4. Chapter Four #3
She seemed pleased by that and urged her mare a little farther ahead before settling back beside him.
They rode through a village where children stopped beside a gate to watch them pass. One small boy waved. Georgiana raised her hand in return, shy at first, then with more confidence when the boy grinned.
“You look happier already,” Darcy said.
Georgiana adjusted her reins. “Do I?”
“Yes.”
“I think I am.” She peered across the fields. “I like being between places sometimes. No one expects me to perform with propriety while traveling.”
“Do I expect that of you at home?”
“No.” She considered the question longer than he expected. “Not exactly.”
Darcy felt the truth of it instantly. “Then how?”
Georgiana guided her mare around a puddle before replying. “You expect me to be well. That is different.”
Darcy’s throat closed. His attention shifted to the road ahead, where it curved between high hedges. “I have wished you well.”
“I know. That is why I try.”
The hoofbeats continued, steady against the damp road. Darcy had imagined himself protective. Perhaps he had been. Protection, however, could become another room with locked doors if one never asked the person inside whether she wished to leave.
Elizabeth would have said that too.
No. Elizabeth would have said it more sharply, and with justification.
Georgiana tilted her head. “You are thinking of something unpleasant.”
Darcy almost denied it. Then his saw his sister’s face, open and anxious and newly brave after giving him honesty once already that morning, and he chose differently. “I was thinking of Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
Georgiana’s eyes widened. “The lady from Hertfordshire?”
“Yes.” He had mentioned her in letters many times.
“Sister to Mr. Bingley’s lady?”
Darcy’s mouth moved despite himself. “I believe Bingley would object to the possessive, though not sincerely.”
Georgiana smiled. “Is she very handsome?”
“Yes.” The answer came before caution could edit it. “But that was never the whole of it.”
His sister studied him with sudden interest.
Darcy looked toward the road ahead. The hedges gave way to a broader sweep of country, hills rising beyond fields divided by stone walls.
“I asked her to marry me in Kent.”
Georgiana gasped. Her mare tossed its head in response to the movement, and she steadied the reins quickly. “Fitzwilliam!”
“She refused me.”
“Oh.” Georgiana’s face changed from surprise to distress. “I am sorry.”
“I deserved it.”
“You cannot mean that.”
“I can.” He adjusted his grip on the reins, though the leather needed no adjustment. “My proposal was proud, ungenerous, and insulting. I spoke of loving her as though it was a misfortune I had condescended to endure.”
Georgiana stared at him, appalled. “You did not.”
“Not in those words, perhaps. The meaning was present enough.”
She was silent for several hoofbeats.
Then, with sisterly bluntness he had rarely heard from her, she said, “That was very foolish.”
Darcy agreed. “Yes.”
“Did you apologize?”
“I wrote to her. The letter contained explanations I believed necessary. Whether it served as an apology, I do not know.” It had been written with great bitterness of spirit. He very much doubted Elizabeth saw it as a proper apology.
“Did you say you were sorry?”
The question struck harder than he expected.
Had he? He had defended himself regarding Wickham. Explained Bingley and revealed Georgiana’s history because Elizabeth needed truth and perhaps because he had needed someone to believe him. He had acknowledged the pain he caused. But sorry? Plainly?
“I do not think I did,” he admitted.
Georgiana’s brows drew together. “Then if you see her again, you must.”
Darcy studied at his sister.
Her expression held no accusation—just certainty.
“Yes,” he said. “I must.”
They rode on.
The afternoon deepened around them. At one posting stop Georgiana drank lemonade and declared herself equal to continuing.
At another, Darcy sent a note ahead to Pemberley, warning Mrs. Reynolds of their arrival and the change in party.
Georgiana bought a paper of sugared almonds from a shop near the inn and ate them one at a time while attempting to look dignified.
She offered him one. Darcy declined. She offered again. He took it.
“There,” Georgiana said, pleased. “Travel improves you too.”
He nearly made some dry answer, but the words failed beneath the unexpected pleasure of the moment. His sister was teasing him. Awkwardly, softly, but teasing him.
How much had he missed while believing her merely shy?
As they left the town behind, Darcy allowed his horse to fall half a length back and watched Georgiana ride ahead.
Her posture had loosened. A strand of hair had escaped beneath her hat and moved in the breeze.
She was young. Younger than Miss Bingley allowed her to appear.
Younger than grief and shame and Ramsgate had made her seem in his memory.
He had been proud of his care for her.
Perhaps care required more listening than arranging.
The road curved westward. The country began to look like home. Stone walls. Uneven fields. The shapes of distant hills he knew before they fully emerged. A clump of trees on a ridge. A bend in the road where the view opened, then vanished again.
Pemberley was near.
With every mile, Darcy became more aware of the house waiting ahead.
Not the grandeur visitors saw first, nor the consequence others attached to his name.
Home. His father’s library. His mother’s favorite path.
Reynolds’s firm affection disguised as household order.
The stream running clean below the lawn.
Rooms where Georgiana had learned to walk, to read, to play.
He had once thought Pemberley revealed him well.
Then Elizabeth Bennet had refused him, and the certainty had cracked.
If she ever saw it, what would she think?
The question had haunted him at odd hours.
During correspondence. At dinner. On horseback.
In rooms where no one spoke her name. She would admire the grounds, perhaps.
She had an eye for natural beauty and no patience for ostentation.
She might approve the house’s situation.
She might laugh at the portraits, challenge him over some improvement, tease Georgiana into speaking, walk the paths he had walked since his childhood.
Then he would recall her face at Hunsford and set the thought aside with deserved humiliation. He might never see her again. That possibility had once been necessary for self-command. Now it was merely bleak.
If he did not see her again, he could still become less deserving of her censure.
That, at least, remained within his power.
He could listen before deciding. Ask before assuming.
Correct what pride had made easy to ignore.
Be better to Georgiana. Better to Bingley.
Better, perhaps, in small ordinary ways no one would ever connect to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
He was not a man of dramatic resolutions, but he could begin.
“Fitzwilliam!”
Georgiana’s voice carried back from ahead.
She had stopped at the crest of the road, her mare shifting beneath her.
Beyond her, the land fell away in a familiar sweep.
Trees gathered thick along the valley, and above them, still partly hidden by distance and the road’s curve, stood the first pale glimpse of Pemberley’s stone.
Georgiana pivoted in the saddle, her face alight. “We are nearly home.”
Darcy rode up beside her.
They remained still for a breath. Then Georgiana grinned, touched her heel to the mare, and raced ahead down the road before he could remind her of caution.
“Georgiana!” he called, though there was no real reprimand in it.
She did not slow. Darcy watched her fly toward Pemberley with loose ribbons, bright cheeks, and the first true freedom he had seen in her for longer than he cared to admit.
Then he urged his horse after her.