Duty and Desire fdg-2 Page 7

  “Not driving, precisely.” She looked up at him briefly but then turned her gaze away. “Remember, I wrote to you that I had begun visiting our tenants and the families of our laborers as Mother did?”

  “Yes, I recall you did,” he protested. “But, Georgiana, our mother never actually ‘visited’ them. It was more a formal affair, held quarterly on the grounds of the largest tenants.” He looked disapprovingly at her. “You do not mean to say you pay calls?”

  She quailed a little at his tone but returned, “Every Sunday afternoon. I have divided up the estate, you see, and visit them in turn on their respective Sundays. Well, not all, but the poorer ones and especially those with little children —”

  “Georgiana!” Darcy choked out, aghast. “Good God, what can you be thinking?” He pushed back his chair and practically leapt from it while his sister’s countenance grew pale at his outburst. Running a hand through his hair, he looked down at her incredulously. “It is beyond all expectation that you should expose yourself so or behave so familiarly — a Darcy of Pemberley! You will cease these ‘visits’ at once!”

  “But, Fitzwilliam —”

  “And what of disease?” he interrupted, beginning to pace before her. “Although I pride myself on the good condition of Pemberley’s people, contagion is not unknown in the lower classes…even here.” The possibilities caused Darcy to shudder, but a new thought quickly gripped him. “You cannot have been alone in this. Who has aided you in this madness? I want —”

  “Brother!” Georgiana’s voice was quiet but insistent. “Please, hear me.” The earnestness of her plea arrested Darcy’s pacing. “Please,” she repeated, indicating his chair. “It is distressing to me to have displeased you and more so when you tower over me.” Her words, echoing Bingley’s complaint of his ‘towering frown,’ served to check his temper but not assuage it. He curtly bowed his compliance and resumed his seat.

  “Fitzwilliam, I can no longer live a life of shapeless idleness,” she began softly. “My music, my books, all that occupied my time were good things and served their purpose, but they are too weak to live upon.”

  Darcy shifted back in his chair defensively. “You have had the finest education it was possible to secure for a female of your station. How can you say it is too weak? What can you know, young as you are, to determine such a thing?” he demanded.

  “I know myself, Brother, and what I almost did, despite my education and the advantages of my station.” Darcy flinched as her words went home, and quickly looked away. “After Ramsgate,” she continued, “all my illusions were exposed. I saw my life for what it was, a listless, languid void filled with pretty toys. Nothing in it had prepared me against Wickham’s deceptions.”

  “If you had had proper supervision — if I had not neglected —”

  “Fitzwilliam,” she insisted, “my own wretched heart aided him, filling in words of love where he had left only dangling phrases. Do you see?” She leaned forward, her eyes intent upon him. “I had to know, had to determine the worst of my case and pray that what I discovered would, in the hands of Providence, be turned to my good.” She rose from her chair, only to kneel by him.

  “Georgiana!” Alarmed at her posture, he grasped her hands and would have lifted her, but the look of her face deterred him.

  “Dear Brother, whether you had been there or no, whether it was Wickham or another, the true danger to me was not from without. It was from within. If for no other reason than this discovery, for the remedy it brought, I thank God for what happened.” She stopped and looked up into his face, searching for his understanding, but he could not give it. He did, though, sense a connection upon which to vent his frustration.

  “Is this the reason, then, for these ‘visits’ and that absurd letter to Hinchcliffe? You imagine you must atone for some sort of inner flaw with a surfeit of good deeds?”

  “You told him not to disperse the funds?” she asked, withdrawing her hands from his.

  “My dear girl, the Society for Returning Young Women to Their Friends in the Country?” He could not prevent the disgust from creeping into his voice and so rose and poured himself more coffee from the buffet. “Wherever did you hear about such females?” he continued over his shoulder. “It is highly improper for a girl of your age even to know of such things, let alone subscribe, and at a hundred pounds per annum! The twenty was more than generous, and that, I think, should be the total of your charity in that direction.” He looked over at her then as he lifted a spoon to stir in the cream, but immediately he put it down again. That look had returned to her face which neither he nor his cousin had been able to remedy.

  “Dearest, what is it?” Silently cursing his incautious bluntness, he returned to her side, reaching out to take her into his arms. But she withdrew from his clasp and regarded him fixedly.

  “A girl my age, Brother? The Society rescues girls my age and younger, Fitzwilliam.”

  “Yes, that is true, Georgiana,” he replied carefully, his brow wrinkled in concern for her, “but it need not trouble you. There are other worthy causes that you —”

  “I wish to subscribe to this one particularly.” Her chin had come up although her voice trembled, “because I…Because I might have become one of those girls.”

  “Never!” Darcy’s outrage at the idea knew no bounds. “Whatever can you mean by suggesting such an idea!”

  Georgiana shook her head. “I believed Wickham, Fitzwilliam! I believed just as those poor girls believe those who entice them into degradation. What if you had not come to Ramsgate? Would I have eloped with him?” Darcy stared at her wordlessly. “I have looked into my heart, Brother, and I confess that, despite your loving care for me, despite what it meant to be a Darcy of Pemberley, I would have gone with him. I was that besotted, that deceived.” She stopped momentarily to catch her breath.

  “I would have searched for you, Georgiana” — Darcy leaned toward her, his voice choked with emotion — “and found you. Wickham wanted you both to be found so —”

  “Yes, so he could hold my honor for ransom.”

  “What do you mean?” Darcy asked sharply.

  “When Wickham gave me up so easily, I made inquiries.” As she gathered herself to tell him, Darcy’s heart almost stilled within his chest. “The rector who was to marry us was a stage player. I would have come to him believing myself to be his wife, and then you would have been forced to buy him as my husband.”

  A blind rage shook Darcy to his very core. Turning from her, he strode to the window, but the picturesque view did nothing to soothe his roiling emotions.

  “Do you see, Fitzwilliam? My situation may have differed in some respects from those of the girls I wish to help, but I had you and they have no one! Let me do what I can!” She came to stand by him at the window. Laying a hand upon his coat sleeve, she continued softly, “And you are wrong about my reasons, dear Brother. I can atone for nothing, and it is for joy of that fact that I do these things and so please Providence.”

  The gentleness of her words gripped him, but he could not accept their truth. “When do you wish to go on your ‘visits’?” he asked, his voice almost cracking under the strain of keeping his anger from frightening his sister.

  “This afternoon, if it pleases you, Fitzwilliam.” Her smile, so like their mother’s, faded at his next words.

  “It does not please me,” he replied ungraciously, “but I and only I shall conduct you on all such excursions in the future, should any more occur. And you will abide by my decisions concerning your safety?”

  “Yes, Brother,” she answered in a small voice.

  “Very well, then. One o’clock.” He gave her a curt bow and left the room with no thought as to where he was going. The aggressive sound of his stride warned all before him that the master was not best pleased, so the halls were vacant as he moved through them. After a few minutes, the sound of claws tapping against the polished oak floors made an impression upon him, and he looked down to see Trafalgar trotting
alongside.

  “Well, Monster, to what do I owe the pleasure? Have you enraged Cook again or made a fool of Joseph? Or is there some other deviltry against whose consequences you need my protection?” Trafalgar whined briefly, then pushed his muzzle against Darcy’s hand until he’d gotten it underneath. “Oh, you want to be stroked, is it? Well, come on then.” They seemed to have made their way to his study, so man and beast proceeded inside. Darcy collapsed on the sofa, and after only a moment’s hesitation, Trafalgar scrambled up beside him and laid his great head on his lap. Darcy stared across the room, feeling everything but seeing nothing. What should he do? About which catastrophe? his inner voice asked sarcastically.

  “Oh Lord, what a muddle!” He sighed deeply. Trafalgar wormed his muzzle under his hand again, this time giving it a lick as he did so. “No, I have not forgotten you, you great ox!” Darcy began to stroke the hound’s soft head and shoulders. Trafalgar sighed in deep contentment and pushed himself even closer against his master. “Would that all my troubles could be so easily solved.” He looked down into eyes glazed over in ecstasy. “What would you say to a ride in the sleigh to pay calls on the local mongrels?” The hound raised his head and gave Darcy a quizzical stare before yawning wide and dropping his head again. “My thoughts exactly, but if I must go, so must you.”

  Apart from the new regime of Georgiana’s “Sunday mercies,” to which he had most unwillingly committed, Darcy found the days before Christmas to be redolent with that season’s traditional good cheer and happy customs. Every servant, from the highest craftsman to the lowliest stable lad, seemed to go about his duties with a lightness to his step and a smile upon his face that testified to their rich anticipation of the Great Day. The news of Pemberley’s return to its customs of the past after observing five years of mourning for the late master had spread well beyond the borders of that estate to envelope those of its neighbors, Lambton village, and even on to Derby. Therefore, it was not uncommon for Darcy to look up from his book or papers to see Reynolds’s cheerful person announcing yet another neighbor waiting to be received in the drawing room or warning that another party had arrived to delight in the decorations of Pemberley’s public rooms.

  Although they were still in silent disagreement upon the subject of her visits and charities, Darcy could not but be captured by his sister’s happy contentment as she made preparation for the holidays. Their days were now spent in fond accord as they prepared for their relatives’ visit. In the evenings, the warmly lit music room swelled with duets, Darcy joining his voice to Georgiana’s in song, or his violin to her pianoforte, in music filled with the joy of the season.

  Darcy could have called himself well content if it were not for a peculiar disquiet that shadowed his days and haunted his nights. He found it difficult to walk through the rooms of his home, dressed as they were for the holidays and heavy with the scents of greenery and cinnamon, and not be reminded of Christmases past, when his parents were still living. Their shades would tease him at the most unexpected times, causing him to look sharply and, when they had faded, to shake his head in self-reproof. Georgiana did not seem so affected, her younger memories being, he supposed, not so strong or numerous as his own. But the poignant memories of the past were not the sum of his discontent. A persistent thread of restlessness, a feeling of incompleteness invaded most every hour.

  In due course, all was made ready for the festivities, and the evening before the expected arrival of their aunt and uncle was upon them. Georgiana quietly practiced her part of a duet they would perform, but Darcy roamed the music room, unable to settle himself into the embrace of any of his usual activities while waiting for his sister to finish. Finally, the music stopped.

  “Brother, is something troubling you?” Georgiana’s voice arrested his rambling.

  “No, merely restless I suppose” — he sighed — “or anxious that all is well with our uncle’s journey.” He turned back to her and reached for his violin. “Are you ready for me to join you?”

  “Restless, Fitzwilliam?” She frowned gently. “If that is so, then you have been ‘restless’ since your return.” Darcy tucked the instrument under his chin and drew the bow across the strings, checking the tuning.

  “You are mistaken, I am sure.” He dismissed her concern. “Regardless, it will pass.” He took his position behind her at the pianoforte. “Shall we start at the beginning?”

  “Shall we, indeed?” Georgiana replied, placing her hands in her lap and turning to him. “I wish you would start from the beginning, and tell me the truth. What is it, Fitzwilliam, that distracts you so?”

  “I beg you to believe me when I say you are mistaken, Georgiana.” He would not meet her gaze but stared steadfastly at the sheet of music behind her. How could he tell her what he did not know?

  “I believe that you are lonely and are missing someone,” Georgiana persisted in a soft voice.

  “Lonely!” Darcy sputtered, putting away the violin from his chin.

  “And I believe that the ‘someone’ is Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” she finished with certainty.

  Silence lengthened between them as Darcy stared at his sister, his mind wholly engaged in testing her theory against his emotions. Patting his arm, Georgiana rose from the bench and went over to a table, retrieving a book from which dangled a rainbow of embroidery threads. Opening it carefully, she plucked the knot from between the pages and turned back to him, displaying it in the palm of her small hand.

  “This is a rather unusual bookmark for a gentleman, Fitzwilliam.” A knowing smile played about her face. “Unless it is also a keepsake, a treasured token from a special lady.” She advanced upon him and took his hand. Upturning it gently, she laid the knot in his palm. “You gaze off into the air or study a room or look out upon the gardens, covered as they are with snow, and it is as if I am not there. Or rather, as if someone else were. The most interesting expressions cross your face then: sometimes wistful, sometimes stern, and sometimes your eyes speak of such loneliness that I cannot bear to behold it.”

  He looked down at the bright threads coiled in his palm; then, hardening his heart, he closed his fingers upon them. “Perhaps you are correct, Georgiana, but you should join with me and pray it is not so, for the lady and her family are so decidedly beneath our own that an alliance is unthinkable. It would be an abasement of the Darcy name, whose honor I am forsworn to uphold in all respects, to make her my wife and the mother of the heir of Pemberley.” His voice choked at the image his own words conjured.

  “Oh, Fitzwilliam, it cannot be thus!” Georgiana cried, clutching his arm. “Miss Bennet cannot be so lowborn that both your happinesses must be denied.”

  “Not both.” Darcy laughed mirthlessly. “The lady does not look on me with much favor, and if she discovers what —” He stopped short. “She has little reason to change her opinion,” he finished. “Do not paint me into a tragic figure, my dear. I would wear the part quite ill.” He bent and kissed Georgiana’s sweet brow.

  “But the token, surely that means something,” she exclaimed.

  “Stolen, sweetling!” He tucked the knot into his waistcoat pocket. “She forgot it at Netherfield, and I appropriated it,” he confessed. “You see, it is more pathetic than tragic. Or, mayhap, a comedy; I know not which. I must consult Fletcher,” he mused. “He would know.”

  Georgiana looked up into his face, her eyes still troubled. “Do you love her?”

  “I hardly know,” he said quietly and paused. “I have little experience with that particular breed of emotion.” He drew her down to the divan. “I know what love is in many of its aspects: love of family, love of home, love of honor. But this tie between a man and a woman…” He paused. “I have seen it in its most sublime form in our parents and, occasionally, in other marriages; but it seems the exception. Men and women routinely profess themselves violently in love, only to disavow the same a month later. Was it love? I suspect not! Infatuation, an incitement to passion by a pretty face or a fashionabl
e address, more like.”

  “Then,” Georgiana drew the word out, “do you put down Miss Elizabeth merely as a pretty face who has incited —”

  “Here now, my girl.” Darcy shifted uncomfortably, flushing at the import of what his very young sister was about to suggest. “I do no such thing, and anything more on the subject would be most indelicate!” He glanced at her and, noting her dissatisfaction with his forestalling of an answer to her question, continued, “At least, I do not think of her in that way ‘merely,’ as you put it.” He returned her triumphant smile. “I admire her wit, her grace, and her compassion as well. I like the manner in which she looks me in the eye and tells me exactly what she is thinking or wishes me to believe that she is thinking. It is difficult to distinguish the two at times.”

  “And you miss her; that much I already knew. Yet, you are not ready to call it love?” Georgiana prodded him.

  “I dare not and will not,” he replied firmly. “To what purpose?” he answered her small cry of dissent. “I have explained to you all the reasons why, for both Elizabeth and me, such a declaration would be profitless!”

  “But would you,” Georgiana persisted, “before God, be well content to cleave only to her?”

  Darcy’s eyes widened at her forthright question, but soon the sight of her earnest face was replaced by images of his own weaving, images that he’d tried to put aside but could not. Well content? His hand went to his waistcoat pocket and drew out the knotted silken threads. Fingering them, he counted them off: three green, two yellow, and one each of blue, rose, and lavender, bound in a most cunningly shaped knot.

  If her beautiful eyes were to look at him, in truth, in the way he’d imagined…He almost allowed himself to drift with the thought but was brought back to reality when the image before him changed to a very different one.

  “Bingley!” he groaned, startling his sister.

  “Mr. Bingley?” repeated Georgiana, recalling him to his surroundings. “Does Mr. Bingley love Elizabeth too?”