“There is a woman.”
“There is a steward. Appointed by the trust that governs the tower. She maintains the navigational apparatus in my absence.”
“Fitzwilliam.”
“Her name is Elizabeth Bennet. She is the daughter of a gentleman—a deceased gentleman, from Hertfordshire. She was appointed steward last September. She is competent, intelligent, and of good character. She is maintaining the light in my absence but cannot do so indefinitely.”
“And she is the reason you will not stay in London.”
He met his aunt’s eyes. “She is part of the reason. The tower is the other part. The two are not separable.”
Lady Matlock regarded him until the quiet between them had said what neither would. Then she picked up her cup again, as though the conversation had merely halted for the weather.
“Georgiana’s presentation must still be planned. If you insist on returning to this lighthouse, the planning will fall to me, as it has fallen to me for five years. I am willing to continue. I am not willing to be ignored. You will write. You will respond promptly. You will make decisions when decisions are required, and you will not hide behind distance as an excuse for indifference. Am I understood?”
“Entirely.”
“And when this autumn of yours arrives—when whatever conditions you will not explain have been met—what then?”
“Then I will reassess.”
“Reassess.” She repeated the word the way one repeats a word that was doing too much work and not enough of it. “You speak of authority as though it were a letter. Authority is presence, Fitzwilliam. It is the willingness to be in the room when the decisions are made. Your father understood that. Your brother would have understood it.”
He did not flinch at her reference to George. He had carried the name too long already, and the weight of it no longer produced the visible fracture it once had. But the weight was there. It was always there.
“My brother is dead. I am what remains, and what remains is a man who has spent five years learning to be useful in a place that required him, and who is not yet finished with that work.”
Lady Matlock narrowed her eyes. She was seeing something she had not expected. He was not the man who had ridden away five years ago—shattered, silent, incapable of sitting in his father’s chair without the responsibility undoing him.
He was not whole, perhaps. But he was standing. He was answering her questions. He was not fleeing.
“This Elizabeth Bennet,” she said. “Richard did not speak of her. Richard spoke of the tower, the coast, the village, the flame. He spoke of everything surrounding her with such elaborate care that her absence from his account was the most conspicuous thing in it.”
He said nothing. There was nothing to say that Lady Matlock had not already concluded.
“Is she the reason you finally responded to the family’s requests? I know you, Fitzwilliam. You would have sent Richard packing without a word if you hadnot already been prepared to return on your own. Is it she who has finally caused you to think about your future?”
The question was so precise, so unanswerable, so exactly the shape of the truth, that it stopped his breath for a count of three.
“Yes.”
She frowned. “I expect you are perfectly aware of the expectations upon you. The necessities of re-establishing Pemberley’s position in society, of bringing to it a bride of suitable standing with a dowry sufficient to provide for the establishment of any children. Your absence has damaged your prospects in that regard and increased the necessity of certain... alliances.Properconnections.”
He forced his hand to stop trembling on his cup. Of course, he knew she would say this. Everyone would be saying it. Had he not gone away, he would likely already have been married by now, to some simpering heiress who plumped Pemberley’s coffers and filled Pemberley’s nursery. And he would have been poorer and lonelier for it.
“Aunt, I have been absent from society for five years. I have spent that time keeping a lighthouse on a cliff in Northumberland, alone with my thoughts and the tide. I have hauled oil, trimmed wicks, and slept on a canvas cot in a room twelve feet across. I have no connexions in any drawing room in England that have not gone stale in my absence. Whatever reputation I possessed at twenty-three has been replaced by five years of silence and speculation. What respectable father—what father who has paid any attention at all to the whereabouts of Fitzwilliam Darcy—would permit his daughter within courting distance of a man who abandoned his estate, his sister, and his name to tend a lamp on a rock?”
Lady Matlock opened her mouth. He did not permit the interruption.
“The answer is none. No father of sense would entertain it, at least not for a year or two, and even then, they would still whisper about me. Wonder about my sanity. I am not a prospect, Aunt. I am a cautionary tale. The families you imagine allying with have spent five years explaining the absence of Fitzwilliam Darcy to their daughters as an example of what grief does to men of otherwise sound inheritance, and they are not wrong. I am aware of what I am. I am aware of what I have made of myself. And I would sooner ride back to Northumberland tonight and let every drawing room in Derbyshire and London hang than sit in a parlour and pretend to be the man those families require.”
Lady Matlock’s cup had stopped halfway to her mouth again. She set it down. She looked at him—not with the piercing calculation she had employed since he sat down, but with something rawer. Surprise, perhaps. Or recognition.
“You have given this some thought.”
“I have given it five years of thought. The thinking is not new. Only the audience.”
“And... who is this Miss Bennet that you mean to ally yourself with her? Who are her people?”
