Darcy watched his daughter gnaw on her own fist as she stared up at Kirby with large brown eyes like her mother’s. Little Anne seemed open to being held by this blond stranger, but Kirby had reservations.
“I think I prefer the other Miss Darcy’s company,” Kirby said with a polite nod to Georgiana. “She is less likely to cry.”
Darcy stepped forward and picked his daughter off of Elizabeth’s lap. “It will be a long Christmas school holiday if you are afraid of a four-month-old.” He held her out and forcedKirby to take her. They had waited a long time for Anne, and he could admit to himself that he was eager for others to admire her.
“You can even call her Nan, if you want to,” Elizabeth added.
Kirby smiled a little. “But what will she think of me?” Kirby asked, shifting Anne in his arms to look into her face. “She will someday ask who I am to you and why I am here.”
Darcy often wondered how Kirby had felt when he heard his uncle was to be hanged at Tyburn the Monday following the trial. It was Kirby’s testimony of how his uncle arranged, encouraged, and participated in the brutal revenge stoning of the excise man that sealed Markle’s fate.
But Kirby refused to mention his life amongst smugglers and murderers. At the age of twelve, he had divorced himself from his past and spoke only of things that happened after the moment they left the Old Bailey and Elizabeth put an arm around the boy and said, “Let us go home.”
He needed Kirby to know beyond a doubt that Pemberley would always be his home. “Miss Darcy is twelve years my junior,” Darcy told him lightly, “and I know from experience that sisters are fond of their older brothers, and that they look up to them. And it is an older brother’s responsibility to care for his sister, even when she is fully grown,” he added, looking at Georgiana.
Kirby ducked his head and turned pink. Darcy noticed Elizabeth give him an approving look for how he put the boy at ease.
Anne was not actually Kirby’s sister, but they were still a family. When they visited the Bingleys and their children, when the Gardiners visited, when they travelled to Longbourn, Kirby was with them. He came to Pemberley at every school holiday, and Darcy would support him at Cambridge when the time came.
“Will we have to tell her someday…” Kirby asked, stretching to keep his mouth out of Anne’s curious reach. “Tell her how I came to be here?”
“I should like to,” Elizabeth cried, earning a surprised look from Kirby. “You saved our lives, after all. You are a courageous young man.”
Kirby looked as though he wanted to never speak of it, so Darcy said, “For now, she will accept you as you are, not where you came from. You are her family, and she will love you. But if you want to tell Anne that Mrs Darcy and I found you on the roadside and brought you home because you looked hungry, that is just as well and rather close to the truth.”
The room laughed, including Anne, and this first giggle made everyone spend the next quarter of an hour trying to elicit another.
“I hadno idea Kirby worried about how to explain his past,” Elizabeth said to him late that night after the baby was finally fed and asleep. “I don’t blame him for his uncle, so I never considered that he might feel guilty by association.”
“Some will judge him for it, so we must do better to assure him that no one here holds it against him.”
“His history could make for an inspiring story when he is a barrister someday, upholding the law.”
Darcy agreed and then yawned and tried to hide it, knowing that until only recently Elizabeth was awake much later with Anne. Elizabeth still laughed at him, shaking her head as she readied for bed.
“Now that our family is coming for Christmas and Kirby is here, you will have to stay up later than is your wont.”
“My inclination is to retire either to bed or my study room after candlelight, something I am willing to put aside for the sake of good society.” The Bingleys and the Gardiners were good society, and he wanted them here for Christmas as much as Elizabeth did.
“That is why you need two cups of coffee in the evening, without sugar,” she added. “Plenty of cakes with honey, though.”
“That reminds me,” he said while taking off his waistcoat, “I must reduce your pin money. I cannot afford both that and to feed that boy.”
She laughed as she brushed out her hair. “He is only here on school holidays.”
“They must not feed him at Mr Gates’. Mrs Gates is taking the money I send and burning it.”
“Fitzwilliam, you have a droll sense of humour,” she said, smiling at him in the mirror’s reflection. “I wish everyone could see that.” As Darcy watched her, he saw the amusement fade from her expression.
“What is the matter?”
She shrugged and stood. “What Kirby said today had me thinking about the abduction. The second one,” she corrected. “Markle wanted to hurt you, but he never meant to kill you. He intended to murder me because he thought nothing could hurt you more. What kind of person even thinks like that?”
The rigour of his resentment for Markle had long been relaxed, but it was still something they rarely spoke of. “A person who will never harm anyone again because of your courage.”
“Do you regret agreeing to the scheme to lure him out?” she asked, putting her arms around his shoulders.
“Sometimes, when I see how it haunts you.”
