Page 149 of Faceless

“Do not thank me. I have not done anything yet but issue nomenclature and summon a barrister.”

The resemblance, she thought, did not run only through the jaw and the eyes.

The door opened. Richard came in without waiting to be invited, which told Elizabeth more about the urgency of the interruption than any amount of apologetic speech would have done.

The earl looked up. “I said a moment.”

“You have had one.” Richard shut the door behind him. “Georgiana is waiting for you.”

Something changed in the older man’s face — the sudden recollection that grief, which he had been treating for nine months as accomplished fact, had all at once become something unfinished and dangerous.

“His sister does not know?” Elizabeth asked.

“No,” Richard answered. “She does not.”

LIV

Elizabeth Darcy

Georgiana Darcy was at the pianoforte when Elizabeth was brought to her, not playing but merely seated there with both hands resting upon the keys, as though she had either stopped very suddenly or had come to the instrument in the hope that music might provide occupation and found the hope unequal to the attempt.

She was younger than Elizabeth had imagined, though not childishly so. Sixteen, perhaps. Young rather in the way of the carefully protected, marked by it in both its tenderness and its cost. She had Darcy’s colouring exactly — the dark hair, the pale skin, the grave mouth.

The door closed behind Elizabeth. They were alone.

No one had provided instructions for this interview. Richard had touched her arm once in the corridor with the pressure that said I can take you no further than this. After that, she had only herself.

Georgiana stood as Elizabeth entered. She did not curtsey. She only stood, with her hands gathered awkwardly in front of her and her chin a little lifted, watching Elizabeth cross the room with the strained politeness of having been told a stranger was coming up to see her and not told why.

Elizabeth did the only thing she could think to do, which was to come forward and offer her hand.

“Forgive the manner of my arrival, Miss Darcy. I have only just come from Scotland and have not been able to dress as I should have wished. My name is Elizabeth Bennet.”

Georgiana’s hand was already half-extended. It stopped in the air between them.

Her eyes widened, her lips parted on a breath she did not finish, the first tears arrived before she had time to govern them — and Georgiana sat back down on the piano bench rather suddenly, as though her knees had ceased to hold her. One hand went to her mouth.

“Oh,” she said. Then again, behind her fingers, “Oh.”

Elizabeth rushed forward a little. “Miss Darcy? Have I upset you?”

“He — he wrote that name. He wrote it from Netherfield in the autumn before. Then again, from Kent in the spring. I have known your name for —” She stopped. She pressed the back of her hand against her eyes. “Forgive me. I do not — Miss Bennet, I do not understand how you have come to be here. Was Fitzwilliam — were you and he — when he —”

She could not finish the question. She had hold of the word engaged and was not going to use it, because using it would commit her to a kind of grief she was not yet prepared to revise. Her hand stayed at her mouth.

Elizabeth understood, with a small cold drop in her chest, that no one had told this girl anything. Richard had brought Elizabeth straight from her uncle’s library to this room. He had left the news to be delivered by a woman, because he had decided his cousin deserved that much. Whatever the colonel had said to his cousin upon his arrival, it had been nothing of consequence — only that a lady was coming up to see her.

“Miss Darcy. I have something I must tell you, and I must tell you carefully. Will you listen to me a moment without interrupting?”

Georgiana’s eyes had gone enormous. She nodded.

“Your brother did not die in April. He is alive. He is in London. I have come from him four days ago.”

Georgiana made a sound that was not quite a word. Her hand tightened on Elizabeth’s so hard it hurt. “What? How —”

“He has been living under a false name in Scotland to avoid a warrant on a charge he did not commit. The warrant has now found him, and he is being held in London pending trial — but he is alive, Miss Darcy. He is alive, and he has been alive every day since April, and I have come to your uncle’s house because we are going to bring him home.”

“A… alive?”