“Fine.” She sighed, pretending to be disappointed. “I can make do with the tight breeches. They leave nothing to the imagination,” she whispered. “Noth-ing.”
He still didn’t react, and she knew he was trying not to, so she would have to try harder. “Would you have asked Miss Elizabeth Bennet to dance at a ball?”
“Would she have wanted to dance with me?” he asked, playing along. “I remember Miss Bennet calling me a selfish jerk.”
“Yeah, but you were hot,” she deadpanned. “I wanted to dance with you.”
“I wanted to dance with you too.”
“Could you have convinced Miss Bennet to meet you alone in an alcove while the dancers had supper?”
“Of course I could,” he said in a low voice, still observing the work around them and not looking at her. A thrill ran over her at both his tone and his words. It was a long-running joke, and implausible since Darcy would never have kissed a woman he wasn’t engaged to, and had refused to have sex with someone he wasn’t married to. “But I was a gentleman and would have contented myself with just dancing with you.”
“You do know I mean an entirely different verb when I say I wanted ‘to dance’ with you, right?”
Darcy breathed deeply and tried to keep his satisfied smile from bursting from one corner of his mouth. Rather than answer, he looked to see if anyone watched them. He chose not to risk a kiss and instead touched her quickly and lightly along her wrist, making her heart thrum. Someone born in the 1780s was still reluctant to kiss in front of others, but she didn’t mind.He made up for it in his glances and subtle touches when in public, and even more completely when they were alone.
Not that it stopped her from flirting with him in public spaces.
“Georgiana and I are going out—unless Mr Darcy would like to show me how good he is at dancing before I leave? I always enjoy dancing, but I’m not sure how much you enjoy the exercise.”
He gave a look that was half exasperated, half amused before composing himself. She couldn’t wait to pay for her impertinence later.
“I have no time to dance. I am leaving to meet the bus,” he said. “I can bring that gown to our rooms before I go.” He opened his hands to show they were clean, and then he removed his watch so it wouldn’t catch on the fabric. They all had learnt a few things about handling textiles.
She left the ballroom in an excellent mood and found Georgiana at the instrument in the music room. Now that the pianoforte was repaired, she put on concerts twice a day. It would disappoint visitors and staff when she “returned to university” at the end of September.
Georgiana saw her at the door and collected her sheet music. “I was just practising a new song for after you reopen.”
“You don’t have to keep playing, you know. I don’t want you to get bored.” Georgiana crinkled her nose. She still struggled with modern words, even if she had heard them many times. “If you find performing twice a day to be tiresome, you can stop. We can do anything you want, or go anywhere you want.”
She shook her head shyly. “I have no interest in travelling again, or learning anything more than what I need to appear as though I belong at 2026 Pemberley. Playing and being with my family is what I want to do.”
They had such a short time left together, and she wanted to cram every experience into Georgiana’s time in 2026. But just because she had been a little bored when she was out of her time, it didn’t mean that Georgiana felt the same way. “I just want you to enjoy yourself, and I remember not having much to do when I visited the past.”
“I am still enjoying my reprieve from being landlord and mistress,” she said, smiling. “But more importantly, I am getting to know my brother as a friend, rather than a father figure from years ago.”
“How is he different?”
“Fitzwilliam is as clever as I remember, but I never realised how inquiring a mind he must have. He has embraced this world wholeheartedly. I think he enjoys the perpetual discovering, and rising to the challenge of understanding anything that is new or unlike what life was like in the nineteenth century.”
It certainly was a part of why he thrived here. “That makes sense. He is intelligent and confident enough to want to conquer any challenge.”
“But I do not.” She took out her smartphone, hefting it in her hand and looking at it like it could bite her. “You have fantastic things here, Elizabeth, but this place overwhelms me. I can scarcely feed myself with those machines in your kitchen.”
“You’ve come a long way?—”
“I have not,” she insisted. “But all is well because I do not want to. I do not want to live in this place and face a barrage of tools and words and customs and history that I do not understand. But Fitzwilliam does. He finds it fascinating, and he has the curiosity and the intellect to prosper. He even sounds more like you than he does me,” she added, laughing.
“He’s still the same person, though. His values, his feelings, his principles. He’s the same man even if he’s wearing clothesthat look strange to you, or his sentences don’t sound quite right to your ear.”
“I know,” Georgiana said softly. “And I wish I had more time to know him better because I think as I grew up we would have become close friends rather than merely be tied by filial bonds.”
“You both know how lucky you are to have this chance, even though it will hurt to say goodbye. If you’re happy living quietly at Pemberley, so be it. Everyone loves to listen to you, but there’s only—” Elizabeth’s voice caught. “There’s only a few weeks left.”
Georgiana sighed. “Nineteen days. I am happy to know you better too,” she added. “When we met in 1811, I felt as though we had become friends, but my shyness and age prevented much of a relationship.”
“And I always knew I had to leave, so I’m sure I held back. As much as I cared for Fitzwilliam, I was still eager to go home. But I felt the same way about our friendship. I hated leaving you the way I did.”
