Chapter 5 #3
Elizabeth had entered their rooms to see flames flickering beneath an empty burner on the gas stove. She dashed into the kitchen to turn it off. The hot tea kettle had been used and set aside—on the counter. The dish cloth next to the stove was a spark away from burning.
“I should have done a better job of teaching you to turn things off when you’re done with them.” Elizabeth said this as kindly as she could before frantically checking that all the knobs were off and no gas still leaked.
“No, no, you did tell me. Like snuffing a candle, you said.” Georgiana flushed deep red. “If I engage the power, I have to disengage it when I am finished.”
“It’s a lot to remember,” Elizabeth assured her, although Darcy had not had half so much trouble.
Georgiana was adapting well enough all things considered, although sometimes toilets were not flushed, or lights were left on.
She would never tell her, but, in some ways, it was like having a toddler again.
Electricity or anything related to cooking was especially a struggle for Georgiana.
Still, it had only been a few days in this century.
Elizabeth had dripped candle wax and smeared ink the entire time she was in the nineteenth century.
She had never come close to burning down Pemberley, though.
“Would you like a change of scene?” she asked, thinking a space a little more familiar and with fewer obvious modern updates might help Georgiana. And a space away from the gas cooker. “All of Pemberley is open to you.”
“Oh no, thank you,” she cried. “I am content here in your rooms. I have also a box of music books to look through, and I can do that here at your dining table.”
“Aren’t you a little bored in here?” When Georgiana looked confused, she said instead, “Do you not find being confined tiresome?”
“Not at all. I like to walk the garden before the grounds open, but the house…” She paused and looked around.
Elizabeth wondered if she was remembering what this space looked like before it was a large private apartment with a kitchen.
“Pemberley—life here—is different. Mrs Reynolds tried to help me prepare, but I am afraid all the changes overwhelm me.”
Elizabeth smiled at the mention of the housekeeper who, out of fear Elizabeth would realise she too was from the future, had radiated dislike toward her. That she helped Georgiana prep for her travel showed that the stern woman had softened a little. “Does she hate that you came?”
Georgiana laughed. “She said, ‘What will happen if all the Darcy children abandon Pemberley?’”
“That sounds like her.” Severe, reserved, but dedicated to Pemberley. “She loves you Darcy children like her own.”
“And she is dear to us, and she explained much to help me be ready to come here, but it is hard to comprehend this place of yours until you see it for yourself.”
Darcy had wanted Elizabeth to hide away for three months when she was stuck in the past, but tedium and isolation would have driven her mad.
How was Georgiana not losing her mind? “I don’t want to push you to do more here if you’re overwhelmed, but I also don’t want you to be bored or lonely for three months. ”
Georgiana squeezed her hand. “It is odd having no responsibilities as far as the house, tenants, or society goes. But I am grateful for this time of quiet.”
“Quiet?” She laughed. “There are people at Pemberley all the time.”
“Not in here,” she said, looking around their private residence.
“I have ten servants, Elizabeth, and those are only the ones who have reason to be in the house. I am never completely alone. And if I am by myself, someone could come in at any time whilst carrying out their duties. But here? Here no one must come in to speak to me about dinner menus or to scrub the grate and lay a fire. If I want to bathe in a tub at home, that involves the labour of at least three people. This is a strange kind of privacy in the twenty-first century, but I enjoy it.”
She could understand that. Darcy had commented on the same thing. It meant they had to do more for themselves but, in general, their lives were significantly more private than the life Darcy had known. “But you must be used to having more to do.”
Georgiana agreed, and then lapsed into silence. If she didn’t want to go anywhere, had no interest in learning about modern life, it could be a long summer. Elizabeth had another thought, one that she knew Darcy would disapprove of, but he wasn’t a mother.
“Georgiana, do you want to learn anything about, or even meet, your birth mother?”
Georgiana dropped her hand and stared.
“Fitzwilliam and I learned who she is,” she added. “Or, at least we have a good guess based on what we know and what Ms Leigh looks like.”
After a beat of silence, she asked flatly, “Does she mourn my loss? Does she presume me dead?”
“Yes, I think so. She had you when she was a teenager, and she was a homeless drug user.” When Georgiana looked confused, she tried to remember the phrase Darcy had used.
“She was an opium eater. She was imprisoned for losing you, and for the drugs, but she got sober and turned her life around. Now she has a program where she talks to school children about the dangers of drug addiction. I think she’s married and has other children. But your mother never forgave herself—”
“My mother was Lady Anne Darcy.”
“Oh, I know that,” Elizabeth cried, apologetic. “I’m sorry. And I think this woman would agree with you. I just, if Sandra disappeared, it would be a comfort to at least know she was alive and had been well cared-for.”
Georgiana’s hard look faded as instantly as it came. “Would it not make you want to have your child back, even if a lifetime had gone by? I could never have a relationship with that woman.”
She knew the truth in her own heart. “Yes. But maybe something is better than nothing after a devastating loss like that? We know when you disappeared and what you were wearing when they found you on Stanton Moor in 1795. Even a letter from you might change everything for this woman.”
“You have a good heart, Elizabeth,” Georgiana murmured.
“But I will neither meet her nor write to her. I do not blame her for losing me at the stone circle, but she is not my mother. I have no memory of her or that life. I owe her no notice. My mother was Lady Anne Darcy. She died when I was young, but I have memories of her. She brushed my hair and sang to me. She is the one my brother told me stories about, the one my father loved and mourned.”
Elizabeth’s cheeks heated at overstepping. “I am sorry to distress you.”
“I am not distressed,” she insisted, “and after seeing you with Sandra, I know why you asked. I may not understand what it is to be a mother, but I understand your compassion and do not fault you for it. I am glad to know you and Sandra better, but I am not embracing this century. You need not keep me busy, and I do not want to meet the woman who bore me, or even learn about every tool or—”
Darcy came in, tossed his keys and phone onto the side table, saw them talking on the couch, and stopped short. He recovered, but then said, “I just forgot, I am needed in the stables,” and turned around again. “I can meet Sandra’s bus tonight,” he called over his shoulder.
Elizabeth pushed down her anger. He was going out of his way to avoid his sister.
She saw in her eyes that Georgiana knew it too, so Elizabeth cheerfully said, “You really are fine with going nowhere, just playing with Sandra, and performing music? I promise not to push you, although I’ll always try to include you, okay? ”
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to parse her words, and Elizabeth corrected herself. “May I ask to include you in what we do and who we meet? You can always refuse, however, and will not be thought rude.”
Georgiana understood and tried to meet her bright tone.
“It is a holiday for me. I have no tenants to meet with or argue with, no attorneys or bankers to write to. Pemberley is currently in the hands of Mr Willers. And you and my brother, I suppose,” she added with a laugh.
“I am only here for a respite, to speak with my brother, and to prepare to face a future without…without my dependable steward.”
She was glad for Georgiana to have a holiday, and she wanted her to have the confidence to confess her feelings for Philip Willers. But Darcy’s behaviour was not helping. She doubted his willingness in deepening his connection to his sister, and that might be what she needed most.