Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Fitzwilliam Darcy was not a man given to anxiety. That was for people who lacked either the resources or the foresight to control their circumstances. He planned, he prepared, he anticipated difficulties and addressed them before they could grow into genuine problems.
But as he settled into his carriage, he had to admit that he was concerned.
He had not gone without letters from Georgiana. She had written faithfully, just as she always did. The letters were neatly penned, properly dated, and entirely correct.
But they did not sound like his sister.
The first letter had been pure Georgiana, four sides crammed with observations about the light on the water, a conchology of shells sorted by colour and species, three queries about Pemberley’s cats, and a postscript inquiring whether the roses had bloomed.
The second letter had been different. It concerned itself entirely with the promenade at Ramsgate: the length of it, the evenness of the paving stones, the hours at which it was most and least crowded.
It was thorough. It was orderly. It was not the letter of a girl who had once devoted five hundred words to the feeling of having conquered a sonata.
Mrs. Younge says I ought to learn to organise my thoughts, Georgiana had written. She says a lady’s correspondence should not ramble. I am trying to improve.
The third letter was about Margate. The fourth about the piano in the Ramsgate house.
Each one arrived promptly. Each one addressed a single subject with admirable discipline, though the last had concluded rather abruptly.
Each one made Darcy feel as though he was reading an essay from a polite stranger rather than the sister who had once closed a letter with Do you think fish have thoughts?
I have been wondering about it all day and cannot decide.
His aunt Lady Matlock had often remarked that Georgiana’s letters were “charming but disordered” in a tone that suggested disorder was not charming at all. Mrs. Younge was evidently instilling the kind of discipline that would serve Georgiana well in society.
Darcy watched the countryside roll past. He could not say precisely what troubled him. The letters were not wrong. They were simply . . . less. It was as though someone had taken his sister’s voice and passed it through a sieve, straining out most of what made it hers.
He had replied to each one, answering questions she had not asked, telling her about the roses and the cats and the beauty of the light at Matlock in the early morning. He had hoped, maybe foolishly, to coax her back to herself.
Fifteen was not ten. She could not remain a child forever, and he would be a poor guardian indeed if he resented her maturity simply because he missed her free spirit.
But he did miss it. It had been two months since he had left his sister in Ramsgate, and he missed it terribly.
Darcy shifted against the seat, attempting to find a position that did not aggravate the dull ache between his shoulder blades. The journey from Matlock to London stretched interminably before him, and he had nothing to occupy his thoughts but the letters.
He sighed. The carriage could not travel any faster. He would need to turn his mind to other things. His escape from Matlock, for instance. That ought to have felt like a victory.
Lady Matlock had married off her eldest son, who was now living with his society wife at the earl’s secondary estate in Yorkshire. With her second son a colonel in His Majesty’s Army and unlikely to marry in the near future, she had now turned her attentions to Darcy.
Her attempts to seat him beside Lady Helena Reddingcote at every conceivable gathering had grown increasingly unsubtle. By the third week, his aunt had abandoned all pretence of coincidence and simply announced seating arrangements.
Lady Helena was pleasant enough. Pretty, not unintelligent, possessed of excellent teeth and a serviceable command of French. She played the harp, laughed at appropriate moments, and never expressed an opinion that might cause discomfort. She would make some fortunate gentleman an admirable wife.
That gentleman would not be Darcy.
He had tried to feel something for the woman during their many enforced conversations and had succeeded only in developing a profound appreciation for weather as a topic of discussion.
Lady Helena could speak about the late summer weather for a remarkable length of time, leaving him free to think of other things.
Unfortunately, his aunt had taken his pretence of attention as a sign of his interest.
Lady Helena had, at least, been bearable.
The same could not be said of the other candidates his aunt had paraded before him.
Miss Fanshawe had opinions about horticulture that she shared at length and without invitation.
Miss Graves laughed frequently, at considerable volume, in a tone that put him in mind of a fox’s scream.
And the Honourable Miss Parnell had spent an entire dinner explaining to Darcy that she did not care for reading, as though this were an accomplishment rather than an admission.
Lady Matlock had been undeterred by his failure to attach himself to any of them. “You are too particular, Darcy,” she had informed him, as though particular were a disease. “You will never find a wife if you insist on finding fault with every candidate.”
He did not find fault with every candidate. He simply found no reason to marry any of them, however little his aunt appreciated the distinction. He wished for an heir one day, but he was hardly an old man. For now, he was content to wait for a woman who interested him.
Darcy extended his legs across the carriage floor and watched the countryside roll past in shades of late summer gold. The harvest would be good this year. The tenants at Pemberley would be satisfied.
But his mind stubbornly returned to Georgiana.
The difficulty with being the guardian of a young woman was that one developed an unfortunate tendency towards excessive vigilance.
Darcy had spent more than four years learning to read Georgiana’s silences, to interpret her smiles, to know the difference between happiness and its convincing counterfeit.
He had become, against his natural inclinations, something of an expert in the moods of his now-fifteen-year-old sister.
It was not a qualification he had ever expected to acquire. And none of that expertise helped him now, when Georgiana was more than two hundred miles away and wrote such dull letters.
He liked to think that there would be a real letter waiting in London.
He would arrive at the townhouse and find a thick packet on his desk, full of shells and sunsets and anxious questions about Lady Matlock’s terrier.
He would feel foolish for having worried.
He would write back immediately, announce he would be with her by the end of the week, and everything would be set to rights.
Two long days after leaving Matlock, the carriage reached the outskirts of London by the time the summer daylight was beginning to fade. Darcy watched the city materialise around him, fields giving way to cottages and then to the increasingly cramped streets of the capital.
The house in Mayfair was lit and waiting, the staff alerted to his arrival by the courier he had sent ahead.
Darcy surrendered his hat and coat to his butler and did not bother to soften the sharpness in his voice when he asked the only question that mattered.
“Tracy, has any post arrived from Ramsgate?”
Tracy received his coat with the unhurried calm of a man who had served two generations of Darcys and would not be rattled by the third. “Supper, sir? I shall have a tray sent up directly.”
Darcy waited for the butler to look at him and then said, “No—the post. From Ramsgate.”
“Several items, sir. I have placed them on your desk.” Tracy inclined his head. “And I shall have that tray sent up with coffee.”
“I do not want coffee.” But Tracy was already retreating towards the kitchens, because he knew what was needed and had ceased to rely on his employer’s input some years ago.
Darcy watched him go, then took the stairs two at a time, dignity be damned, and was through the study door before he had properly caught his breath.
The post had been precisely sorted and stacked. Darcy rifled through it. Invitations, correspondence from his solicitor, a letter from his aunt Lady Catherine that would have to wait.
Two letters from Ramsgate. Surely one of them must be from Georgiana.
He picked up the first. Mrs. Younge’s handwriting.
Neat, businesslike, familiar. He reached for the other.
This script was practical and firm, and his heart sank.
Not Georgiana’s. He could not tell, in fact, whether the writing was that of a man or a woman.
Darcy turned the paper over, frowning at the seal. It was not one he recognised. The direction read Mr. Darcy, 24 Upper Brook Street, Bereford House, London.
He did not believe he knew the writer. But the letter had come from Ramsgate a week ago. Darcy broke the seal. It was dated a week ago today.
30 August, Ramsgate
Sir—
Forgive the presumption of a stranger writing to you on a matter of some delicacy. Your sister was kind enough to give me this direction so that she and I might continue our acquaintance by letter. I hope you will forgive me for using it in a manner she did not intend.
A woman, then, who had an acquaintance with Georgiana. A woman writing to a man she did not know. The impropriety of this was clear, but something else drew his attention more strongly.
Georgiana had given her direction to someone he had never met.