Page 68 of Till Death Us Do Part: Book 2
“You are forgiven, and also welcome in my shop, Mr Darcy,” she said, and handed him the valise.
Happy to have the problem so well solved, Darcy took the valise in one hand, and walked beside her out of the coffee house, then a respectful distance beside her to Thorne Books.
24.Thorne Books
Darcy opened the door for Mrs Thorne and held his hand out for her to precede him. Just as she crossed the threshold, a toddler of two or three years ran across the front of the shop on unsteady legs, crashed into her, and grabbed on to her skirt, holding on for dear life.
Mrs Thorne gave a laugh, which Darcy was happy to hear seemed to lack most of the tension she showed around him (understandably). “Good afternoon to you as well, Miriam.”
She then picked the child up, threw her in the air a couple of times, and ended up carrying her on her hip.
She pointed the child to Darcy. “Miriam, this is Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy, this is Miriam.”
The child looked at him carefully, then became shy and buried her face in Mrs Thorne’s shoulder, which brought a chuckle from the woman, and an accompanying one from Darcy.
Another young woman of around twenty, sitting at the same counter where Darcy first spied Mrs Thorne, looked up sharply at the introduction, though it was anybody’s guess whether she knew the name or just wanted to ensure her offspring was not in any sort of mischief.
Amanda said, “I will keep Miriam for a while,” not bothering to introduce the woman to Darcy.
“I will help Cook. We are having beef stew tonight.”
With that, the woman said, “Mr Darcy,” then curtseyed and left the room.
“She and her husband are partners in the business. We have worked together five years, and I would judge us successful, and they are a good part of it.”
He looked around and got the same impression of a large, well-organised shop. “If I may mention that first day withoutrecrimination, Mrs Thorne, I was just turning to compliment you on the shop when—”
She laughed. “You may continue with the compliment and forget the rest. We are beyond that.”
Miriam still had her head buried in Mrs Thorne’s shoulder, but she was curiously peeking out from time to time at Darcy, then burying her face again. Experience with Georgiana’s children, Bingley’s children, and even some of the Bennet sisters’ children had taught him that it was easy to frighten them by acting precipitously. However, if he were wily and patient, and just left them alone, they would eventually decide he was big, but not noticeably bigger or more frightening than other adults. The child would eventually reach out to him.
Amanda said, “All right, Mr Darcy. Tell me five books you love and five you hate.”
Intrigued, he named his five favourites, though when he finished the list, he could easily pick five others, and they would be equally his favourites. He named three books that everyone knew he loathed, and just to be fair, two more that Georgiana loved but he did not care for.
“All right, Miriam, shall we help this gentleman?”
The child was still clinging tightly, so she walked over to a wheeled cart and turned her around to sit on it.
“Hold on, little one!” she said breathlessly before pushing off with the cart at breakneck speed, or what must have seemed so, because the child vacillated between screaming and laughing.
While Darcy watched in bemusement, Mrs Thorne pushed the cart down one aisle and up another, slowing down only marginally at certain spots to pluck a book off the shelf and throw it on the cart atop a growing pile in front of Miriam.
Five minutes later, she appeared with the cart full and the child laughing her head off. “There you go, Mr Darcy. You can take the cart over to the fireplace, where you will see a nice chair.You may of course buy nothing, but if you are inclined towards purchase, you are limited to five.”
Not quite able to follow, Darcy started dividing his attention between looking at the pile of at least twenty books, then back at Mrs Thorne. “Only five? Why?”
She laughed. “Because I am doing you a great service—gifting you with the supreme pleasure of having to decide based on limited choices. I do this often. Rich men rarely need to choose. You have enough money that if you see twenty books that look interesting, you can just as easily buy them as not. Frequently, you then end up with twenty books gathering dust on your shelves, while you repeat the process in your next excursion. By forcing you to choose, I make it more likely you will read and enjoy those you take. I call it scarcity economy.”
“It sounds like I read too many law books, and you read too much Adam Smith,” he said with a laugh.
“Perhaps. I do read a great deal, on far more subjects than would be considered ‘ladylike’ in England, but—”
She seemed thoughtful for a moment, long enough for Miriam to start seeking attention, so Darcy bent over to be closer to eye level and smiled but made no other movement.
Amanda continued, “Aristotle famously said, ‘The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know.’ The world is a much bigger and more interesting place than my upbringing led me to believe.”
“That is the truth,” Darcy replied, then, before diving into a metaphorical rabbit hole, he returned to the original subject and asked simply, “What if I just write down the rest and buy them from your competitor, or sneak back in and buy them from your assistant?”
