There was no governess.
No proper schoolroom instruction beyond whatever aging Mrs. Reynolds could still manage between supervising the maids and household responsibilities with a dwindling number of servants.
Fitz’s jaw tightened. “How did this happen?” he asked Mrs. Reynolds.
The older woman folded her hands tightly together. “Your father said a permanent governess was unnecessary until Miss Georgiana grew older.”
“She is seven.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the music master?”
Mrs. Reynolds looked uncomfortable. “The music master departed six months ago. I believe after some dispute over payment.”
Fitz turned toward the dark window overlooking the grounds. Rain lashed against the glass in hard autumn bursts.
The realization settled upon him slowly and horribly.
Pemberley was being ruined, neglected in dozens of small dangerous ways that accumulated quietly over time. The west tenant cottages needed repairs. The southern boundary walls had begun crumbling. Two stable roofs leaked. Several longtime servants had departed because wages increasingly arrived late.
Fitz asked after a few of the missing faces by name. Mrs. Reynolds answered readily enough for most of them, but hesitated over one. “And the upper housemaid — your niece, wasn’t it?”
“Susie, sir. Susie Thompson.” Mrs. Reynolds’s hands twisted in her apron. “I sent her off myself, this past spring. A respectable family in London had need of a housemaid, and I could not in good conscience keep her here.”
Fitz nodded.
But Georgiana—
His little sister wandered half-wild through a great empty house, waiting endlessly for people who never came home.
Fitz threw himself in estate management.
He rode out personally amongst the tenants, speaking quietly with families he remembered from childhood. Everywhere he found small signs of strain.
A widow whose chimney had partially collapsed before winter.
A tenant farmer delaying replacement of a lame plow horse because credit had tightened.
Children wearing boots too thin for approaching cold.
None of it catastrophic.
All of it preventable.
The steward refused to hand over the ledgers, claiming that Mr. Darcy specifically ordered all books remain locked in his study during his absence.
Fitz wrote to London, certain that the steward—a poor replacement for the loyal Mr. Wickham, now long passed—was being dishonest.
His father’s reply arrived eleven days later.
You are not yet master of Pemberley. Stop meddling in matters you do not understand.
Fitz read the note twice before folding it carefully… and then he burned it.
He paid for repairs where he could. Quietly. From his own quarterly allowance.
He purchased timber for Widow Harper’s roof. Sent coal anonymously to an elderly couple near Kympton. Paid the blacksmith directly to repair farming equipment after learning the estate office refused further credit without authorization from London.
