“I am sorry, George,” John said, stepping forward. “She was a good woman. The best I ever knew.” He spoke simply, without embellishment, but his voice was rough with feeling.
George inclined his head. “Thank you.”
Young George Wickham, only two months older than Fitzwilliam, shifted awkwardly beside his father. He looked between the two solemn Darcys, then attempted a grin. “Aunt Sarah used to say it was a miracle the chapel never collapsedfrom our racket as boys. Maybe now she can haunt us into behaving.”
It was meant to lighten the mood, but it rang hollow in the cold, grieving air. No one laughed.
John put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Come, lad. Let us leave them be.”
They turned and walked away down the gravel path.
At last, the two Darcys were alone. George knelt. Slowly, deliberately, he made the sign of the cross:In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.
Fitzwilliam, at his side, followed his father’s movements with the solemnity of one well-trained, but also with the trembling awe of a boy who knew something irreversible had occurred.
George bowed his head. “Domine Deus… give me strength.”
The silence was broken only by the wind in the yew trees outside and the shifting of stone beneath the coffin ropes. George remained kneeling for a long time, lips moving in a prayer too quiet for anyone else to hear.
When he finally stood, his back was straighter than it had been all morning. Not because the grief had lessened—oh, it had not—but because he had given it to God.
He placed a hand on Fitzwilliam’s shoulder. “Come, my boy. We must go home.”
The walk from the chapel to the house was long and quiet. The gravel crunched beneath their feet. The wind had picked up. George’s cloak billowed behind him, and Fitzwilliam’s smaller stride hurried to match his father's.
“She loved the chapel,” Fitzwilliam said softly. “Mama.”
“She did,” George replied, his voice thick. “She loved every corner of Pemberley. But it was not the land or the stone or the wealth that meant the most to her.”
“What was it, then?”
George glanced down at him, and his throat tightened. “You.”
Fitzwilliam looked away. “I wish I had been able to say goodbye.”
“She knew,” George said. “She always knew.”
They passed the south lawn, where Sarah had once planted snowdrops against the stone wall. The flowers were not yet in bloom.
“I do not know how I am to carry on,” George confessed aloud, more to himself than to his son.
Fitzwilliam looked up at him. “You told me once that God gives us the strength when we need it.”
George stopped walking.
“Yes,” he said after a long pause. “And He has given me you.”
They turned toward the house together, the wind at their backs, the last of the mourners already gone.
Behind them, in the still silence of the chapel, Sarah Darcy rested in the earth—surrounded by centuries of faith, wrapped in the prayers of her husband and son, and mourned by the man who would never stop loving her.
Chapter 7: 1794-1795
July 1794—Carlton House, London
The ballroom at Carlton House glittered with artifice.
Crystal chandeliers threw refracted light across polished marble floors, casting prisms over painted smiles and powdered hair. George Darcy stood near the edgeof the crowd, hands clasped behind his back, enduring the raucous laughter of the Prince of Wales as he regaled a cluster of minor dukes with some lewd anecdote involving a French marquise and a footman dressed as a priest.
