“Must I hold one?” she whispered. “They are frightening. And so bright.”
“You’ll like it. Your brother eventually did.” Georgiana just needed encouragement. “Whenever you want to avoid a conversation, you can look at it and tell the person you’re talking to that you have to leave. It’s perfect. Fitzwilliam uses it all the time to avoid flatterers and annoying people.”
She looked at him again to share a smile, but he said nothing. Swallowing a frustrated sigh at her husband’s strange attitude, they walked to their own rooms and Elizabeth unlocked the door. “Why don’t you go ahead? I’ll be right there so we canpractise.” Georgiana went inside, and Elizabeth stayed behind with Darcy.
Before she could ask him what his problem was, he said, “Stop avoiding it. Ask her.”
“What?”
“You need to ask Georgiana why she is here.”
“We said she could tell us in her own time. She’s only been here eighteen hours. Oryoucould ask her.”
He actually recoiled. “You are the one so excited to have a sister here. You ask her. I have work to do before I get Sandra from Lambton.”
She was about to tell him she would meet the bus, but he strode away. Elizabeth huffed and then checked her phone to see if Jane had texted her back. There was a read receipt, but no reply, so she slid her phone in her pocket. She went inside, determined to enjoy every moment she had with Georgiana.
CHAPTER FIVE
Darcy hid in the stables doing labour he ought to have left to his employees. He sensed their relief when he finally left to meet Sandra’s bus. On their walk home, he explained that Georgiana would stay for the summer, and she was her mother’s sister. It was not as though Mrs Bennet or Jane would ever visit and refute it. Elizabeth still yearned for their notice, but he knew they would never love her the way she deserved.
He had expected difficult questions, but Sandra was most concerned about whether Aunt Georgiana liked to play Barbies or LEGO.
When they came home, Elizabeth was instructing Georgiana about the phone, which made Sandra giggle.
“You don’t have to push quite so hard,” Elizabeth said kindly as his sister stabbed at the screen to open an app.
It took him back to the three months he had spent here in Bakewell with Elizabeth. He had been desperate to get home, but equally wretched at the idea of leaving the only woman he imagined sharing his life with. He had wanted to learn every single thing about this complex world and yet hated the idea of bringing back knowledge he could unfairly use to improve his life in the nineteenth century.
His phone chimed, and he saw Georgiana had texted him from Elizabeth’s old phone. She had written two complete sentences with punctuation, along with a salutation and valediction. Georgiana looked at him expectantly, so he replied with a short congratulation before updating the contact info.
“Did I do it correctly? And I can really speak with you whenever I need to?” she breathed. “No matter where you are?”
He took a steadying breath, staring at his phone. He had a family member in his contacts. Georgiana was here, and he could talk with her whenever he wanted. His sister was in his phone until the end of September, but after the equinox he would never talk with her again. What was the point of furthering a relationship that would never last?
“Remember, you can be brief in a text, and you don’t need a greeting,” Elizabeth answered for him, “but that’s right.”
“This is remarkable,” Georgiana said, hefting the small smartphone in her hand but eyeing it warily. “You can send a message to anyone at anytime, anywhere? There is nothing at all like it when I am from.”
Darcy wondered when the telegraph was invented. Georgiana would not see telephones come into use, but she could send a telegram in her lifetime.
“Now, if the director needs to contact you about changes to your performance schedule,” Elizabeth went on, “or if you need to talk with me or your brother while we’re not here, you can.”
While Sandra unpacked her school bag and changed out of her uniform, Elizabeth confirmed that the museum director agreed that Georgiana could be their musician-in-residence pretending to research private music collections of the nineteenth century. Once the instrument was repaired, she would give daily performances in the music room while people passed through to look at the gowns.
“How did your meeting with the director go?” he asked, worried that she had appeared to be out of her time.
Georgiana gave a polite smile. “She seemed interested in me, but I could communicate nothing aside from what Elizabeth prepared me to say.”
“She realised that you’re a little shy,” Elizabeth said, “but I could tell the idea of the music program excited her.”
Perhaps Georgiana’s shyness would be an asset. It was clear to anyone who met her that she was shy, although not as exceedingly timid as she had been when Darcy left her all those years ago. With experience had come greater confidence, as he always knew it would. Still, her natural reticence would make it easier to avoid hard questions she could never answer.
“Someone is coming on Friday to examine the instrument,” Darcy said. “I think they maintained it through the 1980s whilst—” He broke off, nearly mentioning the name of Pemberley’s last inheritor. Saying that her surname was Willers-Darcy was not a hint he could in good conscience give. “If it was not greatly neglected, he said it might take a month before it is playable.”
“I do not mind,” Georgiana said. “Elizabeth explained there was a mechanism that could play music to accompany me, and I can sing with that in the meantime.”
She said this in a bemused voice, and he fully understood her being charmed by the notion of instant music. He opened his mouth to talk about it, but hesitated. He did not want Georgiana to sympathise with him, to share his appreciation for how marvellous it was to listen to music whenever it was wanted. It was simpler for him if he and his sister had no deeper moments, no shared experiences.
