June, 1810
Pemberley
It was raining atPemberley.
Not the sort of rain that threatened floods or made for poetic despair—just the slow, insistent kind that glazed every window and made the house feel too large by half.
Darcy was in the library. Not reading.
He sat at the desk with a stack of letters before him—half of them opened, one abandoned mid-reply. His pen hovered over a blank sheet. Nothing came.
The fire hissed behind him. A log cracked.
Georgiana entered without knocking, as she always did. She had a book under her arm and her spectacles sliding down her nose. She did not need them. She just thought they made her look studious.
“You have been sitting like that for an hour,” she said, dropping onto the chaise beside the hearth.
“I have been thinking.”
“You have been sulking.”
He looked over at her. “I do not sulk.”
“You become profoundly still and make the air feel guilty.”
Darcy exhaled. “It has been a long week.”
“It has beenthreeweeks since you came home from London,” she said casually, flipping open her book.
He said nothing.
Georgiana peered over the edge of her page. “Did something happen?”
Darcy returned to his letter. Dipped the pen. Still did not write.
“Someone read something they should not have,” he said at last.
Georgiana frowned. “You, or someone else?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I read it.”
“Ah.”
There was a pause.
“Did you tell anyone else?”
“No.”
“Did you yell?”
“No.”
“Did you write about it in your own journal with a sharp quill and excessive punctuation?”
Darcy blinked. “Why would I do that?”
Georgiana smiled. “You are not the only one who knows how to observe people.”
