Lady Matlock regarded him with the piercing attention of a woman who had raised three children of her own and one of someone else’s, and who had long since ceased to confuse affection with indulgence. “Now. Richard tells me very little, which tells me a great deal. But you are here, and that is what matters. We have a great deal of ground to recover.”
She spoke as though the recovery were already underway—as though his arrival in London were the final act of a return that had begun when Richard rode north and would conclude with the restoration of Fitzwilliam Darcy to the life his birth had prepared for him. The assumption was so complete that it did not announce itself as assumption. It presented itself as fact.
“Pemberley first. You have seen Mr Harding, I take it. Richard said the estate is sound, which is more than we had any right to expect. The north gallery?”
“Authorized. Full replacement of the roof section. The pianoforte is to be assessed and restored as well.”
“Good. That should have been done two years ago, but I could not compel your steward to commit the funds without your signature, and your signature arrived so infrequently that—” She stopped. She set the observation aside with the discipline of a woman who had decided to look forward rather than back. “No matter. It is done now. The tenants?”
“Two cottages require roofing. Mr Harding has estimates. I have signed them.”
“And you have reviewed the accounts yourself? Not merely glanced at the summaries?”
“Line by line. The accounts are sound. Mr Harding has been scrupulous.”
Lady Matlock nodded. The nod contained approval and its shadow—the unspoken observation that a man who reviewed his accounts line by line after five years of absence was a man who understood the magnitude of what he neglected. She did not say this. She did not need to.
“Then we must speak of Georgiana. Her presentation is planned for next spring—the season after this one. That gives us a year, which is adequate if we begin immediately. She will need new gowns, of course. She will need instruction in formal dining, in the management of conversation with people who are neither her aunt nor her piano tutor. Dancing instructions, of course, and practise, for which, I trust, you will make yourself available.”
“I hardly even recall how to dance, Aunt. I would set her back far more than I could help her.”
“Then you will sit in that room andwatchher, Fitzwilliam. Heaven knows she deserves your interest. And she will need introductions—the right introductions, Fitzwilliam, not merely the ones at hand. And she will need her guardian standing beside her when the doors open.”
She spoke with the fluency of a woman who had been planning this in his absence, who had constructed the entire scope of Georgiana’s debut on the assumption that he would eventually return and assume the role her plans required.
“I know little enough of court subtleties, but I will be involved in the planning,” he said. “I want to be. But Aunt—I must be transparent with you. I intend to return to Northumberland.”
The cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
“Sorry?”
“The tower requires a keeper. I have obligations there—to the trust, to the village, to the apparatus itself. I came south to settle the estate and to see Georgiana. Both of those things are underway. When they are sufficiently advanced, I will return north.”
Lady Matlock set the cup down. The gesture was controlled, but the control was new—the control of a woman reassembling her understanding of a conversation that had just tilted beneath her.
“Richard led me to believe you had come home.”
“I have come to Pemberley. I have come to London. I have not come home in the way you understand it.Home is—” He stopped. The word had nearly escaped in a direction he had not authorized. “The tower is where I am needed.”
“The tower.” She repeated it without inflection, the way one tasted a word while deciding what to do with it. “Fitzwilliam, you have an estate of twelve thousand acres that has operated without governance for five years. You have a sister who requires presenting.You have a household, tenants, a name that has been absent from every room it ought to have occupied since your father died. And you intend to return to alighthouse.”
“The estate is managed. Mr Harding is competent. The work will continue.”
“The work will continue. Yes. The work has been continuing for five years. The question is not whether Pemberley survives your absence—it has demonstrated that capacity admirably. The question is whether it should be required to survive it indefinitely.” She folded her hands. “How long?”
“Until autumn.”
“Why autumn? Why not another five years? What happens in autumn?”
The question sparked the hair on the back of his neck to rise. He could not answer it—not fully, not without explaining the trust’s clause, the year of unmarried residence, the mechanism by which Elizabeth’s stewardship would be secured, and the calendar by which the securing would be accomplished. September. September was when the year completed. September was when the clause expired. September was when the future he could not yet describe might begin to take its shape.
“There are conditions attached to the trust that resolve in the autumn. After that, the arrangement will be more settled.”
“What arrangement? What conditions? You are speaking to me in the language of a solicitor, Fitzwilliam, and I have known you since you were three days old. Speak plainly.”
“I cannot. Not until certain matters are resolved.”
Lady Matlock studied him in the way of a woman deciding between two approaches and choosing the more direct.
