Page 96 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
“But I am not like Miss Bingley. I truly regard your well-being.” I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to compare myself to Caroline, if only to assure her that some people who drew close to her truly cared for her.
“I know, and that is why my brother loves you.”
My heart took an involuntary lurch, and then I was the one shaking, even in this warm room with the fire bright and the water cooling.
“Georgiana, you cannot know?—”
“I know my brother better than anyone. He stops in the breakfast room and stares at the empty chair. I hear him pause outside the music room when I play the jig, and the pausing tells me he islistening for your voice beneath the notes. He carries a book he will not read and will not return and will not put down. He burned your contract letter and sat in the study picking cat hair from his waistcoat, and when I told him you had taken extra care with your appearance at the assembly, he closed his eyes as though I had struck him. A man who does not love does not close his eyes at the memory of a green ribbon.”
My hands were trembling. I clasped them in my lap to stop the trembling, and the clasping did not help.
“I do not dare—” I began, and stopped, because the sentence had too many possible endings and I was afraid of all of them.
“You do not dare hope,” Georgiana said. “I know. I recognize the expression. I wore it at Ramsgate, and I have been wearing it since. You taught me to take it off.” She reached across and took my hand, her grip fierce. “You told me the choice was mine. I am telling you the choice is yours. But you cannot make it if you do not know the truth, so I have brought you the truth. It is wet and muddy, and it crossed a stream in a rainstorm, and I am asking you to listen to it.”
The lump in my throat was too thick for words, but I managed. “Mama will have a woolen blanket and chamomile and a lecture about walking in the rain, and you will submit to all three, because you are at Longbourn now and at Longbourn we do not let girls catch their death for want of a cup of tea.”
“Elizabeth?” Georgiana said as I led her toward the stairs.
“Yes?”
“My brother will come looking for me when he discovers I have left.”
“Let him come.”
“He will be coming for me, or so he will say, but he will ask for you—to see you, Elizabeth.”
“He will come for you, Georgie, and he will see you here, warm, dry, and safe with a family that took you in because you are loved, not because you are leveraged.” I gave her a warm hug. “Let him see where you chose to go when you needed to be safe.Because a man who pays attention—and your brother pays attention, he’s the owl, after all, will know what he must do. If he is listening.”
“He is listening, Elizabeth. He has always been listening. He simply does not know how to answer.”
“Or he already knows.” I thought of the word exhaled in between bites of ginger biscuit, magnificent, remarkable, extraordinary, and I tried not to hope, because Darcy would come for Georgiana to manage the scandal, and what to do with Bingley, and these reasons had nothing to do with me.
I repeated this to myself twice, which was how I knew it was not working.
