Page 53 of Courting Elizabeth

“You should rest,” I ventured.

“Is that why you sent word to Mrs Allen that I would not receive her?”

I looked at the notebook under her arm. It contained notes from the estate school.

“The ball already demands your entire day.”

“My day,” she repeated.

“I wished to spare you unnecessary fatigue.”

“What you have done is dispose of my time without consulting me.”

The accuracy of her reproach stung before I could fully absorb it.

“I thought I was acting for your benefit.”

“You often think so. That is precisely the danger.”

Mrs Reynolds bent over the flowers to afford us a privacy that a ballroom full of servants scarcely permitted.

I looked at Elizabeth. She was neither ungrateful nor unreasonable. She was simply holding me to a promise I had already made—one my fear of seeing her judged had caused me to forget.

“Mrs Reynolds,” I said, “inform Mrs Allen that Mrs Darcy will receive her at the agreed time.”

The housekeeper bowed and withdrew.

Elizabeth crossed her arms.

“You yield quickly.”

“I recognize certain errors quickly. Others require more time.”

“You will do it again.”

“Probably.”

She uncrossed her arms and set the notebook on a console table.

“One more thing. Georgiana will play this evening.”

I thought I had misheard.

“Before eighty people?”

“Before six. I promised her the small music room and six guests of her choosing—four of whom are under twenty, and none of whom is named Mrs Harcourt.”

“She agreed?”

“She proposed it.”

I said nothing for long enough that Elizabeth noticed.

“Since Ramsgate, she only plays for me.”

“I know. She told me shortly after our arrival, in the scullery, while shelling peas.”

The scullery. The peas. Months of doctors and governesses, and my sister had confided this over a basket of vegetables.