Darcy hoped he had been what his sister needed after their father died. His death had cast them adrift, but they were at such different stages of their lives that they struggled to share what the loss meant to them. “I had to send you to school, but I did my best to be a considerate guardian and a caring brother. Perhaps it was good practice for having a daughter of my own.”
“Are you disappointed you did not have a boy?”
It was as common a question to ask a man now as it was then, but slightly strange to him since male-line primogeniture was abolished. “Not at all. I would have loved either the same. I enjoy being a girl dad.” At her curious look he explained, “A girl dad plays make-believe princesses, and does hair, but he also teaches his daughters how to fish and ride the same as a son.”
“In this time, that seems fitting for how I have seen girls and boys act. The children at Sandra’s…” His sister paused to recollect. “The place where the children gather to be driven to school. The parents do not direct the girls into more feminine activities. They all run about and play the same. You encourage Sandra in her interests, regardless if they take a masculine bent. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes, but it is more than that. I recognise the importance of raising Sandra to be a strong woman. The world now is safer, but it is still not safe to be a woman, or a woman alone, everywhere. There are still stereotypes and inequalities that stand in the way of her doing whatever she wants. So she needs to rely on me, and I have to fight for her as much as I must teach her to advocate for herself.”
Georgiana looked abjectly confused. “I do not understand how to be a woman in this world, or to raise a daughter to live in this one.” She brightened and said, “I look forward to having children, though. One, at least.”
He smiled to himself, imagining her with the little boy in the portrait he hid upstairs. “You will need to be married for that to happen—ideally.”
She looked horrified. “In my century, it will be imperative.”
“Then you had better speak to your steward before he leaves to become a secretary because he fears he loves you in vain.”
“I will hint to Mr Willers that my feelings for him go beyond that of his employer, beyond friendship. It must be up to him, as the man, to confess any feelings first.”
Hints and hoping would accomplish nothing. “You ought to speak directly.”
“That is done here,” she emphasised, “not then. Most people in my time would look at your modern education and way of raising a girl with complete disdain, and no man in my time would respect a woman who speaks her affectionate feelings before being assured of his.”
Darcy let it go for now. He could not push too hard, force a different set of values on her, or insist she act contrary to her upbringing and expectations. But he could encourage her to act in her own best interests and then she might decide for herself to speak. She would regret it forever if Philip Willers left Pemberley without knowing she loved him.
“You must have learnt so many astonishing things since you have been here,” she said after a silence. “Would you tell me about some of them?”
He leant back in his seat. She was asking for his sake, to know about his life, not eager to use information for her own gain after she returned or even to satisfy her own curiosity. He did not wish to shock or frighten her. Where to begin discussing two hundred years of advancement in every realm?
“Colds are not caused by being out in the cold or rain.”
Georgiana shrieked in surprise and then laughed. “Do not tease me! I sincerely want to know things that have changed or been discovered. I already know there are more planets in the heavens.”
“I am in earnest. Colds occur more frequently when the weather is cold because people spend more time indoors near infected people, but not from their bodies being cold.”
“I cannot believe it. If not by being cold, then how?”
How to explain a virus? “Animalcules, agents causing an infectious disease, exist in a tiny droplet of fluid. They spread through the air or by touch. We breathe them in or touch ourmouths or eyes, and that makes us ill. And they are always adapting to better infect their host, and that is why variolation cannot prevent a cold.”
Her jaw hung open. “I cannot believe being soaked through on a frigid day does not lead to a cold. Tell me something else.”
“Look carefully at your fingers,” he said, holding out his own. “Do you see the whorls and arches on each tip?” She nodded. “They are different for each finger and each person on the planet.”
“No!” she cried. “Surely there are similar patterns amongst all people, but not unique to each person.”
“No, they truly are. No two fingerprints have ever been found alike, so we can identify a person by them. If police find a fingerprint at the scene of a crime and compare it with their fingerprint files, they could identify the culprit by what they touched, even without putting their fingers in ink or ash or something else to leave a visible mark.”
Georgiana stared at her own hands, shaking her head to herself.
“There are also the horses,” he went on eagerly as more ideas came to him. “Did you know they do not gallop the way you think they do?”
She scoffed. “Horses are the same. You have five in your stable, and they look exactly the same as the ones in mine.”
“The animals are the same, but some paintings you see of horses galloping are wrong.”
“Anyone can plainly see how horses appear whilst at a run.”
He shook his head. “Horses run so fast that our eyes cannot break down the action of their gait. Go look at the painting of the grey horse in the library. Artists paint a running horse with the front legs extended forward, and the hind legs extended to the rear and all hooves off the ground, but that is actually physically impossible.”
