Page 94 of A Matter of Murder
“What should we do?” Lizzie asked.
“Not a thing,” Darcy said, crumpling the letter up. “I imagine he’ll find his way here soon enough. Until then, all we can do is wait.”
Georgiana’s smile was stiff compared to what it had been just moments earlier, but she attempted to play off the awkwardness. “Charlotte, Lizzie, tomorrow I shall show you all of Pemberley. You’ll love it here, I promise. We can have picnics along the river and pick berries in the gardens, and oh—do you ride?”
“Not well,” Lizzie said honestly.
“All right, then we’ll leave the horses. But wait until you see the library—”
Lizzie smiled and nodded to everything Georgiana said, but her heart was racing. Darcy’s father had returned to England. He was coming here. She’d likely encounter him in just a few days’ time.
If given the choice, she wasn’t sure whom she dreaded facing more: Lady Catherine, or Darcy’s father.
Twenty-Three
In Which Darcy and Georgiana Have a Heart-to-Heart
It was glorious being home.
Darcy hadn’t spent a night at Pemberley in nearly a year, and he’d forgotten, as he always did when he went away, just how much he loved it here. It wasn’t just the fine house, or the familiar servants who’d known him since he was a boy, or how the bustle of London seemed very far when he was here—it was also being back with Georgiana once more. He felt proud and strangely sad to see how much she’d grown in their time apart. Despite her casual appearance when they’d first arrived, she poured the tea expertly and made brilliant and witty conversation with Lizzie and Charlotte. She efficiently saw that they were put up in comfortable rooms, informed the cook that there would be three additional people at dinner, and when she heard that they’d both arrived with little more than a change of clothes, she immediately saw to having spare clothing and garments placed in their rooms.
Darcy knew his sister hadn’t been a child for a long time, but it was strange to realize she was a young lady now. Strange, but nice.
Given the strenuousness of their journey and their quick flight from Netherfield, Lizzie and Charlotte opted to turn in early after dinner, and Lizzie whisked Guy along with her. Darcy had a serious word with Charleston and Mrs. Reynolds in the library about the secrecy of Lizzie’s presence and the need for caution, and he was walking toward the stairs, contemplating just how comfortable his bed here was, when he felt a poke in his ribs and turned to find Georgiana looking at him with something like mischief in her eyes.
“Brother. I think we need to talk.”
He looked down the hall, where Charleston was instructing a footman. “Now?”
She rolled her eyes. “Unless you have more pressing business to tend to?”
He smiled. “All right. The grotto?”
Georgiana wrinkled her nose. “It’s dark.”
He looked out the window. It was a beautiful summer evening, and the sky was dusky, with pinpricks of stars beginning to dot the night sky. “Are you afraid?”
Indignation flashed across her face. “No, but you are.”
“I’m afraid of dark, closed-in spaces,” he corrected. “There’s a difference—”
“Race you there!”
Georgiana took off down the hall, pulling up her skirts soshe could run. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. All right, she might be grown-up looking, but that didn’t stop her from still behaving like a ten-year-old. “Didn’t your lady’s companion teach you it’s impolite for a lady to run?” he called after her.
“I’m sure she would if she could catch me!”
Darcy took off after Georgiana, slipping out a back door to the gardens behind Pemberley. Georgiana eschewed the perfectly serviceable walking paths to run across the lawn, dodging bushes and benches and cutting through flower beds. He shook his head and followed her, feeling like he was twelve all over again. The ornamental gardens were large—one of Pemberley’s many achievements—and they butted up against the woods. There, nestled among the trees, was a small grotto, half sunken into the earth. The outside was uninspiring stone covered in creeping ivy, but when he followed Georgiana through the door, which was sunken down three steps into the ground, it was as if they’d slipped into a different world.
Georgiana was already fiddling with a tinderbox, panting lightly as she struck the box and lit a candle. It let out a small ring of light that did little to illuminate the space. “You’ve gotten slow in your old age, brother.”
“You won’t live until old age if you keep up with those jokes,” he said, picking up another candle and lighting it. “And besides, you had a head start.”
“We started from the same spot,” she argued. He shook his head. Lord help him if he had to contend with both Lizzie and Georgiana in the same house, arguing details with him.
They lit several more candles and carried them to various holders around the grotto. Intricately carved walls and ceilings boasted designs of seashells carved into the smooth rock. They were as familiar to him as his own childhood bedroom given the number of hours he’d spent in the grotto, which had been commissioned by his great-grandfather. This place had been his first refuge, and later, a place he shared with Georgiana when they both needed an escape.
“It’s good to be home,” he said in a quiet voice.