Fitz had continued north alone.
Yet something essential had altered.
Or perhapshehad.
At nineteen, Fitz returned taller, leaner, quieter than when he departed. Travel had worn away the last traces of boyhood softness from his face. Years spent amongst ruins older than England itself had given him a strange sense of perspective that made much of fashionable society seem trivial by comparison.
But nothing—not Rome, nor Athens, nor Vienna—prepared him for the sight of Georgiana waiting upon the front steps of Pemberley, alone save for Mrs. Reynolds.
She stood bundled in a blue pelisse several seasons too short at the wrists, dark curls escaping her bonnet as cold November wind whipped across the drive. Mrs. Reynolds stood behind her protectively, one hand upon the child’s shoulder.
The instant the carriage stopped, Georgiana flew toward him.
“Brother!”
He scarcely had time to descend before she collided with him hard enough to nearly send them both backward.
Fitz caught her automatically, startled by how much she had grown.
Georgiana was all long limbs and enormous gray eyes. She clung to his neck with such desperate force that something painful twisted inside his chest.
“You came back,” she whispered.
Fitz held her tighter.
“Of course I came back.”
She drew back just enough to look anxiously up at him. “You were gone forever.”
The words struck harder than they ought.
Mrs. Reynolds approached, threads of silver touched the hair beneath her cap, and exhaustion lingered faintly about her eyes.
“Welcome home, Master Fitzwilliam.”
He looked up at Pemberley’s imposing facade. “Where is Father?”
A shadow passed quickly across Mrs. Reynolds’s face. “In London, sir.”
“Still?”
Mrs. Reynolds hesitated carefully. “His business there has required considerable attention these past months.”
Fitz understood the evasion immediately.
Business. Mistresses more likely. Cards. Drinking. Society.
George Darcy had always enjoyed London excessively. Since Lady Anne’s death, however, he scarcely seemed capable of enduring Pemberley longer than a few weeks at a time.
And Georgiana—
Fitz looked down at his sister.
“How long has she been here alone?”
Mrs. Reynolds answered quietly, “Nearly eight months, sir.”
In the following days and weeks, Fitz’s disbelief grew.
