Chapter 2
The two boys arrived home from Eton beneath heavy June skies after a miserable journey through rain-soaked roads. Fitz had spent most of the final day eager with anticipation. His mother’s last letter before term ended had spoken cautiously of her confinement approaching.
At last, a sibling. He scarcely cared whether it proved brother or sister, so long as it was healthy.
The carriage rolled beneath Pemberley’s great stone archway near dusk. Servants emerged quietly into the courtyard as the horses slowed.
Too quietly.
Fitz noticed it immediately.
No one smiled.
No one hurried forward eagerly.
Even the air itself felt wrong.
Mr. Darcy stepped up to the carriage. His face was as expressive and welcoming as stone. “Well, Fitzwilliam,” he said flatly, “your mother is dead.”
For one terrible moment, Fitz did not understand the words.
Dead?
The world tilted strangely around him. “No,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes filling with tears.
His father looked almost annoyed by the response. “Control yourself, Fitzwilliam. You are a man, not a child.”
Fitz barely heard him.
His mother. Gone.
The person who wrote him letters smelling of lavender. The one person who had always looked at him gently. The one place in the world where he never feared disapproval.
Gone.
A horrible sound escaped his throat before he could stop it.
Georgie, standing next to him, snorted. “Baby. I didn’t cry when my mother died.”
The words were not especially loud, but several stablehands looked over at once.
Heat flooded Fitz’s face. He realized suddenly—with horrifying clarity—that everyone could see him. See the tears. See the weakness. See the grief tearing him apart.
And his father was watching with visible impatience.
Something inside him hardened.
Not all at once.
But like water freezing in winter.
He swallowed.
Straightened.
Locked his jaw so tightly it hurt.
Fitz did not cry. Not even when he was alone that night in his room.
He turned his head toward the adjoining dressing room where his trunk sat half unpacked. Candlelight from the dying fire cast faint shadows against the walls, making the room seem unfamiliar despite it being his own chamber since infancy.
Mother is dead.
The thought still did not feel real.
A soft sound broke the silence.
A baby crying.
Fitz sat upright instantly.
The sound came faintly through the corridor beyond his door.
The baby.
The child had lived.
Somewhere down the hall, the infant began crying harder—thin, weak little wails that sounded almost like a kitten.
He hesitated only a moment before throwing back the blankets. The floorboards were cold beneath his bare feet as he crossed to the door. He pulled on his dressing gown hastily and slipped into the dark corridor beyond.
No candles burned in the long gallery. No music drifted faintly from the drawing room. Even the servants moved softly, their footsteps muted as though loud sounds themselves might prove disrespectful to the dead.
The crying continued, and he followed the sound toward the nursery wing. One door stood slightly ajar with candlelight spilling through the opening.
He approached quietly. Inside, a nursery maid sat slumped in a chair near the fire, clearly asleep from exhaustion. One hand still rested against the cradle beside her. The baby cried weakly within it.
Fitz stepped cautiously into the room.
The nursery smelled faintly of milk, lavender water, and sickness.
His chest tightened painfully.
Mother should be here.
Instead there remained only silence and shadows and one tiny crying infant who would never remember the woman who died bringing her into the world.
The cradle looked enormous compared to the baby lying inside it.
She was so small.
He stared down at her uncertainly and tucked the edge of its blanket awkwardly around it. The corner of the blanket smoothed out and revealed a name, embroidered on the edge.
Georgiana.
A sister.
A tuft of dark hair curled across her forehead from beneath her sleeping bonnet, and her tiny face was red from crying. One little fist waved weakly in the air above the blankets.
The only thing left of Mother.
The baby’s cries quieted slightly as he leaned closer, though tiny hiccuping breaths still escaped her.
Without entirely knowing why, Fitz reached one finger carefully toward her hand.
Her fingers closed around it instantly.
The contact hit him like a physical blow.
His throat tightened violently.
“She’s got your eyes.”
Fitz jumped and spun around. Old Mr. Wickham, Georgie’s father, stood quietly in the doorway, a candle in one hand. The steward’s usually steady face looked worn with grief.
“I did not mean to wake anyone,” Fitz whispered quickly.
“You didn’t.”
The older man stepped farther into the room, lowering his voice instinctively. “Poor little mite’s had a hard welcome into the world.”
Fitz looked back toward the cradle.
“She looks so fragile.”
“Aye.”
For several moments, neither spoke. Then he asked in a very small voice, “Did Mother see her?”
Mr. Wickham swallowed hard. “She did.”
“Did she… know she was dying?”
The steward was silent so long that Darcy feared he would not answer. He reached for the blanket and passed his thumb over the delicate embroidery. “At the end, I think she did.”
Fitz stared at the sleeping infant. A terrible ache spread through his chest again, pressing so hard it almost hurt to breathe.
“She told me to build walls,” he whispered suddenly.
Mr. Wickham frowned slightly. “What’s that, lad?”
“Mother.” He kept his eyes fixed on the cradle. “She told me the world is kinder to men who appear strong.”
The older man looked at him for a long moment. Then he set the candle down and rested one rough hand gently atop Fitz’s shoulder. “Strength’s a fine thing,” he said quietly. “But there’s a difference between strength and loneliness.”
Fitz did not answer.
The baby had loosened her hold upon his finger now, drifting toward sleep once more. Her tiny breaths came soft and uneven beneath the blankets, utterly unaware that she had entered the world at the cost of her mother’s life.
He wondered suddenly if she would grow up lonely too.
Father did not know how to comfort grief. Of that Fitz was certain now.
And Georgie—
Fitz’s jaw tightened faintly.
Georgie would not understand either. He would joke, laugh, mock sorrow until it shrank into something ugly and shameful.
The nursery felt unbearably quiet.
Slowly, carefully, Fitz reached down and once again smoothed the blanket near the infant’s shoulder, the way he had once seen his mother do while holding a tenant’s newest family member.
The baby stirred faintly at the touch.
“Georgiana,” he whispered.
The name hurt somehow. A final gift from Mother.
Darcy swallowed against the tightness in his throat and bent slightly closer to the cradle.
“I shall take care of you,” he said softly, the words meant only for the sleeping child. “No matter what happens.”
Mr. Wickham looked away then, as though the moment had become too private to witness directly.
Darcy kept his eyes fixed upon the baby. “You and I shall have each other,” he murmured quietly. “So neither of us shall ever be alone again.”
The infant sighed in her sleep, one tiny hand curling against the blanket.
And standing there in the dim nursery with grief hollowing out his chest, Fitzwilliam Darcy made the first vow of his life that truly mattered.
No one would ever hurt Georgiana if he could prevent it.
No one would ever make her feel abandoned.
Not while he lived.
∞∞∞
September 1799
By the time Fitz went up to university at fifteen, he had already learned how to disappear into himself.
Eton had taught him silence. Grief had taught him restraint. His father had taught him that approval came not through affection but through accomplishment, precision, and control.
So Fitz applied himself to scholarship with the same relentless discipline another young man might devote to military ambition or society.
He rose early.
He studied late.
He spoke little.
And in the span of two years, he completed the course of study that ordinarily occupied far longer. In typical tradition, he was moved ahead to the next school based on his capabilities, not his age.
Unfortunately, he did not go alone. Old Mr. Wickham fell ill two months before graduation.
Now eighteen, Wickham—which he now insisted everyone call him, as there was no Mr. Wickham older than him—had little time for education, but he had plenty of pride.
Pride which would not allow Wickham anything which he himself could not have, and so he had convinced Mr. Darcy to send him to Cambridge as well.
Mr. Darcy’s money meant more to the school than Wickham’s ability, so to Cambridge both boys went—though Wickham was in for a rude awakening, now at a school where the adults valued education over charm.
While the tutors praised the Darcy heir’s intellect, the other students called Fitz severe, though never within earshot of Richard Fitzwilliam, Darcy’s cousin and only friend.
Lord Matlock’s second son—known simply as Richard amongst the family—was three years older than Fitz and already comfortably established at Cambridge when Fitz arrived. Where Fitz was reserved, Richard was easy. Where Fitz inspired distance, Richard inspired loyalty.
And unlike Wickham, Richard’s humor never possessed cruelty beneath it, and he was able to protect his cousin from anything Wickham attempted.
It began almost immediately.
During Fitz’s second week at Cambridge, a group of older students, led by Wickham and his charm, cornered Fitz after supper in one of the courtyards, amused by the unusually young scholar who spoke with grave politeness and dressed with almost painful neatness.
“Darcy’s afraid someone may wrinkle his cuffs,” one boy remarked loudly as Fitz attempted to pass.
Another reached toward Fitz’s books. “Careful, he may challenge you to mortal combat over proper Latin declensions.”
The remarks were mild compared to Eton, but Fitz felt the old humiliation tightening in his chest all the same.
Then Richard appeared behind them.