L
Dearest Mama,
The knocker echoed.
My heart, it began, and she had to stop and press the back of her wrist to her mouth.
“Why did you wear a cheap one?”
“Because it was what I had, and because I had grown fond of it. One can grow fond of cheap things, you know, if they have kept one company long enough.”
“Where is it now?”
Elizabeth bit her lip and curled her fingers into her palm. “It… it is put away for safekeeping.”
Marianne squinted as she tilted her head, for it had apparently fallen to her to serve tea to the doll, and she carried it on as any proper hostess would. “But why, if it was cheap? You could just wear it. You keep the nice things safe, that is what Mama says.”
“It is the dear things you protect, sweet one. Whether they cost much or very little. That trinket is… very dear.”
Marianne considered this, found it acceptable, and returned to the graver business of the tea-party.
Elizabeth sat a moment with her marked hand in her lap, and then she rose, and went to the window seat at the end of the nursery where the light was good. She drew the folded note out from where she had tucked it, and read his tender, dangerous, forbidden words one more time — My heart.
Then, she went back down to put on the face for noon.
Matlock House welcomed him with an uproar that he had known it would, and that he had, in his heart, half dreaded and half needed.
His aunt wept. His uncle wrung his hand and said, “By God, by God, we had given you up,” three times over.
His cousin Reginald, the viscount, offered him a cigar, which he declined, and his latest letter from Richard in Gibraltar, which he read with eyes newly enlightened to the meanings behind tactful, reassuring phrases written there.
“Stop with that dull stuff, Reginald,” the countess had protested at length. “Let the man drink his tea. He looks frightfully underfed. Darcy, really, now that you are home, you must do something about your appearance.”
He smiled, thanked his aunt for her concern, and drank his tea. Georgiana had said little since he walked in, but she sat close on the sofa, her eyes swallowing him and sifting him, and full of questions he could not yet answer.
After half an hour, and after he had satisfied most of his uncle’s questions about the state of his financial affairs and his aunt’s questions about the beauty of Spain, he asked to be granted a private interview with his sister.
She held back until the last smiling face left the room, until the door closed, and then she was in his arms.
“You are truly here. Truly! I was beginning to fear all sorts of things.”
“I am truly here, Georgiana. Let me look at you.” He held her off.
“My dearest girl, you have been frightened. I am sorrier for that than for anything. I could not send word — there was no word to be sent, from where I was — but I thought of you every day, and of how you would be bearing it. I am sorry.”
“You are forgiven the instant you say it.” She smiled up at him. “You need not even say it. You are home.”
“I am, and I want you to come to stay at Darcy house with me, as soon as can be arranged. There is… I have something to tell you.”
“Oh?”
He drew her to the window embrasure at the far end of the room, where the noise of the hall faded and where there was no reasonable fear that Georgiana’s shock and delight might be overheard. He took both her hands.
“Dearest, I was married in Spain.”
“But…” Her brow creased, and she tilted her head. “Lady Honoria? I thought she was here in London. Your letter said —”
“No. Georgiana, do you recall a few years ago, when I went with Bingley to Hertfordshire? I was only there for about a month, so you may not.”
“A little. You wrote to me a great deal while you were there. Oh, dear… you have not married Miss Bingley, have you?”
He laughed. “I do not suppose you remember me mentioning a Miss Elizabeth Bennet among my acquaintances in the neighbourhood?”
Her eyes narrowed, then widened. “The one you said had fine eyes and an enchanting laugh?”
“Ah.” He chuckled to himself. “Yes, I suppose I must have written that. She is Elizabeth Darcy now, and I am looking forward to introducing you.”
She gasped and bounced. “Oh! Fitzwilliam, I… well, where is she? I will see her when I come home, will I not?”
“No.” He patted her hand and shook his head. “It is rather complicated just now.”
He told her the rest — that he loved Elizabeth past anything he had words for, and that she was in London this very day, at her aunt's house in Cheapside, and that no one — not their aunt or uncle, not her maid, no one — must know of it yet, for reasons he would explain when he could.
They were reasons that touched Elizabeth's family and their whole future, and that he was trusting her with a thing he had trusted no one else in this house.
She drooped on the cushions a little, her eyes starry.
“But still. Married. I have a sister! You — oh, but this is the best thing I have ever heard, this is —” She caught herself, dropped her voice, glanced over her shoulder, and turned back to him.
“What is she like? You must tell me everything about her. When may I meet her? Oh, I have always wanted a sister, you know I have, and you have gone and got me one in Spain, of all the — is she very beautiful? Is she clever? She must be clever, you would never —”
“Georgiana!” He pressed her hands. “You must be calm. Truly. I need you to understand how much rests on this being kept close — not spoken of, not hinted at, not written in a letter that someone might read. Can you do that for me?”
“Of course I can.”
He raised a brow.
“I can, Fitzwilliam. I know I once gave you cause to doubt me, but that was three years ago. I would not do anything to hurt her, or you. I promise you, I can keep it.”
“I know you can. Forgive me. I did not mean —”
“You did, a little, but do not worry. I shall be so discreet you will forget I know at all. Only —” the eagerness broke through again — “only you must not make me wait very long to meet her.”
“Soon,” he said. “I promise you. There are things I must see to first — a few days, a little untangling, and then I will find a way to bring you together, and you shall have your sister.” He kissed her forehead.
“She wants to meet you as much as you want to meet her. She said so to me, on the ship. She told me to come to you at once, and let you have your brother back first before she came into it, and that she will love you soon. Those were nearly her words.”
Georgiana's eyes filled. “She said that? Before she has even met me?”
“She did.”
“Then I love her already, and I shall keep your secret with my life, and I shall count the days.”
He was some while in disengaging himself from his family at Matlock House.
He finally returned home a little after two, meaning to be quick about it — to change to a suit of clothes that looked sharper and more imposing, collect the papers from the study, and go straight on to the Foreign Office while the afternoon lasted.
Jeffries met him in the hall with a silver tray, and on the tray was a card. Darcy took it up and read it.
The Earl of Marchwood. And beneath, in a secretary's neat hand, a line begging Mr Darcy would do his lordship the honour of calling at his earliest convenience, his lordship being most heartily glad to learn of Mr Darcy's safe return, and most desirous of hearing his news.
“When did this come?”
“This morning, sir. Not two hours after you went out, by a footman in the Marchwood livery.”
He had walked off the Prudence onto a public wharf yesterday afternoon, come home in a hired cab long after the fashionable hour, gone out this morning to his uncle's house without sending word to anyone else.
And in that narrow window, before he had made a single business call, the Earl of Marchwood had learned he was returned, and known it in time to have a card on his hall tray by noon.
Most desirous of hearing his news. Darcy's mouth curved, without much humour in it. His lordship must keep his own watch on the shipping lists, or on this house, or on both. It was not a comfortable thought, though he supposed he ought to have expected it.
He had meant to go to the Foreign Office.
He wanted, badly, to go to the Foreign Office — to set the machinery of the claim moving with his own hands, today, while there was daylight and time.
But one did not keep the Earl of Marchwood waiting, not when the earl was, whatever else he was, the single man best placed to hurry that same claim through the same office; and there was, besides, a kind of sense in getting it over.
He would have to face Marchwood sooner or later.
Better to do it now, with a good report to give and his wits about him, than to let the man send a second card and wonder why the first had gone unanswered.
And there was Lady Honoria. He did not let himself dwell on that part.
“Have the carriage brought round,” he said, and handed the card back to Jeffries. “I am going to Marchwood House.”
He went up to change after all — one did not make a business call in the same vestment he wore to greet his sister — and as his valet worked, he stood at the glass looking at the gaunt, bearded stranger in it.
The game had begun before he had even chosen to sit down at the table.
Marchwood had moved first. Marchwood always moved first. He would have to play the man very carefully indeed, and give away nothing he was not obliged to give, and remember every moment that the genial old friend who was so heartily glad of his return was also the one person in England with the power, and now perhaps the will, to see him ruined.