uncomfortable coach ride for all of ten miles. Even without typhus, someone who had five more years of age, a mobcap, different dresses, a likely change of hairstyle, and a bold-as-brass temperament, could very well stare him down and convince him that up was down and down was up—if she never broke character.
He occasionally supposed he could answer the question definitively by bringing one of her sisters to Scotland, or even Mrs Reynolds. He had belatedly helped his sisters in law find husbands and was on cordial relations with all. Mrs Jane Warner would come if asked, but what would he say?‘Mrs Warner, I would like you to come to Scotland and prove me both insane and badly mannered?’The ‘badly mannered’ part she could just write back and confirm based on experience, but the verification that he had gone completely mad would probably require personal inspection. And if shedididentify Mrs Thorne as Elizabeth, what then?
Even though Mrs Thorne had warned him off quite thoroughly at the assembly, she always welcomed him with the hand of guarded friendship. She listened to what he had to say, agreed with what she liked, and disagreed with what she did not. She never changed opinions based on who she was talking to, but he had seen her do so based on evidence several times.
Darcy had taken to ambushing Amanda for a midday meal two or three times each week. He came into the shop with the same frequency, but not always on the same days. He occasionally saw her early in the morning or late at night. Not long after the first dance, Miriam’s mother packed her up fora trip to join her husband, who had been travelling with the mysterious buyer who seemed a mythological creature to him. They were expected to be away for one to two months. Mrs Thorne hired a private coach to take her to meet her husband near Scarborough. He had met the mother several times but suspected she did not like rich men either, as she always excused herself within a few minutes of their meeting, though she was generous enough to allow him to keep Miriam’s company.
On that day, he had entered the shop and walked to the back to see Mrs Thorne staring at a large wooden shipping crate, which she very kindly (mostly) asked him to help open.
Returning with the crowbar, he said, “Your buyer would not send guns or bombs, I would hope.”
“Not likely, but mostly because he would fetch a better Thorne in London. They are mad for armaments there. You could say the same for snakes and reptiles.”
Darcy chuckled and went at the crate with the crowbar. A few minutes’ effort had the lid off, and he saw the contents were carefully wrapped in burlap.
