Page 41 of The Secret Diary of Anne de Bourgh

At luncheon Darcy told us that Richard will arrive on Friday, if he continues well enough for the journey. Sanderson is to accompany him, and my uncle has agreed to spare him for a visit of some days.

Friday is only three days away.

Mary has been saying that October seems a very long way off. I begin to understand her.

16 July

Richard is here.

He arrived yesterday afternoon, and I had spent so much of the day listening for a carriage that when it did come, I was quite unable to pretend indifference. I was at the window even before Georgiana, who made no attempt whatever to conceal her pleasure.

He came into the house leaning upon his cane, with Sanderson following behind him. I thought him tired, but he was smiling as Georgiana hurried forward to greet him.

I waited until she had released him before offering my own welcome.

“Annie.” He took my hand, looking down at me with such evident pleasure that I could scarcely remember what I had intended to say. “How good it is to see you.”

“And you,” I managed. “We have been expecting you all day.”

“Have you? How nice it is to be so welcomed!”

Darcy insisted that he sit down before answering any more questions. Richard submitted, though he remarked that he had hoped to escape such attentions by leaving his father’s house.

“You have come to the wrong place for that,” Lizzy told him.

“I begin to perceive my mistake.”

Sanderson had brought a small parcel into the room with him. Once Richard was seated, he took it from his valet and held it out to me.

“I brought you something.”

“For me?”

“Yes, for you. Unless you have developed an objection to sweets since we last met.”

I had no such objection, and said so rather quickly.

The parcel contained a little box of sugar drops, pale yellow and flavoured with lemon. He had bought them at a confectioner’s in Matlock, he told me, having thought that I might like them.

I took one at his invitation. It was very sweet indeed, with just enough sharpness to make me wish to taste it again.

“Are they satisfactory?” he asked.

“Very.”

“I am glad. I considered keeping them, but Sanderson knew for whom they were intended, and I feared he would inform upon me.”

Sanderson, who had been attending to the arrangement of a cushion, did not look up.

“I should not presume to interfere with the colonel’s gifts, miss.”

“Which means that he would have told you,” Richard said.

I laughed and offered the box to Georgiana, who accepted a sweet at once. Kitty and Lizzy were equally willing to give their opinions, though Mary politely declined, and I was obliged to rescue the box before it could make a second journey around the room.

Richard watched all this with considerable amusement.

“I see I ought to have brought a larger quantity.”