Her finger strayed over the keys as her mouth puckered. “Yes.”
“Then, it is settled. Let us have no more of this assuming my thoughts. If you wish to study composition, then study it you shall.”
Georgiana’s eyes widened in almost girlish delight—a thing he had not seen in better than two years. “Do you mean that?”
“Of course, I do. I have been troubled over you for many months now, wondering why you seem so different than the girl I had always known. You have been unhappy—sullen, even. Is this the cause? You thought I would deny your fondest wishes?”
Her face was almost glowing, and she blinked back a rush of emotion. She put her hands to her cheeks. “More than that. I denied them myself. I thought they were impossible—I mean, I am a Darcy! It is not for me to chase will-o-the-wisps. I know what is expected of me, who and what I must be, so I never permitted myself to dream.”
“Well, I hope you will do so now.”
A broad smile swept over her features, and she leapt to her toes, snapping up a bit of her music and twirling about like a child. “Thank you, Fitzwilliam!”
“Oh, do not thank me. Now I do not have to get you a Christmas present.”
It was perhaps the first time he had heard her truly laugh in months.
Therewassomesatisfactionin retiring to his bed that evening. For the first time in a long while, he felt as if he understood something—even if it was something so simple as his sister’s unspoken ambitions. Why the devil would she not have tested him, asked what was on her heart before it soured her?
He knew the truth, though, and it had made him stale as surely as it had nearly ruined her. He had become too dull, too immovable. Almost like an old man, he lived his life, though he was not yet thirty. Always the safe path, always the rational course. He could not very well change all that—as Georgiana had said, he was a Darcy. And yet…
He thumbed open that book of poetry—he had brought it to his room with him, on some odd impulse—and flipped to a verse that had caught his eye but not his attention until this moment. He tilted it close to his lamp and read.
My mother! if thou love me, name no more
My noble birth! Sounding at every breath
My noble birth, thou kill'st me. Thither fly,
As to their only refuge, all from whom
Nature withholds all good besides; they boast
Their noble birth, conduct us to the tombs
Of their forefathers, and, from age to age
Ascending, trumpet their illustrious race:
But whom hast thou beheld, or canst thou name,
Derived from no forefathers? Such a man
Lives not; for how could such be born at all?
And, if it chance that, native of a land
Far distant, or in infancy deprived
Of all his kindred, one, who cannot trace
His origin, exist, why deem him sprung
From baser ancestry than theirs who can?
My mother! he whom nature at his birth
Endow'd with virtuous qualities, although
