He heaved a sigh; he knew the answer. After Sandra had arrived and parenthood was not as easy as they expected, he had realised that he and Elizabeth spoke using the same words, but the pictures they represented were completely different.
Elizabeth did not know what the pictures of “relationship with sister” looked like to him. She saw best friends sharing everything. He saw a time, a culture, an existence that had to be left in the past for him to be committed here. This was home. He typically thought little of providence, but he and Elizabeth were supposed to be together—and be together here and now.
And that meant a complete separation from everything in the nineteenth century.
He was not used to this thick feeling of disquiet between them, this sense that they were not in accord. They quarrelled, but those were the typical disagreements between any couple who had been together as long as they had. Even when they misunderstood what the other needed and expected after Sandra was born, their confusion had never been ever-present or resentment-filled.
He never wanted to be a man who resented his wife. And he never wanted to be a man who disappointed his sister, either.
He needed to resolve matters with both of them. But he had to make things right with Elizabeth before he did anything else. There was no one and nothing more important to him than her. It was all the more reason why he could not be the one who validated Georgiana’s feelings, to mean anything to his sister. However he dealt with his sister, talking to his wife had to come first.
“Who is meeting me today?” Sandra asked with an upturned face. He put his hands on her cheeks and wished he couldcapture her little face just like that forever. His daughter would be eight in December, and in another blink of an eye, she would go off to live her own life.
“What if I ask Aunt Georgiana to walk you home? You and she can order takeaway for dinner.” Even while distancing himself from Georgiana, he had noticed cooking or using the appliances confused her. No matter how often she watched Elizabeth cook, she seemed to think throwing a collection of ingredients into the microwave for five minutes resulted in a complete dinner on the table.
A shriek of delight followed his suggestion. He then added, bracing himself for another girlish squeal, “Would you like to spend the rest of the weekend with Frank and Gwen?”
“A sleepover?” she whispered, as though there was nothing better on earth than sleeping in the Danconias’ guest room and being allowed to eat and watch whatever she wanted.
“Yes. Mummy and I can pick you up on Sunday afternoon.”
Another scream of delight and jumping followed. Then she paused and looked at him solemnly with Elizabeth’s eyes. “Why are you going away?”
Simplicity and honesty worked best with her. He knelt to her level and said, “I have to apologise to Mummy.”
Sandra gave a grave nod. “Grownups say sorry too.”
“Yes, they do.” She was lively and serious in nearly the same breath, a mix of himself and Elizabeth.
He could not imagine either of his parents apologising for losing their temper or making a blunder. Now he knew that a father could admit to a mistake without being weak in the eyes of his child.
Sandra took his face in her hands like he had done to her. “Here’s what you do, Daddy: you have to say what you did and how it was wrong, and then tell her how you’re going to help make it better.”
He kept his face serious to match her expression. “I can do that.” In a whisper he added, “Do you think Mummy will accept my sorry?”
“Oh yeah. Mummy is the nicest!”
He smiled. “Yes, she is.”
In 1826, he would have had a governess to teach and mind Sandra and a nurse to care for her. He and Elizabeth would see her every day and hear her lessons, and maybe even play a little. But being deeply involved in raising her would not be expected. They would go on lengthy holidays without her. They might see her an hour a day until she was old enough to join them in the evening, and by then he would be thinking about fortunes and suitors and a season in town to make his daughter another man’s responsibility.
As hard as it was to adjust to being a father now, he liked this way of raising children much better.
Sandra kissed him goodbye and boarded the bus, and Darcy pulled out his phone to call his friend. He would always prefer to text—talking aloud to someone not present still felt strange—but this late-notice appeal should be made by phone.
“It’s Darcy,” he said when Frank picked up. “Are you and Gwen available to watch Sandra tomorrow morning and keep her overnight? I need time with Elizabeth to sort through a few things.”
He listened to Frank’s assent and follow-up question. “Yes, I screwed up,” he agreed, choosing a different word than the one Frank used. The vulgar word was as common in the past as it was now, but he would never use it on the street where a woman of quality could overhear him. Of course, in 2026, every woman was a woman of quality.
He heard Frank talking to Gwen in the background before promising to spoil his daughter and rot her teeth as much as possible in thirty-six hours. “Thank you,” he said before hangingup. What an outdated phrase, “to hang up” a phone call, when for decades everyone touched a button to end one.
Of course, to him, a “call” still had a different meaning.
He would walk back to the house and ask his sister to mind Sandra tonight. And then set up the credit card on the delivery app on her phone and teach her how to use it. Otherwise, they would be stuck eating cereal that Sandra made. Actually, Sandra could probably manage the ordering better.
He would ask Roland to knock on her door on Saturday and be certain she was coping well alone. His groundskeeper would understand why he was asking if a thirty-year-old woman remembered how the lights and the tea kettle worked.
A deeper conversation with Georgiana might have to happen, but not before he laid himself bare to Elizabeth and apologised.
