Page 8 of Expectations (Obstinate, Headstrong Girl #7)

CHAPTER SEVEN

GIVE SORROW WORDS

A n hour later, her emotions under slightly better regulation, Elizabeth entered the cheerful, snug nursery, excusing Bess to her tea.

Cassandra was directing the placement of her troops of soldiers, while Tommy ignored her orders for the placement of his.

Instead, he was labouring over a drawing of a dog.

“Auntie,” he said, shoving aside his mop of blond curls that always managed to appear disordered, no matter how often she cut them, “look at my doggy. His name is Percy.”

Dutifully, she looked. “A very nice picture, Tommy. Why did you choose to call him Percy?”

He gave a small shrug, his freckled nose crinkling. “Papa’s hounds all had names like ‘Thunder’ and ‘Beast’, and they were all mean. I wanted him to have a name that was gentle, so he could sleep in my room with me, and not bite.”

She laid a hand upon his thin shoulder. “I think they were mean because they were trained to hunt, and were never allowed to learn gentleness. But it is a very good name, for a very good dog.”

“I am about to slaughter all of your forces, Tommy,” Cassandra warned. “Your defences are awful.”

“You always make me be the French anyway,” Tommy pointed out. “Why would I want to protect them?”

Cassandra ignored this, making explosive noises in her battleground.

Elizabeth seated herself on the large rocking chair that she had managed to retain from the Netherfield nursery—too old and creaky to be of any interest to anyone, but the repository of a thousand memories, a thousand stories at bedtime, a thousand songs in the night.

She had brought her sewing, but for a long while she simply watched the children play, trying to memorise the moment so that she could hold it in her heart forever.

After several minutes, Tommy went to his bookshelf and chose one of his favourites, bringing it to Elizabeth and snuggling upon her lap.

She set the untouched dress aside and began reading it to him, even though he knew it by heart, treasuring his slight weight upon her lap, pressing a kiss or two onto his curls; before it was half finished, Cassandra joined them, climbing up on her other side.

At the story’s conclusion, Cassandra was the first to ask about Mr Darcy.

“Did you help Mr Darcy with his business?”

About that. Elizabeth sighed.

“Mr Darcy was once a very close friend of your papa’s,” she began.

“That’s what Auntie Lydia told us,” Tommy reported. “She said he is a very great man, with a big house and horses and probably he has a high-perch phaeton like Papa used to have. I am big now, and wouldn’t be scared of riding in one anymore. At least, I don’t think I would.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Cassandra said confidently. “I told you, you would grow up and probably buy one of your own. You were just too small.”

“Papa was awfully disappointed in me that day,” Tommy confessed dolefully.

“Your papa loved you very much,” Elizabeth reassured.

“He realised later that you were too small, and he ought not to have pressed you about it, remember? He told me to tell you how sorry he was that he bellowed at you.” She felt no qualms about the blatant lie, or any of those she had told over the years covering their parents’ poorest behaviours.

If Bingley had had the brains of a peagoose, he would have realised it, and it was not the children’s fault that their parents had grown so obtuse.

She took a deep breath. “In fact, your papa loved you both so much that he was worried about your futures, if anything bad happened to him. Tommy, he wanted you to have a gentleman’s education, and then further opportunities, so that you would be able to care for Cassandra someday when I am old.”

Both children gazed up at her, listening, only mildly curious. She felt her throat try to close around the words she must speak; only the need for truth permitted their release.

“Your father wrote out what is called a ‘will’. It is a document of instructions about important steps to take if bad things happen. As we all know, something bad did happen.”

They both nodded.

“Papa and Mama died,” Cassandra added.

“Yes. One of those important instructions was given to Mr Darcy. He was told to bring Tommy to his home, to raise him to be a gentleman.”

Cassandra frowned and Tommy looked bewildered.

Elizabeth brushed his cheek. “Mr Darcy has taken these instructions very seriously.”

“So when I grow up, I have to go to Mr Darcy’s house?” Tommy asked.

“Sooner than that,” Elizabeth admitted.

His sister struggled to her feet, a diminutive Athena with fiery eyes, facing Elizabeth. It was very difficult to get anything past Cassandra. “How soon? When?”

Elizabeth bit her lip, trying to be the calm, soothing adult the children needed. It was difficult, with the anguish filling her. “Very soon, I fear.”

“Will I go with him? Will you?”

She could not do it, could not surrender this precious little girl; the only thing worse than losing one of the children would be losing them both.

It might be selfish, but she did not think so—Cassandra was much too young to be torn from the only mother she had ever really known.

Tommy was as well, but at least Mr Darcy appeared to have an interest in him.

Cassandra was an afterthought to him, and less than that to her own father.

“Not yet. Not now.”

Cassandra looked so stricken that she immediately weakened.

“It is possible you will go, sometime in the future. But I cannot—I can never go. For now, we must prepare ourselves that Tommy must leave sooner. Mr Darcy is returning on Monday. I mean to ask him for more time—hopefully he will permit Tommy to stay until after Christmas. It is not up to me, however, much as I wish it were.”

“But…but I don’t want to go,” Tommy said, tears beginning to flow.

“It is not fair! It is not right!” Cassandra exclaimed angrily. “He will not go! You do not have to, Tommy. I won’t let you!”

Elizabeth closed her eyes, praying for help that would not come.

That night, she fell into her bed in exhaustion.

The children had, finally, accepted the truth, but had been tearful and fractious the rest of the day—or rather, Tommy was tearful, and Cassandra was fractious.

Even the capable Bess had been at a loss.

All Elizabeth had been able to do was respond to tantrums with patience, try to distract them with their favourite games and a long ramble in the woods, and field questions for which she had few answers.

At bedtime, she had read story after story, unable to refuse long after they ought to have been asleep.

After all, Tommy might never hear her read them again.

Her own tears, the ones she had withheld all the endless day, began falling at last, and she sobbed into her pillow, her heart breaking into a thousand shards of love, grief, and despair.