“Good.”
“I was going to say…” Darcy paused again. “She is going to take it well, you know. Whatever face she puts on it.”
Fitzwilliam looked at him.
“She has more resolution than she is given credit for,” Darcy said. “Than she gives herself credit for.” He set the cue down again. “I only mean that you need not brace yourself for hysterics.”
“I know.” Fitzwilliam had not been bracing himself for hysterics. He had been bracing himself for the opposite; for Lydia holding herself together with every ounce of that iron she kept hidden under the brown curls and the bright chatter, and for the cost of it, which he would see and not be able to address. “I know.”
Another silence, easier than the first.
“She will need people around her,” Fitzwilliam said. “While I am away. Your offer, when you made it…”
“It was not an offer. It stands as a fact.” Darcy’s tone did not invite debate. “Lydia will have a home at Pemberley whenever she wishes it. Georgiana will like her, I think, once she knows her properly.” He looked at his cousin steadily. “And I give you my word, Richard. I will keep her safe.”
The use of his Christian name was so uncharacteristic that Fitzwilliam found he had nothing adequate to say in return. He picked up his cue, discovered he could not remember whose shot it was, and set it back down.
“Thank you,” he said, which was insufficient, but Darcy only nodded once, as a man does for whom the matter was settled and required no further discussion.
A silence. Then Darcy said, with the careful neutrality he deployed when he was about to say something he considered significant: “I intend to speak to Miss Elizabeth. Soon. Once this business of the wedding is settled.”
Fitzwilliam looked at him.
“My previous attempt at Hunsford was not a success,” Darcy said, not meeting his eyes.
“You proposed to Elizabeth Bennet at Hunsford,” Fitzwilliam said, arriving at this conclusion with considerable interest, “and she turned you down.”
“She did.”
This was absolutely fascinating information, and one day Fitzwilliam would try to get the entire story out of his cousin, but he suspected Darcy would need to be plied with a great deal of brandy in order to reveal anything. “And you intend to try again,” was all Fitzwilliam said at the present time.
“I do.” Darcy’s jaw set in the way that meant the subject was not open for debate, only for information-sharing. “I wanted you to know. That I hope there will be a Mrs Darcy at Pemberley very soon, and one with whom Lydia will always be welcome as family, because she willbefamily.”
Fitzwilliam thought about Elizabeth Bennet, about the dry intelligence of her and the warmth underneath it, about the way she had handled Lady Catherine and the way she had handled Lydia and the way she sometimes looked at his cousin when she thought nobody was watching. He thought about the way Darcy had been since he arrived in Brighton escorting Elizabeth; decisive, purposeful, the best version of himself.
“She’ll say yes,” he said.
Darcy looked at him.
“This time,” Fitzwilliam amended. “Whatever your previous difficulties, whatever you said at Hunsford; you are not the same man who said it. And she will see that.”
Darcy was quiet for a moment. “I hope so,” he said, which for Darcy was a significant admission.
“She will,” Fitzwilliam said. “And Pemberley will suit her extremely well.” He picked up his cue again. “I am glad of it, Darcy. Genuinely glad.”
They returned to the game. Fitzwilliam played rather better after that, comforted that Elizabeth would make Lydia’s happiness and welfare a priority not for his sake, but for her sister’s.
He rode to Longbourn with Darcy and Bingley, watching with amusement as the other two deftly peeled off the Bennet sisters who were the object of their affections and disappeared with them into the gardens. He had to endure a little more fussing from Mrs Bennet, but perhaps she sensed his mood, because when he quietly requested a short private interview, Mrs Bennet gave him a penetrating look and nodded.
“I shall just attend to some matters in the stillroom. Mary, Kitty, attend me.”
And then the small morning room was empty except for himself and Lydia, sitting very straight in a chair by the window.
She gave him a small, composed smile as the door closed behind her mother and sisters. She was wearing a white morning gown with a green sash and she had done something with her hair that made her look rather older than usual, and he thought, not for the first time, that she had in the last weeks made some considerable leap that he had not anticipated and did not fully understand as yet.
He sat down across from her, which was perhaps not the most correct arrangement given they were not yet married, but the sofa was too far away and would have felt absurd, and he did not want to remain standing and loom over her.
“I have something to tell you,” he said. “I am sorry I did not tell you sooner. I should have.”
