“You would be entirely correct in that, sir,” Fletcher replied, “save for the presence of ‘haply.’ ”

“Haply? By chance?” Darcy frowned.

“By Fortune, if we follow the Bard’s metaphor,” Fletcher amended. “Hope reborn begins with no more than a thought; but that thought is able to move the poet from misery to joy. ‘Haply I think on thee,’ and then ‘bootless cries’ are turned into ‘hymns at heaven’s gate.’ ” His voice fell almost to a sigh.

“All this with a thought,” Darcy interrupted, discontent and skepticism hard-edging his words.

“No, sir, not a thought — Fortune’s thought. Would you like the towel now, sir?” Fletcher cocked his head toward the steamy article whose comforting fragrance was beginning to tickle Darcy’s nose. Nodding, he sat back again in the chair, closing his eyes against the towel’s imminent application. It landed suddenly in a hot and unceremonious heap upon his face as, in a shocked voice, his valet exclaimed, “Miss Darcy!”

In a single, swift movement, Darcy flung the towel from him and shot bolt upright. “Georgiana!” Never had his sister entered his chambers uninvited! He could not even think when her last visit had been; certainly, she had never seen its walls before he was properly dressed.

“I-I beg your pardon, Fitzwilliam,” she stuttered to his incredulous gaze. Although she was obviously nervous, she returned his regard steadily, breaking only to slide a glance at Fletcher, who had remained next to his chair in slack-mouthed surprise.

“Is, ah, is something the matter?” Darcy’s brain did not seem to be working at all properly.

“Breakfast” was her simple reply. The revelation of her purpose for appearing in his chambers was no less surprising than her actual presence there. He had known she would not receive the news with anything less than disappointment. Evidently, she had received it with a great deal more and had bravely determined to beard the recalcitrant lion in his den. Darcy passed a hand over his freshly shorn cheeks as he took in her straight, dignified carriage, yet softly tender eyes. Quite suddenly, he was put in mind of their mother. So be it, he sighed to himself. How could he refuse in the face of such a revealing glimpse at the woman that his sister was becoming?

“I shall be pleased to join you as soon as I am dressed,” he conceded. “Tell the servants to lay my place.”

“I would prefer to breakfast with you here, please…in your chambers.” She was clearly pressing the advantage of his surprise. Her voice had trembled a bit but had, in the end, held firm. Even so, she was not finished. “I have already instructed that both our breakfasts be brought up.”

“Indeed?” Darcy looked upon his sister with new appreciation. She was becoming something more than what she had been. Was this further evidence of Dy’s influence or proof of his contention that she was a girl no longer? If he was to discover which, Darcy would have to submit to her arrangements. He inclined his head in formal acquiescence to her wishes. “Then I shall be pleased to join you even sooner, as I am dressed.”

Her smile was a delight. “Thank you, Fitzwilliam.” She curtsied, and after glancing curiously once more at Fletcher, whose dazed attention had not abated during the entirety of the interview, she departed his dressing room, closing the door behind her. For a full minute, neither Darcy nor Fletcher moved or spoke, both of them caught up in a contemplation of the closed door.

Finally, Darcy cleared his throat. “Well, it appears that we have received our orders, Fletcher.”


Now properly attired, Darcy hesitantly emerged from behind his dressing room door. He had, throughout his valet’s ministrations, been occupied exclusively with the thought of what he would find on the other side of the door. As interesting as was this new confidence Georgiana exhibited, it did not bode well for his desire to tend to his wounds in private. She would want an accounting for his behavior. How would she approach the matter, he wondered, and how would he avoid it?

Georgiana stood behind one of two chairs drawn up to the small gateleg table, now opened to its fullest extent and laden with covered dishes. Even covered, the savory aromas of the viands tucked beneath were seeping into every corner of the room. Against his will, Darcy’s stomach growled.

“Oh, good, you are hungry then!” his sister greeted him. She signaled the servants to uncover the dishes, and as Darcy seated her, they bore the covers out the door.

They were alone. Darcy took his seat opposite and drew it up to the table, while casting her an uncertain smile. This was all so very strange; he felt off balance. He looked down at the dishes. The most tempting of choices lay before him, and really, the smells wafting up from them were entirely irresistible. The knot that had been his stomach relaxed somewhat as he reached for a plate. Georgiana’s smile widened as he filled it, but she said nothing about his awakened appetite, merely setting about her own meal with a precise grace. Stiff with caution, the muscles in Darcy’s back gradually released. Perhaps she would be satisfied with the return of his appetite and desire no more of him for the present.

“Fitzwilliam?” Her address, with its implied question, came when he had finished pouring his first cup of coffee. “Must we have a formal unveiling of my portrait?”

Prepared for a question in quite another vein, Darcy looked at his sister with surprise. “You do not wish it?”

“No, I do not,” she replied diffidently. “It is not that I dislike the portrait; it is very nice. It is just that…” She stopped. Seeing that she was searching for the right words, Darcy held his peace and lifted his cup to his lips. Was she retreating into shyness again? It was expected that a young lady on the verge of coming out had her portrait painted. The Unveiling was the first step in that vital process. She began again. “How did you feel when your portrait was painted?”

She referred, of course, to the one hanging in Pemberley’s gallery, painted upon his twenty-first birthday. He recalled feeling mightily embarrassed by it, and to this day, he avoided looking at it when he traversed the hall. He much preferred to gaze upon his forebears’ faces, particularly that of their father, painted at the same age, and one of both their parents painted when he was ten.

“I remember disliking the attention and fuss and thinking that the fellow in the painting could not possibly be me,” he admitted.

“Yes!” Georgiana leaned toward him eagerly. “How not you?”

“Oh, older, I suppose, better. Certainly wiser than I could claim at the time.” Or even now, Darcy thought ruefully.

“The ideal of you, rather than the you that you knew yourself to be,” she supplied him, then smiled. ‘’Although, I have always thought your portrait captured you exactly.”

Darcy accepted her compliment with a bow of his head. “The proper perspective for a younger sister to take, to be sure.” He smiled back. “But how is this to the purpose? It is expected that it will be unveiled. Lawrence would have reason to take offense if it were not. He would consider it a commentary upon his skill.” He could see from the look upon her face that the last troubled her. “It need not be a grand affair. Only family and close friends,” he offered. “It is a perfectly lovely portrait, Georgiana.”

At his description, her eyes fell; but when she raised them he saw a serenity in them but a serenity not untouched by the world. “Yes, ‘perfectly’ lovely.” She leaned closer still and reached for him, her fingers lightly grazing the top of his hand. “Fitzwilliam, it is not I! I am not that ‘perfectly lovely’ girl in the painting, and I have no wish to take part in the deception, to stand beside it and pretend that everything it depicts is true.”

“Would you have Lawrence add some spots, a wart or two, perhaps?” he teased, but in truth, he was uneasy, confounded by her reticence. “Georgiana, there is nothing amiss with your portrait!”

“Nothing but honesty about who I truly am.” She sat back in her chair and breathed a sigh. “Fitzwilliam, when you first saw your own portrait, the idealized you, what else did you feel? What did you think?”

Closing his eyes briefly against her intense scrutiny, Darcy breathed out heavily as he flexed his jaw. What did she want from him? The truth, he heard the answer clearly, only the truth.

He opened his eyes again and answered, “I hoped to God that one day I would be the man in the painting — better, wiser — that I would not be a disappointment to my station, my name,…or myself,” he added as he turned his gaze from her searching one. But he had disappointed himself. Norwycke had shown him the dark depths in his heart he had been unable to remedy. He continued, but he could feel his confidence fading. “That I would…in every way…truly be the gentleman…” He stopped, choking at the one word Elizabeth had flung at him that had, during their interview, most made him flinch.

Rising abruptly from his chair, he left the table; but there seemed no place to go, no place to escape what was now become the damning truth. Even were it true that he played the gentleman in all other venues of his life, he had utterly failed in the eyes of the one he most desired to believe him admirable. If he had been found so severely wanting in Elizabeth’s small world, did he even know himself ? Sylvanie’s taunts took on new meaning. Had she recognized this in him and played upon it? With that revelation came the suspicion of the truth of Elizabeth’s other epithets: arrogant, conceited, disdainful of the feelings of others. They had seemed to depict the character of a monstrosity that he had thought born of her anger, and he had summarily dismissed the whole as having any relation to himself. Yet had he not brooded angrily over those words for days now, resentful of Elizabeth’s ungenerous attachment of them to him? Why had her words not caused him to hate her? For, despite all his anger and resentment, he literally ached with the loss of her. His stride had taken him to the window, and spreading his arms, he grasped either side of its frame and stared out against the sunlight pouring through it. Hate Elizabeth? How could he? How could he hate the woman he loved for demanding of him the man he had always desired to be?

The light pressure of a hand on his arm brought him back. He looked down into brimming eyes full of compassion as his sister gently pulled on his sleeve. Helpless to deny her, he bent and received the benediction of her kiss upon his cheek. “Dear Brother, tell me,” Georgiana whispered. “Tell me what happened at Rosings.”

At Georgiana’s plea, Darcy looked down into his sister’s face, his heart stilled in his chest, before he turned away to stare once more out his window. Georgiana’s loving appeal and gentle kiss pierced him to the quick, tempting him to lay before her all the crushing pain of Elizabeth’s determined rejection and the bitter knowledge of himself that he had gained from it; but there was in her eyes something that made his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth with a sudden, irascible stubbornness. Was it possible that she could understand his pain? Yes, he might grant that what she had experienced at Wickham’s hands had been similarly devastating before working such unexpected changes in her and bringing the singular sort of maturity she now exhibited. But while he continued grateful for the solace she had found in religion, he could not, in the cold economy of Heaven that was his own experience, find anything, not even the compassionate solicitude in Georgiana’s eyes, to draw him in that direction. It had always made him uncomfortable, and now, in all he had lately undergone at the behest of Providence, he was become decidedly inured against it.

“Fitzwilliam?” The catch in Georgiana’s voice warned him that his demeanor had betrayed something of what had passed within him. Whatever that had been, and he could not put a name to it as yet, he knew it was not something for her tender sensibilities. Working to settle his features into softer lines, he turned back to her, grabbed for her hand, and brought it up to his lips.

“It was nothing, sweetling. You must not worry.” He stroked her hand with his thumb but could not look into her eyes. Suddenly, his room, indeed all of Erewile House, felt oppressive and confining. He must get out, it was impressed upon him, or suffocate! He released Georgiana’s hand. “I thank you for breakfast and your company, but I must leave you now.” He walked quickly to the bell pull and gave it a quick tug.