Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
After she chased her husband down the stairs, it took Elizabeth a long moment to recognise that the woman he hugged was his sister.
Bewilderment flooded through her. Not only had her friend Georgiana Darcy grown up, but she was here two hundred years out of her time.
Darcy finally let her go, but held a firm grip on her shoulders and looked her up and down.
“I never thought I would see you again,” he whispered.
She had not seen Georgiana since she was fifteen, and Georgiana had only been seventeen when Darcy had entrusted Pemberley’s future to her.
She had always been tall, and she had grown into a striking woman.
Her sweet smile was the same, but there was more confidence in her eyes.
Now she was thirty, and Elizabeth wondered if Darcy felt any regret at missing those intervening years.
Georgiana peered around her brother and noticed her. She smiled uneasily and said, “Elizabeth, how do you do?” She held out a hand, but Elizabeth reached past it and pulled her into her arms.
She had loved Georgiana when she befriended her all those years ago, but had never told her about being from the future. As far as Georgiana had known, her alleged friend Miss Bennet had returned across an ocean and dropped her acquaintance at the loneliest moment of Georgiana’s life.
“I’m sorry I never told you the truth. I hated leaving you like that when you were alone and scared!” She was blubbering, and her tears made her vision blurry. “That night, when your brother was dying, I wanted to tell you I was trying to save him.”
“All is right,” Georgiana said, still clinging to her.
“I am not angry; I never was. Fitzwilliam explained everything after he returned.” Elizabeth had brought Darcy to life-saving antibiotics, and he had left Elizabeth in 2011 to return to the nineteenth century to save Georgiana from an awful man and an untimely death.
Elizabeth let go of her sister-in-law, sniffling and wiping her eyes from the shock and joy of seeing her.
They finally had family with them at Pemberley.
Her sister Jane and her mother had only come to England once in the past thirteen years.
She looked at Darcy, smiling at him to share in the happiness of having Georgiana here, but his eyes were dark and his brow creased.
He was worried, like he was reflecting on a thousand things at once.
“Why are you here?” he asked in a voice more serious than she felt the question deserved.
Georgiana’s smile faded, and she fidgeted with her hands like she did when she was young.
“I fear my resolve has faltered now that I am here. Perhaps I should not have done this.” She blew out a breath, and Elizabeth could not tell if she was more ill from going through the stones or from whatever she needed to discuss.
“May I tell you when I have composed my thoughts? But all is well at Pemberley, I promise.”
Elizabeth read in Darcy’s face that his answer was no, and he was about to insist she explain herself right now.
She laid a hand on his arm. “Fitzwilliam, Georgiana has had a harrowing trip. You remember what it’s like.” Travelling through time at Nine Ladies was an awful, instantaneous pushing-and-pulling feeling, like being ripped apart and crushed all at once while you couldn’t breathe.
Whatever the reason for her to come, and come to them after all this time, it could wait until tomorrow or whenever she was ready. As far as Elizabeth was concerned, she didn’t need a special reason at all. That Georgiana wanted to see them was enough for her.
She grinned to herself as she looked at Georgiana.
Her sister Jane, while a gentle person, was more interested in her own career and pleasing her mother than in any concern about Elizabeth’s life.
Elizabeth would have a sister with her for three months, and she would be grateful for every moment of it.
Darcy still stared at Georgiana, the question “Why?” hovering on his lips. Here was a situation he had no control over, and it galled him. Before he could press his weary sister, Elizabeth said, “Why don’t we go upstairs to bed and talk in the morning?”
“Upstairs?” Darcy repeated. “You want her here, in the house?”
“Not here, Pemberley House, open to public tours tomorrow morning at ten.” She gestured to the room around them. “But here, up in our private apartments, yes.”
Darcy subtly shook his head, and Georgiana dropped her eyes, giving them as much privacy to talk about her as she could.
Why didn’t he want his sister with them?
They had a meaningful exchange with their eyes.
Darcy wanted answers now. Elizabeth glared back, boring into him that Georgiana would stay with them and he had best accept it. He did, but she saw it was a struggle.
“Of course, only wait a moment before coming up.” He kissed his sister on the cheek and then called out to Roland, who had been hovering by the door looking like both the evening and the whisky had caught up to him. “I need your help before you leave.”
Roland followed him with a glassy-eyed stare. He might flee from the crazy Darcy family and never look back.
“It must astound him that I am here, and after all this time too,” Georgiana said into the awkward silence.
“He asked me before he set his scheme into motion if I wanted to come here, to at least see where I was from before deciding what to do with my life. I assured him then that I had no interest in this century.”
Georgiana had been a neglected toddler who had crawled into the stone circle in 1995, and fear for her safety if they sent her back made Darcy’s parents choose to keep her as their own daughter.
She had only learnt the truth when Darcy made his elaborate plan to leave the nineteenth century forever.
“Is that why you’re here now?” Elizabeth asked, keeping her tone even.
If Georgiana abandoned Pemberley in the nineteenth century to resume her life here, what did that mean for what Pemberley was today?
Was that why her husband was not himself?
If Georgiana stayed, it could undo all Darcy had done that let him find Elizabeth again in 2013.
That would absolutely terrify him. “Did you want to return here, to your proper home?”
Georgiana looked around the drawing room that was now a meeting space with folding tables and uncomfortable office chairs. “No. Pemberley is always home, but not this Pemberley.” She gave an uneasy smile. “Maybe Fitzwilliam will be more at ease when I assure him I am going back in September.”
She wanted to ask questions as much as Darcy did, but Georgiana looked rather peaked.
Elizabeth heard Roland come down the staircase and go out the main entrance, locking the doors behind him.
“Come on, we can talk when you’re ready.
We’ll find you some new clothes in the morning.
” Her gown had a lower waist and a broader hem than what Elizabeth had worn in 1811, but it still was out of place in this century.
“That walking gown is beautiful, but people will think you’re one of the exhibits. ”
Georgiana laughed. “I presume Mrs Reynolds’s suggestion to keep the clothes for museum pieces was a good one? I have been setting them aside, although my maid thinks I am mad.”
“It was brilliant,” Elizabeth said as she put an arm around Georgiana and led her up the stairs.
“They drew people here and made a name for us, and helped us afford to keep Pemberley, which supports Lambton. The house, the park, the farmyard, the stables all provide jobs and bring money into the local economy.”
Georgiana smiled through her obvious exhaustion.
“That is a relief to hear. I expect much has changed and will be unrecognisable to me, but I am glad there is still a community here that Pemberley is a part of. I was not sure, of course. The…the way we travelled from the moor to the house was…” She shuddered.
“A horseless carriage? And it was frightfully fast. It made me afraid too much had changed for me to understand.”
Elizabeth gave a sympathetic smile. She remembered how Darcy had struggled with cars and their speed when he first arrived. He adapted well, and so would Georgiana.
At the top, they walked past the portrait gallery to their residence and Elizabeth noticed a space where a painting was missing.
It was Georgiana’s portrait, one that was painted with her husband and young son.
That must have been what Darcy had asked Roland to help him move. She would have to ask him why.
Elizabeth brought Georgiana to their guest room and found her pyjamas and toiletries. “These will be a little short on you, but I’ll go to Lambton tomorrow to buy you enough clothes to get started with. Wait until you try underwear. Definitely in my top five things I missed while living in 1811.”
Georgiana cautiously took the bundle and looked like she might sway on her feet.
Elizabeth showed her the light switch, to Georgiana’s awe, before promising they would talk in the morning.
“Oh,” Elizabeth said, stopping at the door.
“I should show you how the bathroom works. You’d think I’d be better at this.
” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “It’s not like this is my first time acclimating a time traveller. ”
“Mrs Reynolds explained as much as she could.” Pemberley’s housekeeper had fallen through time in the 1980s and had found a home and a purpose living in the past. “I remember what she said about bathrooms and cars, although the bathroom is far less alarming, I suspect.” Georgiana paused.
“She also said I would be allowed to wear trousers,” she whispered. “Is that true?”
Elizabeth laughed and hugged her again before wishing her goodnight. After peeking into Sandra’s room, Elizabeth found Darcy in their bedroom. She could tell by the way he moved around the room that he was on edge.