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“You are not on my side.”

“I am on the side of your happiness.” Elizabeth held her gaze without flinching. “Which may require me to ask questions you would rather I did not, and to reserve my endorsement until I am satisfied that you will not be harmed by what you wish for. If that makes me a poor champion, I shall bear the title.”

“But you will speak to Brother for me? Explain how he loves me and wants me to be his helpmeet in winning souls? The Bible says a man must leave father and mother and cleave to a wife⁠—”

Elizabeth held up her hand. “I know what the Bible says. It also says to honor your father and mother, and yes, I know yours are departed, but is this what they would have wished on you? At sixteen, without ever having had your first London season? You’ve known only two men, you say: the dishonorable one, and this one you say is honorable and loves you. Waiting will not hurt you if he truly loves you.”

“My brother truly loves you, Elizabeth. He told Richard that he would walk into a dragon’s den for you, and Richard told me I must wait for a man like that.”

Elizabeth’s teacup rattled against its saucer, her pulse darting like a startled bird beneath her stays.

“You should.” Her voice trembled as she drew Georgiana against her shoulder, comforting herself as well as the girl. “I would hope Mr. Ashworth will prove himself so, but you are younger than me. I am twenty and will be twenty-one, and I did not marry the men who danced with me too easily, but waited for one who refused to dance with me at first.”

“But I don’t want to wait that long.” Georgiana’s voice broke. “The Bible says a man’s life is like a vapor, appearing for a little time, and then it is gone.”

Elizabeth swallowed hard, her heart thudding heavily. “Gigi, I will not be your champion, but I will listen to you. Whenever you need it, for as long as you wish, and with as much patience as I can manage, which is—I confess—not my most celebrated virtue.”

Georgiana nodded against her shoulder, her breathing still ragged. “Will you forgive my brother for whatever wrong he did you? Because if you were not angry with me, then you must have been angry with him.”

“I will speak to him about you and Mr. Ashworth. I am not angry at him or at you. I fear there are things he might not know about me, and this, Gigi, is a reason for waiting.”

Georgiana made a sound, as if she held back her speech, and then her shoulders shook, and she said, “Lizzy, will you also promise not to let Brother read my diary? Because I wrote several unflattering descriptions of the Colonel’s eating habits, and if Richard discovers them, the guardianship dispute will be the least of my difficulties.”

“No, I suppose you would be quite safe from having a poor eater for a guardian.” Elizabeth laughed, joining Georgiana’s giggles. She rose and smoothed her skirts. “I shall leave you or your maid to sort through the battlefield of petticoats, chemises, and gloves.”

“Thank you for coming.” Georgiana’s voice was steady now, and warm, and only slightly frayed at its edges. “I know you are not entirely well, and I know that Brother—that things between you are—” She pressed her lips together, abandoning the sentence with the good sense to recognize that some territories are best left unmapped. “Just, thank you.”

Elizabeth squeezed her fingers and sought the garden’s clear air. She would have to speak to her husband eventually. Darcy deserved better than silence, and yet… she would not knock on his study door. She would find him on the grounds or in the library, where the room itself offered exits, and the conversation could be abandoned if her courage failed.

Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth patted her hair into place and left the family wing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

COFFEE IN THE GALLERY

The silence in the gallery suited Darcy, the rows of portraits strangely comforting. His ancestors looked down from their gilt-framed canvases, and they never offered advice. They simply stretched the entire length of the east wing, displaying attitudes ranging from martial disapproval to languid self-satisfaction.

His great-grandfather Darcy had famously lost two fingers at the Boyne and spent the rest of his days explaining the tactical necessity of his heroism to anyone unfortunate enough to sit next to him at dinner. Beside him hung the third Earl, whose only recorded service to the Crown consisted of breeding a remarkably bad-tempered strain of bloodhounds that briefly terrorized North Derbyshire and netted him a minor barony from a grateful, if terrified, George II. And Grandmother Darcy, born Lady Constance Fitzhugh, regarded the middle distance with the severe condescension of a woman who had married well, spent her husband’s fortune on Chinese wallpaper, and never once tired of reminding her descendants of the sacrifice.

Lady Anne Darcy’s portrait, however, still managed to look faintly disappointed, perhaps an unfair reading of the canvas. Sir Joshua Reynolds had captured his mother with a grave, handsome serenity, her fair complexion warmed by the amber light the painter favored for his most distinguished subjects. The gown was more than thirty years out of fashion now, its ivory silk bodice fitted closely to a pointed waist, with delicate lace falling from the elbow-length sleeves and a full skirt spreading gracefully over the folds of her chair. A fine fichu softened the neckline, while her powdered hair rose in carefully arranged curls beneath a pearl tiara.

Yet her eyes, pale and clear beneath slender brows that Georgiana had inherited and Darcy had not, held a composed expectation, as though Lady Anne had been waiting for her eldest son to arrive and explain himself.

But she would never reprimand her son for the mess he had made of his marriage. What would she say to him when he had dismissed his wife with two words and then spent three days too proud to knock on her door?

The words had not seemed fatal when he spoke them. They had seemed necessary—a dam thrown up against a flood he could not yet contain. Richard’s accusations still rang in his ears: conspiracy, manipulation, the Bennet family playing him for a fool. Elizabeth had stood there, pale and determined, clearly about to tell him something, and he had not been ready to hear it. Had not trusted himself to respond with anything other than the raw, bleeding confusion Richard had just inflicted.

So she had been indisposed—a polite way a great lady of the house signaled her retreat from the household. She had mentioned his sister, and some confidence, and he, in the throes of a violent disagreement with Richard, had…

Darcy pressed his thumb against the carved edge of the window casement and stared at his mother’s painted face. What would Lady Anne have counseled? She had married a spendthrift with a taste for diamonds and disastrous investments, loved him completely, and, when the accounts went wrong, neither retreated to her bedchamber nor demanded explanations in the corridor. She had sat down at the writing desk in the morning room, sent for the steward, and begun the work of keeping Pemberley solvent while her husband rode out with Bexley to inspect the next magnificent folly.

He looked up at his mother’s eyes, and she had that faraway look, as if a presence had appeared at the far end of the gallery. Darcy fought the urge to look over his shoulder, and lost. He turned then and saw her.

Elizabeth, his wife, carrying a small tray with a coffee pot, her footsteps steady, a light, quick tread on the oak board. Her hair was pinned simply, her morning dress the color of winter sky, and those eyes—those gloriously expressive eyes were fixed on him with the same faraway gaze as a mariner approaching port.

Darcy took a step toward her, and then another, meeting her across the long stretch of sweeping oak parquet floor, its pale, polished wood bare save for a magnificent central French Savonnerie rug whose muted floral medallions absorbed the morning light. They paused near a carved mahogany settee and a small card table left abandoned against the wainscot, the vast, silent gallery seeming to shrink until nothing existed save the space between them.

“Mrs. Reynolds mentioned you had taken no refreshment since breakfast.” Elizabeth’s voice was steady, almost brisk. “I thought the gallery might benefit from coffee, if not from company.”