Chapter 15
Elizabeth
Georgiana Darcy came to Hertfordshire in the second week of the courtship. Darcy announced the visit at Longbourn with such careful, deliberate calm that Elizabeth knew at once how much it mattered to him.
"My sister has been staying in London with Mrs. Annesley," he said. "Bingley has invited them both to Netherfield for a fortnight. Georgiana wishes to meet you."
Mrs. Bennet heard the last sentence from clear across the drawing room, as she heard everything of consequence.
"Miss Darcy wishes to meet Lizzy? Then she must dine here. Hill! We shall need the blue service, and the silver wants inspecting at once."
"Mamma, Miss Darcy has not even arrived yet."
"That is precisely why there is time."
Darcy looked, for a moment, alarmed. Elizabeth took pity on him.
"Perhaps Jane and I might call at Netherfield first," she said. "A smaller party will be easier after the journey."
"Mrs. Annesley will be present," Darcy said, a shade too quickly. "Bingley as well."
"And Sarah?"
"I have no doubt Sarah will discover a reason to be nearby."
Mrs. Bennet had already moved on to planning the later dinner in her head. She granted the smaller call only because she had decided, in private, to treat it as reconnaissance.
On Tuesday, Bingley's carriage collected Jane and Elizabeth.
Jane sat opposite with the particular glow of a woman keeping a happiness entirely to herself.
Bingley had asked her to meet him in Longbourn's shrubbery that very morning, with Mr. Bennet reading beside the window and Elizabeth walking within careful, unobtrusive sight.
No proposal had been made yet. Everyone involved knew perfectly well that one was coming.
"Are you nervous?" Jane asked.
"About Miss Darcy?"
"About meeting the person Mr. Darcy loves best in the world."
Elizabeth adjusted her glove, buying herself a second to answer. "That is an alarming way to put it."
"It is true, though."
"Then yes. I am nervous." She pressed her palms flat against the seat cushion, as if that would keep the rest of her steady too.
"She is nervous as well."
"How could you possibly know that?"
"Mr. Bingley told me."
"Mr. Bingley tells you everything."
Jane's smile went soft. "Nearly everything."
The carriage reached Netherfield. A footman opened the door, and Sarah waited in the hall beside Mrs. Nicholls, wearing now the sharper, more formal cap of a maid in training.
"Welcome back, miss," Sarah said.
Her eyes went straight to Elizabeth's shoulders. The blue shawl had stayed behind at Longbourn today, and something like relief crossed Sarah's face before discipline caught up and smoothed it away.
"The south path is dry," Sarah said, without prompting.
Elizabeth looked at her.
"No recommendation implied, miss."
"I am glad to see your training includes such fine restraint."
Mrs. Nicholls's expression eased by exactly one degree. The tiniest concession, but a real one. Darcy came through from the drawing room to greet them, Jane first and then Elizabeth, and the intimacy of his Christian name sat between them, waiting for a privacy that company would not grant it yet.
"Georgiana is with Mrs. Annesley," he said. "She has changed her mind about the pianoforte twice already."
"About playing it, or about entering the room where it lives?"
"Both."
"Then we will begin with neither."
Georgiana stood near the drawing-room fire, tall for sixteen, fair-haired, and wishing with her whole heart to become part of the wallpaper.
Mrs. Annesley sat nearby with a kind, watchful patience.
Bingley circled the room offering tea to everyone in reach and nearly handed Jane an empty cup before catching himself. Darcy made the introductions.
Georgiana curtsied. "Miss Elizabeth. My brother has written of you."
Darcy went very still, the way a man goes still when he has been caught at something.
"Has he?" Elizabeth asked, delighted despite herself.
"Only to say that Hertfordshire has improved."
Bingley laughed outright. Darcy studied the ceiling with sudden interest.
"Hertfordshire will be quite offended by such restrained praise," Elizabeth said. "We are accustomed to believing ourselves the centre of all civilisation."
Georgiana's smile flickered, uncertain but real. "My brother said you might say something exactly like that."
"Then he has stolen my best material and I demand it back."
Darcy met Elizabeth's eyes across the room, and the gratitude in his face showed far too plainly for a man who valued his own composure as much as he claimed to. There you are, she thought, and the thought had no qualification after it. No "but," no reservation, no careful footnote. Just that.
They talked of the journey, of London, of music. Elizabeth asked Georgiana whether she preferred playing alone or with a partner, and Georgiana admitted, after a hesitation, that she liked duets well enough but could not bear an audience.
"Then Jane and I shall go and examine the view instead," Elizabeth said. "Mr. Bingley may explain his orange trees to us at length. Your brother may turn pages."
"I turn pages badly," Darcy said.
"You may improve under correction."
Georgiana laughed. It was a small sound, barely more than a breath, but Darcy heard it like a bell going off, and something in his whole posture eased.
Sarah brought the music in a moment later.
Two pieces had been laid across the top with a thin blue thread marking each.
Elizabeth noticed, and said nothing at all.
She and Georgiana played a simple duet while the others drifted toward the far windows. Darcy turned pages and missed one, proving his own warning correct. When the piece ended, Georgiana did not look relieved to be finished with it. She looked eager to begin the next.
"Sarah chose this one," she said, touching the blue thread. "She said it does not punish the slower player."
"Sarah is becoming an authority on a great many subjects," Elizabeth said.
"McKeever found the music itself."
Elizabeth glanced at Darcy. "They have expanded operations. From poetry into music."
"Retirement has given them leisure, apparently."
Georgiana looked between them, lost. "I do not understand."
"Neither do we," Darcy said, with a perfectly straight face.
It was not true. But it spared the servants a longer explanation, and spared Georgiana the burden of learning what Caroline had actually done.
After the second duet, the conversation eased into something warmer.
Georgiana asked about Longbourn's walking paths.
Elizabeth asked about Pemberley's lake and, with real effort, managed not to ask a single question about the size of the house itself.
Jane and Mrs. Annesley spoke quietly by the window.
Bingley refilled Jane's teacup three separate times, for no reason Elizabeth could discern except that it gave him an excuse to keep crossing the room toward her.
Darcy watched his sister the whole while.
The severity he wore like armour among strangers had simply gone, and in its place was something Elizabeth had not quite seen on him before.
He anticipated the exact moment Georgiana needed a question thrown her way, and the exact moment she needed to be left in blessed silence.
He did not display the care. He practised it, the way a man practises something he has had years to get right.
Elizabeth had seen enough to know something true about him, and it settled warm behind her ribs.
When the gentlemen drifted to the far end of the room to inspect an engraving, Georgiana leaned toward Elizabeth. "He was very unhappy, after the storm."
Elizabeth turned. "He told you?"
"Not the particulars. He wrote that he had made an offer too quickly, and received exactly the answer he deserved for it."
"That was honest of him."
"My brother is always honest with me." Georgiana's fingers tightened around her teacup.
She looked down, as though debating whether to risk the rest. Then a small, wry twist touched her mouth, so like her brother's own that Elizabeth nearly laughed on the spot.
"Though usually after he has finished being wrong about something. "
The sentence carried Darcy's own particular gravity, delivered in his own sister's voice, and Elizabeth laughed outright.
Georgiana coloured. "I did not mean to criticise him."
"You described him perfectly."
"He has been happier since. Since Hertfordshire, I mean."
Elizabeth glanced across the room. Darcy was listening to something Bingley was saying, his attention only half given. The rest of it was fixed, unmistakably, on the two women by the pianoforte.
"So have I," Elizabeth said.
Georgiana's smile came back, wider this time, and stayed.
Bingley proposed to Jane the following morning.
He arrived at Longbourn before Darcy, survived a full fifteen minutes of Mrs. Bennet's conversation without visible injury, and asked Jane to walk with him in the shrubbery.
Mr. Bennet opened the library window without being asked.
Elizabeth accompanied them as far as the sundial, then discovered a sudden and powerful interest in the winter rosemary growing there.
Bingley spoke without a shred of eloquence, and it suited him better than any polished speech could have.
"I have practised this," he said. "Darcy heard it twice and told me to stop opening with the weather."
Jane waited, her hands folded, her whole face turned toward him.
"I loved you before you were ill. I loved you more once you were, because I found I could not hide it from anyone, least of all myself.
" His voice caught roughly on the next word.
"Your goodness makes me want to deserve you.
I do not know that I ever shall — but I should very much like to spend the rest of my life trying, if you will let me. "
He stopped. His hands were shaking, and he made no attempt to hide that either.
"Charles," Jane said gently.
He looked at her, startled by the sound of his own name.
"You have not actually asked me anything."