Georgiana’s eyes went wide with delighted horror. “Fitzwilliam! Are you Lady Fenwick?”
“Do not be absurd.” The heat in his face intensified rather than subsided, and he knew—with the grim certainty of a man caught in an impossible position—that his denial sounded far less convincing than it ought.
“It would explain a great deal,” Elizabeth continued, her voice honeyed with false innocence. “The mysterious authoress who never appears in society. The passionate understanding of wounded heroes and their magnificent suffering. The intimateknowledge of how a proud man might conceal his heart beneath a veneer of cold reserve.”
“I do not write Gothic novels.”
“The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.” Elizabeth pressed her handkerchief to her lips, but he could see the smile she was attempting to hide behind it. “Though I confess I am struggling to imagine you penning Lady Cecilia’s declaration of love. The syntax alone would require a warmth of feeling I had not previously associated with estate ledgers.”
“Elizabeth—”
“Perhaps you dictate to your valet,” she mused. “He transcribes your passionate outpourings whilst you pace before the fire, overcome with emotion.”
“I have never been overcome with emotion in my life.”
“No?” Her eyebrows rose. “Then carrying your wife up the stairs yesterday was merely… exercise?”
Georgiana made a sound that was half laugh, half squeak, and pressed both hands over her mouth. Darcy glared at her, which only made her shoulders shake harder.
“I believe,” he said, with what dignity remained, “that Mrs. Darcy requires rest, and that this household has developed an unfortunate tendency toward theatrical speculation.”
“But I have not finished Lord Laycock’s confession,” Georgiana protested.
“Lord Laycock’s confession will keep.” His voice came out harsher than intended, and he saw Georgiana’s face fall with hurt confusion. He softened his tone with effort. “Mrs. Darcy is recovering from a fever. We should not tire her with too much drama, however excellently written.”
Elizabeth’s gaze held his for a long moment. He could not read what he saw there—curiosity, certainly, but something else beneath it. Something that made him feel, absurdly, that she waslooking through his careful composure to the secrets he carried beneath.
“Your brother is right,” Elizabeth said at last, a kindness bestowed. “I find myself rather more fatigued than I realized. Perhaps you might continue Lord Laycock’s confession another day, Miss Darcy, when I am better equipped to appreciate his magnificent suffering.”
“Naturally.” Georgiana gathered her book and rose; her earlier enthusiasm had dimmed. “I did not mean to tire you.”
“You rescued me from Cowper,” Elizabeth reassured. “I shall look forward to learning what Lord Laycock has been concealing, and whether Lady Cecilia proves equal to bearing it.”
“She does,” Georgiana said. “She bears it, and she loves him anyway. That is the whole point.”
She slipped out, leaving Darcy sitting awkwardly beside the bed, aware of the current of unease that he could not so easily dispel.
“Your sister has excellent taste in romantic melodrama,” Elizabeth said, her voice carefully light.
“She is young and believes in Gothic redemption.”
“And you do not?”
He looked at his wife—pale against her pillows, her dark eyes watching him with an attention that saw too much.
“I believe,” he said slowly, “that some confessions require more courage than I have yet possessed.”
Elizabeth held his gaze for a breath. Then she coughed again, and the moment broke.
“Rest,” he said, putting a hand to her forehead and noting the return of her fever. “I shall send Clarice with fresh tea.”
He withdrew before she could respond, closing the door gently behind him, and stood in the corridor with Amelia’s words pursuing him like ghosts he could not outrun.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MAN AND BOY BOTH
Sunlight,already far too triumphant for Elizabeth’s taste, spilled across the room as Clarice drew back the velvet curtains. Elizabeth blinked, content to remain motionless while her maid orchestrated the day’s beginning. The ache in her head had vanished, the fever retreated, leaving her with a clear mind and a collection of dreams so peculiar they could only be the offspring of Georgiana’s novels. In one, Darcy was drowning beneath a stone archway, clutching a battered trunk brimming with women’s silks—a scene so extravagantly absurd that even the most overwrought Gothic heroine might have blushed.
