“Maybe his missing her whilst she is here will convince him to stay at Pemberley.”
“Not if visiting us convinces her she doesn’t need him,” she retorted. “That is specifically why she came. What if he leaves and she never marries because she carries a torch for Mr Willers for the rest of her life?”
Darcy exhaled a long breath filled with anxiety. “They will have to sort that out once she returns. But if he wishes to leave, I can think of nothing that will convince him to remain.”
“Can’t you?” Elizabeth moved to sit next to him. “Don’t you see? He loves her, but doesn’t think he can approach the wealthy cousin of an earl. She won’t ask him because she’s his employer, and she lives in a world where the men are supposed to confess romantic feelings first.”
Darcy stared at her. “You think he’s leaving due to what he assumes is an unrequited love for my sister?”
“Of course he is!” she cried, and then looked down the corridor toward Georgiana’s room and lowered her voice. “And she’s devastated he’s leaving not just because he’s a standout employee but because she’s fallen in love with him.”
He did not want to involve himself in this, not even to make Elizabeth happy. “We are not meddling in their hopes and wishes. You and I agreed Georgiana would learn nothing about her future.” He raised a hand to interrupt her. “We agreed not to interfere with time any more than we have. She has to resolve it without our help. It is too dangerous. What happens to us in this century if we change something in the past?”
“But what if she was always meant to come to us so we could encourage her to tell Mr Willers that she loves him?” she pleaded when he rose to walk away. “We don’t have to tell her she’s fated to marry him, but we can tell her to go for it if she loves him. Maybe coming to us for reassurance was what convinced her to marry Mr Willers all along. Maybe this was supposed to happen. You have to tell her you approve.”
He could not be drawn into Georgiana’s sorrows and needs. That was an old life. “I want no part in it.” He left the room.
“She needs you, Fitzwilliam,” she called after him.
He went into their room and gently shut the door. Elizabeth would be dissatisfied with him, angry even, and he would certainly fall asleep without his wife naked in his arms. But she was not the one grieving the loss of someone standing right in front of him.
Georgiana would leave in three months, and they would never see one another again. If his little sister still needed him when she was thirty and he was forty-two, with two hundred years to separate them permanently, it would make her inevitable departure all the harder for him.
“I am sorry, Elizabeth,”Georgiana cried when Elizabeth had returned from taking Sandra to the bus. “I forgot!”
Elizabeth had entered their rooms to see flames flickering beneath an empty burner on the gas stove. She dashed into the kitchen to turn it off. The hot tea kettle had been used and set aside—on the counter. The dish cloth next to the stove was a spark away from burning.
“I should have done a better job of teaching you to turn things off when you’re done with them.” Elizabeth said this as kindly as she could before frantically checking that all the knobs were off and no gas still leaked.
“No, no, you did tell me. Like snuffing a candle, you said.” Georgiana flushed deep red. “If I engage the power, I have to disengage it when I am finished.”
“It’s a lot to remember,” Elizabeth assured her, although Darcy had not had half so much trouble.
Georgiana was adapting well enough all things considered, although sometimes toilets were not flushed, or lights were left on. She would never tell her, but, in some ways, it was like having a toddler again. Electricity or anything related to cooking was especially a struggle for Georgiana. Still, it had only been a few days in this century. Elizabeth had dripped candle wax and smeared ink the entire time she was in the nineteenth century.
She had never come close to burning down Pemberley, though.
“Would you like a change of scene?” she asked, thinking a space a little more familiar and with fewer obvious modern updates might help Georgiana. And a space away from the gas cooker. “All of Pemberley is open to you.”
“Oh no, thank you,” she cried. “I am content here in your rooms. I have also a box of music books to look through, and I can do that here at your dining table.”
“Aren’t you a little bored in here?” When Georgiana looked confused, she said instead, “Do you not find being confined tiresome?”
“Not at all. I like to walk the garden before the grounds open, but the house…” She paused and looked around. Elizabeth wondered if she was remembering what this space looked like before it was a large private apartment with a kitchen. “Pemberley—life here—is different. Mrs Reynolds tried to help me prepare, but I am afraid all the changes overwhelm me.”
Elizabeth smiled at the mention of the housekeeper who, out of fear Elizabeth would realise she too was from the future, had radiated dislike toward her. That she helped Georgiana prep for her travel showed that the stern woman had softened a little. “Does she hate that you came?”
Georgiana laughed. “She said, ‘What will happen if all the Darcy children abandon Pemberley?’”
“That sounds like her.” Severe, reserved, but dedicated to Pemberley. “She loves you Darcy children like her own.”
“And she is dear to us, and she explained much to help me be ready to come here, but it is hard to comprehend this place of yours until you see it for yourself.”
Darcy had wanted Elizabeth to hide away for three months when she was stuck in the past, but tedium and isolation would have driven her mad. How was Georgiana not losing her mind? “I don’t want to push you to do more here if you’re overwhelmed, but I also don’t want you to be bored or lonely for three months.”
Georgiana squeezed her hand. “It is odd having no responsibilities as far as the house, tenants, or society goes. But I am grateful for this time of quiet.”
“Quiet?” She laughed. “There are people at Pemberley all the time.”
