No one hurried forward eagerly.
Even the air itself felt wrong.
Mr. Darcy stepped up to the carriage. His face was as expressive and welcoming as stone. “Well, Fitzwilliam,” he said flatly, “your mother is dead.”
For one terrible moment, Fitz did not understand the words.
Dead?
The world tilted strangely around him. “No,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes filling with tears.
His father looked almost annoyed by the response. “Control yourself, Fitzwilliam. You are a man, not a child.”
Fitz barely heard him.
His mother. Gone.
The person who wrote him letters smelling of lavender. The one person who had always looked at him gently. The one place in the world where he never feared disapproval.
Gone.
A horrible sound escaped his throat before he could stop it.
Georgie, standing next to him, snorted. “Baby. I didn’t cry when my mother died.”
The words were not especially loud, but several stablehands looked over at once.
Heat flooded Fitz’s face. He realized suddenly—with horrifying clarity—that everyone could see him. See the tears. See the weakness. See the grief tearing him apart.
And his father was watching with visible impatience.
Something inside him hardened.
Not all at once.
But like water freezing in winter.
He swallowed.
Straightened.
Locked his jaw so tightly it hurt.
Fitz did not cry. Not even when he was alone that night in his room.
He turned his head toward the adjoining dressing room where his trunk sat half unpacked. Candlelight from the dying fire cast faint shadows against the walls, making the room seem unfamiliar despite it being his own chamber since infancy.
Mother is dead.
The thought still did not feel real.
A soft sound broke the silence.
A baby crying.
Fitz sat upright instantly.
The sound came faintly through the corridor beyond his door.
