“I have thought of you as my sister since Fitzwilliam married you,” she said to Elizabeth. “It is no trial to me to pretend to be your actual sister.”
Elizabeth was not in general a person moved to tears. Moved to emotion, certainly, but not one to cry with every strong feeling. But she blinked a few times and hugged Georgiana. Elizabeth’s sister Jane was a pleasant woman, but Darcy never thought their relationship was substantive. She was too busy with her profession for anything more than texting Elizabeth a meme.
“Oh, me too!” she cried, still hugging Georgiana. “We’re so lucky you’re here. We are going to have fun this summer. I’ll help you adjust, and you can get to know Sandra, and we’re going to the Lakes in August. I want to know all about you!”
He thought that his shy sister would have drawn back from so much physical contact, let alone so much enthusiasm. Theirs was not a time when it was as accepted. But Georgiana embraced her warmly, and it pained him to know that the sisters could never have the friendship they would have known had they lived in the same century.
Elizabeth released Georgiana. “I remember coming up with my time traveller backstory with your cousin.” She looked at him, smiling at the memory. “You had no interest in the details—you just wanted it done and me out of your sight—but Colonel Fitzwilliam had a grand time putting it all together.”
Darcy flinched at the mention of his cousin’s name, all the air driven from his lungs. He managed a non-committal sound as he choked down his breakfast.
“How is Colonel Fitzwilliam?” she asked his sister. “He must be about forty-five now. Is he married?” She asked to be polite. They had done enough genealogical research to broadly know the answer.
“He married several years ago,” Georgiana said with fondness, “to a woman who is extraordinarily kind. I like her very much. She is about my age, the daughter of a baron. He has now left the army, but his wife has a fortune. They adoreone another. They have a daughter who is five, and they expect another child this winter.”
A deep sorrow washed over him, and Darcy looked away so neither of them would see it. Even after all these years, he sometimes caught himself wondering what his cousin’s opinion on some matter he faced might be, or how Fitzwilliam would mock him when he did something thoughtless. He still wished his cousin could have been Sandra’s godfather, still wanted to pass a quiet evening with cards and port with his oldest friend.
To hear his cousin’s name brought him pain, and yet such relief. Someone else in this century knew his cousin, remembered him, and could talk about him. He wanted to ask his sister a thousand questions about Fitzwilliam, but that would hurt more than it eased.
“I love the idea of Colonel Fitzwilliam as a girl dad,” Elizabeth said, grinning at him. Darcy smiled absently and moved around the kitchen, avoiding her eye. No, he would ask nothing about Fitzwilliam. What was the point?
“My cousin spoils her, but she has her mother’s sweetness,” Georgiana said, not understanding the bond that was encompassed in the phrase “girl dad.”
He and his cousin both had daughters, two little girls close in age who would never know one another. Both fathers would make the world a better place for their daughters, but there was nothing Darcy would have taught a son that he would not teach his daughter. Fitzwilliam would be constrained by the values of his time, but he would certainly be an affectionate father.
Although it looked different for both of them, parenting a daughter was another thing he could not share with Fitzwilliam.
“When I told him I was visiting you,” Georgiana said, “he came to see me off and?—”
“You mean to talk you out of it?” Darcy interrupted.
Fitzwilliam had been reluctant about his scheme to leave the nineteenth century. No, not reluctant. Vehemently opposed. But his cousin had helped him because returning to Elizabeth was what Darcy wanted. It was a friendship and loyalty that he had never replaced here. He had friends, good friends he could rely on, but nothing that made him think they would ride and die alongside him like Fitzwilliam had.
“No. He even gave me a letter for you,” Georgiana said with the hint of a question. “He put a great deal of care into it.” Darcy nodded with a polite smile and put his dishes away. “He gave a strict order that unless you have become duller than stagnant mud, you are to write to him whilst I am here. He hopes very much you would give me a letter for him in return.”
He made a non-committal sound. Why bother writing, unburdening himself, when he would never receive a response?
“I will read it later. I need to brush Sandra’s hair before school,” he muttered, leaving the room as fast as he could.
CHAPTER FOUR
Elizabeth walked Sandra to the school bus and chatted with the other parents before finding Georgiana era-appropriate clothes in the village. She and Georgiana could go to Bakewell or Sheffield later so she could choose more items for herself. On her way back, she thought of what they could do with Georgiana all summer. She would surely be bored while she and Darcy worked, and Sandra’s enthusiasm would likely be draining for shy Georgiana.
Thinking of what Jane might be doing, Elizabeth sent her a text to ask her how she was. Jane was an emergency room physician managing car accidents and heart attacks and making their mother proud by being a single professional woman. She scrolled up and saw that the last reply she got from Jane was a thumbs-up tapback from a month ago.
If Georgiana wanted to use a phone while she was here, which sister would text her back first?
Shoving aside her disappointment, she found Tom Roland talking with the landscaping crew and volunteers by the car park. Roland saw her gesture for him to join her, and he gave a resigned sigh she could see from twenty yards away. Last night must weigh on him, but he came right to her side.
“Let me carry those for you, Mrs Darcy.”
She had tried to tell him for years that he could call her “Elizabeth,” but he always refused. She also knew there was no way he would let her carry the shopping bags, so she handed over all but one. “Darcy and I wanted to check on you after…last night.”
There was no one near to them, but after years of discretion, she could not bring herself to say anything aloud about time travelling.
Roland was silent for a long while. “Who else knows?”
“Me, and now you. Sandra will when she is older.” For now, all she understood was that Daddy’s childhood differed from anyone else’s, but not why. For a seven-year-old, that was enough, and it would be unfair to expect a child to keep that secret.
