“I must say,” he said after a few bites, “I never thought I would have the pleasure of taking a quiet breakfast with all you dear folk again. It quite puts me in mind of other days. I am sorry to leave Derbyshire again, and to leave you all so soon.”
“Does it really need to be soon?” Georgiana pleaded, with all the impetuous naivety of her years.
He gave her an indulgent smile. “I am afraid so, dear one. I would have given my other eye to see you walk down the aisle one day to some lucky man, but I am afraid they would take more than my eye in payment of that pleasure.”
Darcy poked at the contents of his plate with his fork—so far from desiring food that it made him almost ill to watch others enjoying their breakfast. Elizabeth, he noted, was sipping conservatively from her tea, but her plate was largely untouched, as well.
The Earl, however, was setting to his own breakfast with gusto. “When do you think to go?” he asked.
Richard laid aside his fork and waited for Elizabeth to look his way—an interlude that lasted several uncomfortable seconds, as she appeared to be lost in thought. “I fear it must be as soon as possible. I have the schedules, and there is a ship sailing from Liverpool every day this week. The one setting out tomorrow morning is promising if we can be on it. What do you think, my dear?”
Elizabeth gave a tight smile. “I think that wise,” she agreed. Then she looked down to her cup again.
Tomorrow morning!Darcy’s chest nearly burst. His eyes burned, and he made a point of looking anywhere else, so he could reel in this staggering sense of loss without gasping aloud at the table.So soon!And she seemed to be accepting it so calmly!
“I still do not like it,” objected the earl. “Is there not somewhere you can go where we can know something of you? What about Spain? I’ve an old friend there, Don Miguel. Or France—now, we can all get to France easily enough to see you from time to time. Wait, I have it. You said you picked up a bit of Dutch. Have you thought of Flanders? Just over the Channel, quiet locale, strong economy for you to find work, rural enough for our Elizabeth to be content.”
“I have been thinking about it,” Richard answered, “and I spoke with Elizabeth about it just last evening. Do you know, New England is not so bad.”
Darcy’s fork dropped with a discordant crash. “It is precisely where she should not go!”
“I only meant to be a temporary landing place,” Richard answered defensively. “A month, at the very most, and there is a deal of international business conducted from there. It could take us anywhere. Besides, it is not as if the United States Marshal would be waiting for her to arrive in port.”
Darcy’s gaze bored into Elizabeth. “You agreed to this?”
Her eyes flicked up to him. “He makes a deal of sense. We can seek better opportunities there, rather than blindly stumbling ahead.”
“But you left America for your safety!”
“When someone was actively looking for me, and I had no one there to whom I could turn—yes.”
“And how do you know they are not still seeking you?”
The earl held up a quelling hand, deliberately catching Darcy’s attention with a stern look. “Because no one in their right mind camps on the shore and waits for one lone woman to come back after a year away. Be reasonable, Darcy. So long as they take care not to write their whereabouts to her family or some-such, I think it a better plan than many they could have conceived.”
Reginald held Darcy’s gaze for several seconds longer, then looked back to his brother, who had already returned to his breakfast. “Richard, I know you will not like this, but I will insist on seeing you in my study before you go. This morning and perhaps this afternoon, at the very least. We should look over your will and see what is to be done about your inheritance. I can find some underhanded means of compensating you for what you must leave behind.”
Richard pushed back in his chair. “If it were only myself, I would tell you to keep all of it, every farthing and acre of land to which I could ever have laid claim, but since I have other cares now—” He rested a speculative glance on Elizabeth’s bowed crown. “Yes, I suppose it is for the best. And it will not hurt me to delay one more day before going, but I’m afraid we must make for the coast as soon as absolutely possible.”
Reginald gave a curt nod. “Very well. Enjoy your breakfast, for I expect we will be some hours. I will go call for my steward and make ready. Excuse me.”
Richard half rose from his seat to acknowledge his elder brother as he passed by. He sat down again to address his plate when something in Elizabeth’s manner must have caught his notice. Her eyes had gone glassy, her stare fixed on a bit of lace on the table. “My dear?” he asked.
She did not respond at once, but when she discovered he was speaking to her, she started and smiled, though it was a pale shadow of any smile Darcy had ever seen on her face. “I beg your pardon. I was only thinking of Jane.”
“We will see her again, my love,” Richard soothed. “When we are settled, we will send word and ask her to come to us for some months if it pleases you. And Bingley too, of course! That’s a chap whose company I could enjoy a long while without ever growing weary of it.”
Elizabeth looked at her plate again. “If you will pardon me, I would like to speak with Lady Matlock this morning, to take my leave.”
“An excellent idea,” Richard agreed. “I believe my mother was hoping to see you this morning, as well. I knew they would be taken with you, my dear.”
Elizabeth set her hands on either side of her chair and released an unsteady exhale before smiling thinly again and rising. She looked at no one as she left the room, and Darcy thought he saw—though it was perhaps wishful thinking—her fingertips raising to her cheek as she hurried out.
He sensed his sister peering at him now, around Richard’s happily oblivious figure, but he studiously ignored her. He knew precisely what she wished him to do and say—everything about Elizabeth and himself, everything about why and how he was not the same man his cousin had left behind, and why things between them could never again be what they were. In Georgiana’s frank and youthful mind, such explanations would serve to patch up any misunderstandings between them over his motives, his reluctance, and his failed enthusiasm for Richard’s recovery, but Darcy could only read disaster in that confession. Richard was barely speaking to him as it was because of one ill-judged comment—one that had doomed any further confessions before he could tender them. He had not yet dared to instigate a fight they would never have time on this earth to resolve.
His cousin would soon be gone—and Elizabeth with him. How they left, the manner of their farewell, depended on him.
Richard cleared his throat and touched a napkin to his mouth. “I do want to thank you both,” he said abruptly. “Elizabeth told me you took her in for months when my brother and mother refused. Thank you for that, Darcy, for giving her a chance. I hoped you would be a friend to her when I could not. You’re a good chap, and I am proud to claim a relation to you.”
