Chapter Fourteen

"Elizabeth, this is Georgiana, my sister," said Darcy proudly. "Georgiana, this is your cousin."

Elizabeth stepped forward to clasp Georgiana's hands impulsively, enchanted. "Good morning, you beautiful creature! I am so happy to meet you!"

Georgiana was a beautiful creature. She would remind anyone of a fairy, with soft fair hair and gentle, bright eyes and a petite, graceful figure. She smiled, shyly, but not uninvitingly. "And I too. I have heard so much about you and your sister, Cousin, that I have been longing to meet you, have I not, William?" She shifted her attention momentarily to her older cousin. "Good morning, Thomas! It is good to see you again!"

When she received no answer, Elizabeth turned to look at her brother. "Thomas?"

He was standing stock still, staring at Georgiana with his mouth a little open, looking very stupid, but at this he recollected himself. "Georgiana! I am very happy to see you again." He cleared his throat.

Elizabeth grinned and turned back to her new cousin. "I hope you are feeling perfectly well now? We were so disappointed you could not come last night."

"Oh yes," said Georgiana. "I am feeling very well. I was very disappointed too. The ball was an event I had looked forward to with such excitement. But now, I confess, because I have met you, and soon I will meet my cousin Jane, I do not regret it as much as I did – I feel perfectly happy."

Darcy stood by proudly, watching his sister and his cousin. There was something about Elizabeth, he could see, some magic charm, that really brought Georgiana out of her shell. Georgiana hardly ever talked so much. Of course, in the last months she had lost a great deal of her shyness, but still, she was naturally a quiet girl, who did not talk a lot, even when she was perfectly comfortable. Elizabeth, however, was almost inspiring his sister to chatter. He wondered if he might regret this.

"I will go and fetch Jane for you now," said Elizabeth. "She will be so happy to see you. I am sure you and she will become the best of friends. Please excuse me, Cousins, Thomas."

She ran off upstairs. Thomas sat down and breathed heavily, his eyes still on Georgiana's face as she said something to her brother while walking into the sitting room. He had not expected it to be like this at all. Last time he saw Georgiana, barely six months ago, she was a little girl, terribly shy, even with he and Richard, and he had given her avuncular, reassuring smiles, and a box of sugarplums before she went away. It was almost farcical to remember it now, and to try to compare that trembling child to the wonderful creature before him now. Of course she was recognisable. She had not lost a quiet, shy manner. But she looked about her with so much more ease, even when meeting strangers – she was almost confident. And she was so pretty. He wondered he had not noticed this before. He blinked several times and tried to regain mastery over himself.

Georgiana sat down on the sopha beside him. "Well, Cousin Thomas!" she said in her gentle way. "Ever since you gave me those sugarplums, I have been unaccountably addicted to them. It was very bad of you."

He laughed with some semblance of reality, but winced inside. O lord, she remembers that? Then I am doomed. "You see I had an ulterior motive." That was not very funny, Thomas.

She giggled. He liked it when she giggled. It wasn't like the other girls of her age. They tittered. She gave a rather adorable, shy little gurgle of amusement. Yes, she gurgled.

Just at that moment, the door opened, and Jane and Rosalind came inside, led by Lizzy. Georgiana jumped up. "You are my cousin Jane!"

"Yes, I am she," said Jane, taking Georgiana's outstretched hands between hers. "And I am so delighted to meet you at last, Cousin Georgiana!"

Rosalind laughed. "I see I am quite forgotten!"

Thomas did not attend much to any more of the conversation but Georgiana's, until Darcy stood up, looking like he had something to say. There was something about the way Darcy did this sort of thing that always attracted attention. Thomas found himself wishing for Darcy's manner.

"It is a great pity my aunt and uncle are not here," said Darcy, "because I must make my goodbyes to all of you. I will be away for a fortnight at the most on business in the north."

"Oh, that is too bad," said Jane warmly. "We will miss you, Cousin Darcy."

"I will miss you all too," said Darcy, looking at Elizabeth rather sadly.

"It is a great deal like you to have business just when we are beginning to have fun, Darcy!" said Thomas. "Can you not wait for a few weeks? I am sure my parents mean to quit town soon enough. Then we will be in the north ourselves."

Darcy smiled. "I could hardly have given Fate a list of the times that would best suit me for business to arise, Thomas." He turned involuntarily again to Elizabeth. "But I will be back again as soon as it is possible for me to come." He paused. "Unfortunately the business is of such a nature – I only heard of it last night, when I arrived home from the ball – that I must be off as soon as possible. I waited to introduce my sister to you, Elizabeth, Jane, but I feel I must leave you now. Georgiana, do you wish to stay longer?"

"Yes, please," she said immediately.

"Very well. I wish you will all convey my deep regrets to my aunt and uncle – and to Richard, of course – that I could not see them before I left." He hesitated at the door. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye," whispered Elizabeth.

Thomas watched her with a slight smile. If anyone had not known better, it would have seemed from her face that he was leaving for a year! Meanwhile, he went about the task of making conversation with Georgiana. Somehow this didn't seem at all arduous, as it had in the past.

Georgiana Darcy almost lived at the Fitzwilliam townhouse for the next couple of weeks. As she was one of the most pleasant types of people to be with, there was not a single person in the house who regretted this. It surprised Jane and Elizabeth that she had always been such good friends with Rosalind, considering the very different personalities of each girl, but they were glad of it. They too grew to know her very well, and harboured a great deal of affection for her. She was such a thoughtful girl. The one evening she remained at the Darcy townhouse instead of visiting her aunt and uncle on Brook Street was spent making little gifts for her newest cousins – little lavender sachets, embroidered with their names and a sprig of lavender, all in the prettiest fashion imaginable. Although she never put herself forward, Elizabeth watched her watching everyone else, and decided that she was a very astute judge of people. If they had a slightly ridiculous visitor, Georgiana's lips twitched at all the moments Elizabeth longed to break into laughter. If someone was slightly upset about something and was trying to hide it – like the time when Elizabeth had been feeling guilty again over her adoptive parents – she noticed at once and gently tried to right things.

Elizabeth thought often of how Wickham had used the poor girl and her anger at him rose all the more. How dare he have exploited her like that? She was the sweetest girl alive. She supposed his treachery must have taught her a lot, however. It probably accounted for the fact that she observed events so carefully now. She was glad that it had not only made her less comfortable; it had pushed her to improve herself. For it was obvious that Georgiana had greatly changed over the last year or so, from the way Rosalind and Mama often spoke of her.

Elizabeth was amused at Thomas' reaction to Georgiana's arrival. She did not dare talk to him about it because he was becoming alarmingly sensitive. She did mention it to Jane once, but was told soundly to mind her own business, because the poor man obviously did not know what to do with himself. However, she had no inclination to tease him, for she wouldn't have wished to upset her brother, or, indeed, Georgiana, for the world, and it seemed like Georgiana was by no means repulsed by his hesitant attentions. She was becoming very fond of her eldest brother. At first, she had felt most distant from him, of her other siblings, because she already knew Rosalind and Richard to some extent. But as she grew to know him, she understood more and more the kind, protective and reliable personality that was Thomas. She felt he was exactly what she had imagined in an elder brother – someone to laugh with, yet someone who looked after her like she was still three years old.

Since Georgiana came, Elizabeth had improved very much at her music suddenly. Not for any competitive reasons, but Georgiana's passion for music could not help but awaken Elizabeth's natural inclination for it, and they played together very often, learning many duets, and accompanying each other's singing. Georgiana had a charming voice, but she would, at first, only sing in front of Elizabeth. Eventually she agreed to sing in a duet with Elizabeth one evening and it was agreed by their entire audience, which included Claudia Trent, who was a frequent visitor at Brook Street, that they were angelic. Elizabeth was pleased to see Georgiana becoming more and more confident in the company of her cousins, and subsequently in strangers' company also.

As for the Earl and Countess, Jane and Elizabeth were becoming more and more happy as their daughters. They had never before experienced having parents who were so affectionate with each other and their children. Elizabeth enjoyed the long conversations she could have with her father, and both sisters couldn't help but take pleasure in the novelty of having a sensible mother, who quite put herself out to ensure her daughters' comfort and whom one could converse with just as easily about religion as about clothes, and who embraced one often. Jane grew to adore her father, looking up to him almost at a ridiculous level. It was interesting also to see the similarities in their own characters to their parents'. Lord Matlock's calmness and Lady Matlock's kindness were very evident in Jane's personality, while Elizabeth's sense of humour and perception seemed to come from her father, and her manner of speaking was held to be almost identical to her mother's. They were also amused to discover their original middle names – Jane's was Jane, funnily enough, and Elizabeth's was Ruby.

The only marring incident in this particular period was a vulgar gossip column in the newspaper, referring to Jane and Elizabeth's reunification with their family, and the evident attachment between 'the youngest of them and the house of a well-known relation from Derbyshire'. As it mentioned, in a roundabout manner, the children Darcy already had, and then suggested Thomas to be a snob, Elizabeth had no difficulty in deciphering whose column it must be, and likewise, no difficulty in ignoring it entirely, as did every other Fitzwilliam. Of course, she was angry at such an unkind attack on Thomas, who was anything but a snob – he was the merely the sort of man who did not suffer foolish people – and of course she hated to hear anything said about Darcy, yet she knew it was best to ignore it.

It was thus an idyllic last few weeks the Fitzwilliams had in town, in Elizabeth's eyes, despite the fact that Darcy was gone and Elizabeth couldn't help but miss him and look for him every time a carriage stopped outside or a door opened.

It was something quite unconscious that Georgiana said that changed this.