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“No, sir. Only a fresh sheet wanted.”

He took it from her. “I shall carry it.”

At the nursery door he knocked softly. Ruth told him to come in.

Martha was holding Anna beside the fire. The child had stopped crying but looked thoroughly displeased by the interruption to her night. Ruth had drawn back the bedding and was lifting the damp sheet from the cot.

“She has been fed,” Martha said. “Now she objects to waiting.”

Darcy gave Ruth the clean sheet.

“May I help?”

“If you would take that corner, sir, I can put this one straight.”

He did as she asked. It was a small cot, and an even smaller sheet, yet he managed to hold the wrong edge first. Ruth corrected him without embarrassment.

They smoothed the bed together. Martha gave Anna into his arms while she fetched the blanket from the chair. The child looked at him with wet lashes and pressed her cheek against his dressing gown.

“There,” he whispered. “You have brought us all out of bed. I hope the result satisfies you.”

She took a fold of the soft cloth in her fist.

He did not attempt to put her down at once. Ruth finished arranging the bedding, Martha settled into the low chair, and Darcy walked slowly between the window and the hearth until Anna’s fingers loosened.

“Now, perhaps,” Ruth said.

He laid her in the cot with the nurse’s quiet direction. Anna stirred when his arm left her, then settled after Martha drew the familiar blanket into place.

Darcy remained until her breathing had grown even again.

He was tired when he returned to bed. It was an ordinary tiredness, earned by being awake at an inconvenient hour and holding a child who would not remember it in the morning. He found it easier to sleep afterwards than he had before.

After breakfast he accompanied them back to the cottage.

Thomas came to the gate before the carriage stopped. He tried to ask Martha how the night had gone while looking past her at Anna, and received no useful answer until Ruth had handed the child down.

“She slept,” Martha said. “Then she woke, as she generally does. Mr. Darcy helped with the bed.”

Thomas glanced at him. “Did he?”

“After being instructed,” Darcy admitted.

The man smiled and offered Anna his finger. She caught it immediately.

They went inside. Martha put the kettle nearer the fire, Ruth settled with the child, and Thomas began telling her about a neighbour’s dog as if she had been absent for a week and must hear everything she had missed.

Darcy accepted a cup of tea.

Anna and Ruth would return to Pemberley that afternoon. Martha would help settle her again; the spare room remained hers if she wished to stay.

Darcy sat with them until Anna tired of Thomas’s finger and reached for the wooden ring. It lay upon the same low shelf where Martha had always kept the things most often wanted, though Thomas had moved the loose cloth well out of reach.

Darcy was glad to sit there and take his place among the people she already loved.

Chapter Forty-Five

ELIZABETH SAW THE carriage before anybody told her it had reached the drive.