Page 95 of A Matter of Murder

“Next time don’t stay away so long,” Georgiana said. The cadence of her words sounded lighthearted, but Darcy heard the hurt beneath it.

He winced. “I am sorry, Georgie. I wish I could say I had a good reason, but it all sounds like sorry excuses. I shouldn’t have left you alone here for so many months.”

She looked down. “What were you to do? Father gave us our marching orders.”

Darcy was sick of marching. “Even still. How have you been? The truth, not what you tell others or what you think I want to hear. If things have been miserable—”

“Not miserable,” she said. “I know I begged for you to visit, but it isn’t as though I was left to waste away in a nunnery. Pemberley is an enchanting prison, and Mrs. Watts isn’t entirely awful.”

“What’s she like?” Darcy asked.

“Sickly. And a bit pedantic, if I am being honest. But she’s not terrible company. We would get the papers from London,and I’d share your exploits with her and she’d make a face”—Georgiana puckered her lips as if she’d just sucked on a lemon wedge—“and she’d say, ‘A proper gentleman like your brother ought to settle down, not find himself running amok!’”

“She sounds like a delight,” Darcy remarked dryly.

“Oh, you haven’t even heard her expound upon her opinions of proper table etiquette,” Georgiana said with an eye roll. “But she is right, you know. A proper gentleman like you ought to settle down. And now that you’ve brought Lizzie here...”

Darcy could see where this was going. “Georgie, I didn’t bring her here to ask her to marry me.”

“No, you brought her here to keep her safe. But why not ask her?”

“It’s complicated.”

Her face darkened. “Don’t tell me you haven’t asked her to marry you because ofhim?”

“No,” Darcy said honestly, because even if his father were begging him to propose, he still wouldn’t unless he knew Lizzie was ready.

But Georgiana didn’t appear to be listening. “For someone who acts so indifferent to us, he’s rather good at making our lives miserable. You know, for my birthday, he wished me a happy fourteenth year!”

Darcy winced. “He forgot.”

“He’s wished me a happy fourteenth year for two years in a row!”

Darcy opened his mouth to offer some words of comfort and found that he couldn’t summon any. It was just as well, because Georgiana didn’t appear to require them. “He left me here with no one but Mrs. Watts and nothing to do or look forward to. I should be in London, having a season at the very least, but instead I am locked up like one of his many priceless treasures he stashes away, only worse—because I am his daughter, not a plaything! And you are his son, and you should be able to marry the girl you love. Instead, we both obey his every command and live the lives he’s imagined for us. Well, I don’t want that, and neither should you—it’s no way to live!”

It appeared that Georgiana was not as content as she let on in her letters. Profound guilt weighed upon Darcy, and not just over having abandoned her. He was just old enough to remember their father as he had been before their mother died. Sometimes the memories felt like dreams. He used to take Darcy to the river’s edge, and they’d race wooden boats in the gentle current. He rode an impossibly tall horse, settling Darcy in front of him in the saddle, keeping him in place with his strong arm. He laughed. Darcy couldn’t remember his father laughing after Georgiana’s birth.

Everything changed the day Darcy’s mother drew her last breath and Georgiana her first. From then on, there were nannies and nurses, and later a tutor for him and a governess for Georgiana. Their father never set foot in the nursery, and when he was home, he’d summon Darcy like he was a pupil and hisfather a headmaster. It had prepared him for school—but his father had ceased being a father.

Darcy wasn’t sure whether he was lucky to have these memories or cursed because he knew what they’d lost. He’d never told Georgiana about them, afraid that doing so would hurt her even more.

But she was hurt now. He hadn’t been able to protect her, not fully.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you ever just yearn to break free and do what you want, for the sake of doing it? Consequences be damned?”

“Georgie!” he admonished.

“What? I read books. I can curse if I want.”

“Hellion,” he pronounced, but there was no bite in his words. “And yes, since you’re asking—I do. All the time. And... I might have done a bit of breaking free, consequences be damned, as you so eloquently put it.”

“Really?”

“Really. But the problem is, thereareconsequences. I love Lizzie very much. I want to marry her. But Father has threatened to disown me if I do.”

Georgiana went still. “He wouldn’t.”