Page 137 of Homeless

Good Conscience

“You look tired, Fitzwilliam. You have looked tired every day since I came, and you will not tell me why, and I have decided not to press you, because you clearly do not wish it.” Georgiana buttered her toast and had the goodness to look down as she spoke. “But I will say that I think you would be less tired if you had someone to share your troubles with. A person cannot carry everything alone. You are always telling me so.”

He massaged his forehead and closed his eyes. “Am I?”

“Constantly. It is one of your chief occupations.” She put more butter on the knife. “And it seems to me, Fitzwilliam, that you have a wife not four miles from this table whom you have not seen in ten days, and who might share your troubles very well if you would let her, and a sister at this table who is dying, positively dying, of wanting to meet her. You are keeping all three of us apart for reasons you will not explain, and making yourself tired in the bargain. It does not seem to me a sensible arrangement. I say so as your sister, who loves you, and who has been very patient.”

He let his hand drop. “Georgiana, I’ve something to tell you.”

“I imagine you have. You have been doing nothing but running about on business since —”

“Pemberley is lost to us.”

She blinked. The toast tilted in her hand, and she set down her knife. “I thought you said the affair would be managed. That you had what you needed of Spain, and that it was only a matter of time before it all came right.”

“I did, and that is what I had hoped. But the matter is not secure enough for the bank to extend their confidence. They know very well that Spain is unlikely to pay, and they would prefer to discharge their interest.”

She drew a careful breath and put her toast back on her plate, untouched. “I see.”

“It does not affect your portion. That is set aside, and perfectly safe.”

“I know that, Fitzwilliam.”

“And we shall still have this house, and the equity of Pemberley besides, whatever that comes to after it is sold.”

She nibbled her lip and looked at the far wall. “Does Elizabeth know?”

He sighed and rubbed his aching forehead again. “Better than I do. She was the one who was realistic about the matter when I insisted on hope.”

She returned her gaze to him. “Then what are you fretting about?”

“I… what?” He straightened in his chair. “I have just told you we are losing our family’s estate, the source of my income, the Darcy pride for three hundred years, and you ask me what I am fretting about?”

“Fitzwilliam.” She rose from the table and came round to his chair to kneel beside it. She took his hand and clutched it between both of hers, and made her stare into her face. “When you first came home from Spain, when everyone else exclaimed what a fright you looked, how you must have dragged yourself out of the country half dead, I did not think as they did. I saw something else, and you explained it for me when you told me about Elizabeth. I think you survived on bread and water, and not much of either, for months with her, and were the happiest you had ever been in your life.”

A smile tugged at his mouth. “You are not wrong.”

“Then why are you still apart from her? If she can give you such happiness, sell everything else, go take up the living of some tidy cottage somewhere, and be at peace.”

“It is… it is not entirely that simple, Georgiana. There is your future to be thought of, for one thing. A ruined brother makes a poor inducement to attract the sort of marriage you deserve.”

She lifted a shoulder. “You seem perfectly happy with a woman of no great name. Why should I not marry a clerk or a baker if I please? You said yourself, my fortune is intact. We need hardly starve.”

He chuckled and squeezed her hands. “I am in no position to argue with you on that point.”

She hopped to her feet. “Then we are agreed! Send for your Elizabeth this very morning, and let us have done with this nonsense of you trying to protect Pemberley’s interests by not claiming her.”

“I was never protecting Pemberley’s interests. I was protecting hers.”

Her face clouded. “What?”

“Georgie, sit down.”

Her hand strayed to the chair nearest him, and she pulled it out, plopping down in it without looking. “Is she in some danger?”

“Not she, but her uncle. Georgie, I married her on an hour’s notice, in a dark church, by a bribed priest. Her uncle had been captured that very afternoon and taken, and it would have meant leaving her alone, with no help and no safety, if I had not. But you already know, so I will keep you in no suspense, that was not why I agreed to marry her so readily. It was only the expedient that made her willing to propose the idea. She needed safe conduct, someone who would not take advantage of her, and someone with enough coin and influence to help secure her uncle’s release, if it came to it. She would tell you herself that she never expected the marriage to last beyond the coast, but by then…”

“Of course she fell in love with you,” Georgiana declared stoutly. “If she has any sense in her head, and no woman you loved could not, then it is a matter of default.”