Elizabeth leaned back in her chair. “I am trying to understand a hero who is not a hero. He is not charming. He is not kind. But he might be—eventually—if someone dropped a bookcase on him and started from scratch.”
Jane said nothing for a moment. Then, a sly grin overtook her features. “At least change his eyebrows. Or everyone will know.”
Elizabeth chewed her lip and shook her head, her pencil poised once more. “Oh, no, impossible. His eyebrows are theentirepoint.”
She adjusted the angle of her notebook, tapping the tip of her pencil against the page. Her expression softened—just slightly.
“He is… not entirely hopeless.”
Jane looked over, surprised.
Elizabeth snapped the book shut again. “But I shall remedy that in the next chapter.”
The sunlight fell atthe wrong angle for thinking.
Darcy sat at the writing desk in Bingley’s study, one hand resting beside his teacup, the other atop the thick ivory stock of a letter he had read three times and still could not quite believe.
Fitzwilliam,
Your silence on the matter of your sister grows conspicuous. A girl of her age, position, and musical ability ought to be visible by now—at least to the right eyes.
The ink was impeccable. The seal crisp. And the meaning unmistakable.
Lord Matlock rarely wrote in metaphor. This was not a query. It was a warning.
Across the room, Bingley was rattling through a drawer, searching for a misplaced pair of gloves with all the coordination of a man trying to throw a net over smoke.
“I am not certain whether Philips is the one with the small vineyard or the enormous bloodhound,” Bingley said, half to himself. “Or was that the vicar? No, the vicar’s wife. She kept feeding me gooseberries.”
Darcy tried to read his letter again, scowling.
“Darcy?”
He looked up.
Bingley grinned, triumphant, holding aloft a single glove. “I have one. The other has vanished. I suspect Caroline stole it in protest.”
“Mm.”
Bingley blinked. “That was a noncommittal noise. Are you quite well?”
Darcy folded the letter and then ripped his fingernails along the existing crease, just for good measure. “Do you recall whether my uncle, Lord Matlock ever met Wickham in Town? Perhaps while we were at school?”
Bingley paused, the glove drooping slightly. “I… do not think he ever had an occasion to. His own sons had finished school by the time we all came to Cambridge. Why?”
“No reason.”
That was a lie. But a necessary one.
The letter had arrived that morning with no prior warning—no preamble, no polite query about Georgiana’s health. Just that sentence. A girl of her age, position, and musical ability.
Visible.
Darcy had heard that word in another context, only months ago. It had come from Georgiana herself, eyes low, voice thin: “I did not think he would be visible. I only meant to write. I did not know he would come inside.”
Darcy’s knuckles pressed into the table.
He had meant to track down George Wickham and threaten him with debtor’s prison or something altogether more dreadful before anything reached the earl’s ears. Clearly, he had failed.
