beside her.
“I must say, dolt, that you did that deedily.”
“Whereas you, scruff, behaved with a complete lack of propriety.” He looked at her closely. “You’re not a scruffy schoolgirl, though you act like one. What are you, sixteen?”
“Seventeen, dolt!” She stuck out a grubby hand, its nails bitten to the quick. “I’m Georgie Darcy, but I quite like being called a scruff,” she said, smiling.
“And I’m Owen Griffiths, but I don’t like being called a dolt.” He shook her hand. Her eyes, he discovered now, were a light green, the colour of new leaves; he had never seen their like before. She was, of course, beautiful. No child of those parents could be ugly.
“Charlie’s Oxford tutor! I’m glad to meet you, Owen.”
“I think it should be Mr. Griffiths,” he said gravely.
“I know it should be, but that makes no difference.”
“Why do we guests never meet you?”
“Because we are not yet out. Schoolroom misses with Mr. Darcy for father are sequestered.” She looked wicked. “Would you like to meet the Darcy girls?”
“Very much.”
“What time is it? I was stuck up that tree for ages.”
“Tea time in a schoolroom.”
“Then come and have tea with us.”
“I think I should ask Mrs. Darcy first.”
“Oh, pooh, nonsense! I’ll take the blame.”
“I suspect you take the blame often, scruff.”
“Well, I’m not a very satisfactory daughter,” she said, the curls bouncing as she engaged in a complicated skip down a flagged path. “I come out next year, when I am eighteen, but Mama despairs of my taking.”
“Oh, I am sure you will take,” he said with a smile.
“As if I care! They will lace me into stays that push up my bosoms, style my hair, smear lotion all over my face, make me use a parasol if I go into the sun, forbid me to ride astride, and generally make my life a misery. All to procure a husband! I can do that
“Er-no. Except that I don’t think the age of a filly is in much doubt, so he probably wouldn’t look anyway.”
“Oh, you are the kind of man who throws cold water!”
“Yes, I fear I am.”
She gave another skip. “They will bully me into simpering and forbid me to say what I think. And it will all be wasted, Owen. I don’t intend to marry. When I’m of age, I’ll buy a farm and live on it, perhaps with Mary. They say,” she confided in a stage whisper, “that I’m very like her.”
“I’ve never met Mary, Georgie, but you’re definitely like her. What would you do with your life, if you were free to choose?”
“Be a farmer,” she said without hesitation. “I like the feel of the earth, causing things to grow, the smell of a well-kept barnyard, the sound of cows mooing-well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll never be allowed to be a farmer.”
“No matter whom you marry, you could emulate Marie Antoinette and have a little farm to play in.”
“My father is a farmer in Wales, but I confess I couldn’t wait to leave the barnyard and the cows. They have to be milked, you know, at a dismally early hour.”
“I know that, dolt!” She went suddenly misty-eyed. “Oh, I do love cows! And dirty hands.”
“They have to be clean to milk,” Owen said prosaically. “Also warm. Cows dislike cold hands on their teats.”
They entered the house by a back door Owen had not dreamed existed, and began to climb a chipped, battered staircase.
“What could you possibly like better than a farm, Owen?”
“Academia. I’m a scholar, and hope one day to be an Oxford don. My discipline is in the Classics.”
She mock-retched. “Erk! How indescribably boring!”
They had passed down several interminably long and musty halls, and now faced a door badly in need of paint. How extraordinary! The parts of Pemberley open to guests were magnificently kept up, but the unseen parts were neglected.
“The schoolroom,” said Georgie, entering with a flourish. “Girls, this is Charlie’s tutor, Owen. Owen, these are my sisters. Susannah-Susie-is almost sixteen, Anne is thirteen, and Catherine-Cathy-is ten. This is our governess, Miss Fortescue. She’s very jolly, and we love her.”
“Georgiana, you cannot invite gentlemen to tea!” said jolly Miss Fortescue, not because she was overly circumspect, Owen divined, but because she knew it meant trouble for Georgie if word reached her mama.
“Of course I can. Sit down, Owen. Tea?”
“Yes, please,” he said, unwilling to give up this wonderful chance to meet Charlie’s sisters. Besides which, the tea was just what he loved-three different kinds of cake, sugared buns, and not a slice of bread-and-butter anywhere.
An hour with the female Darcys enchanted him.
Georgie was a nonpareil; if she could be prevailed upon to wear a fashionable dress and speak on socially acceptable sorts of subjects she would take London by storm even without those ninety thousand pounds. With them, every bachelor would be after her, some of such looks and address that Owen didn’t think she would be able to resist their blandishments. Later on, he changed his mind about that. Solid steel, Georgie.
Susie was blonder than the others, though she had escaped colourless brows and lashes; her eyes were light blue and her silky hair flaxen. Extremely proud of her talent, Miss Fortescue brought out her drawings and paintings, which Owen had to admit were far superior to the usual scribbles and daubs of schoolgirls. By nature she was quiet, even a little shy.
Anne was the darkest in colouring, and the only one with brown eyes. A certain innate hauteur said she was Mr. Darcy’s child, but she also had Elizabeth’s charm, and was very well read. Her ambition, she said without false modesty, was to write three-volume novels in the vein of Mr. Scott. Adventure appealed to her more than romance, and she deemed damsels in castle dungeons silly.
Cathy was another chestnut-haired child, but whereas her brother’s eyes were grey and Georgie’s green, hers were a dark blue in which flickered the naughtiness of an imp-no malice. She informed Owen that her father had slapped her for putting treacle in his bed. Of repentance she displayed none, despite the slap, which she regarded as a mark of distinction. Her sole ambition seemed to be to earn more slaps, which Owen read as Cathy’s way of demonstrating that she loved her father and was not afraid of him.
It was clear that the four girls were starved for adult company; Owen found himself sorry for them. Their station was that of high princesses, and like all high princesses, they were locked in an ivory tower. None of them was a flirt, and none of them considered her life interesting enough to dominate the conversation; what they wanted were Owen’s opinions and experiences of that big outside world.
The party broke up in consternation when Elizabeth walked in. Her brows rose at the sight of Mr. Griffiths, but Georgie leaped fearlessly into the fray.
“Don’t blame Owen! It was me,” she said.
“It was I,” her mother corrected automatically.
“I know, I know! The verb ‘to be’ takes the same case after it as before it. He didn’t want to come, but I made him.”
“He? Him?”
“Oh,
“Owen, you’re free to have tea in the schoolroom at any time,” said Elizabeth placidly. “There, Georgie, are you satisfied?”
“Thank you, Mama, thank you!” cried Georgie.
