Elizabeth looked at her for a long time.
The girl looked down. “I only… I want to know.”
“Your brother would never approve of such thoughts.”
“I just wish to know if he spoke of me,” Georgiana repeated, a sort of tormented tone to her voice.
“I cannot imagine that you have seen him in these past four years, you ought to—”
“I saw him once since.” Georgiana’s voice was very quiet.
Elizabeth waited. She was not confident that she had heard the low voice correctly.
Georgiana pulled her hands away from Elizabeth and tangled them tightly together. She stared sightlessly at her lap. “This year.”
Elizabeth gasped, unable to stop herself. “If Mr. Darcy knew that, he would be very unhappy.”
There was no reply to that.
“All he said to me of you, is… I believe he said that he had once devoted himself to your entertainment, but that he feared that you had grown very proud.”
“Ah.” Something passed through Georgiana. “I suppose, I suppose I must be. I must seem so, to him.”
Elizabeth put an arm around Georgiana. It is what she would have done for one of her sisters, if they had that distraught expression.
They stayed together like this for a while, Georgiana then brushed at the tears on her face, “I should not have had it saved,but I could not bear to have the portrait destroyed.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t look at it,” she insisted. “I can’t bear the thought of doing so. And it would make my brother unhappy if he knew that I looked at the portrait. But I can’t… I can’t forget.”
“No, I cannot either,” Elizabeth said. Suddenly she remembered her father, as she had always loved him, smiling, catching her eye for a joke, telling her in every way possible that he adored her, and that she was his perfect, his favorite child. “No, it is never easy to forget.”
“And you and Fitzwilliam married! It is not fair! It is not! Your circumstances in life are highly unequal also.” Georgiana wrapped her arms around her legs and seemed on the verge of sobbing.
There really was nothing that she could say in reply to that. Especially not given the circumstances of their marriage, and the way that she would never tell anyone besides her aunt that she had not in the slightest intended to marry Darcy.
Papa had not let her tell him, and now she couldn’t tell anyone.
“I was shocked,” Georgiana said, “when I heard that you married. He’d mentioned you in his letters, and it was clear that he liked and admired you, especially after you’d come to care for your sister, what is her name?”
“Jane.”
“Jane,” Georgiana repeated, as though committing the name to memory. She then nodded. “I look forward to meeting her someday.”
“What,” Elizabeth asked with a profound curiosity, “did Darcy write to you about me?”
“Oh, nothing so… secret. You must know. Just that he approved very much of you coming to care for your sister, and he described how clever you were, and that he enjoyed matchingwits with you… and that you played the piano and sang very well.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “My singing voice is notsobad, I suppose.”
“Oh, you have something with the piano… something very good. It is not a matter of technical ability… you have enough skill that it can show, though you ought to practice more. But that is not the central thing… you have a feel for the music, for the feeling of the song.”
“When I listen to you play, you are… exquisite,” Elizabeth replied, “in a way that I could not imagine being.”
“It… is important to me, in a way it should not be for everyone. I disappear into the music when I play. I become nothing but the music, but you, you are simply having fun. And by doing so you make everyone who watches have that pleasure as well. It is lovely to watch you play, Fitzwilliam was right about that.”
“Oh.” Elizabeth blushed, and could not say how grateful she was for the compliment, because she really was grateful for it, and Georgiana’s sincerity shone through her words.
