Page 199 of Faceless

Georgiana was at the foot of the stair.

She came across the hall and into his arms with a sound he hoped never to hear from any person he loved again — the sound of months of fear leaving her too quickly to be borne — and he caught her and held her against his shoulder and closed his eyes.

“Oh, Georgie! Forgive me, dearest.”

“You are home! Brother, look at me. Oh, you are back, you are home!”

“I am home. It is done. I am here.”

“I knew. Richard came. He told me. I knew, I knew —”

“All is well, sweet one. Better than well.”

He held her for a long moment. He did not, for that moment, look at anyone else in the hall. He could not. If he looked at Elizabeth or his uncle or any of them, his composure would go entirely.

Georgiana stepped back at last and wiped her face with both her hands at once, and laughed against her own palm with a small wet hiccupping sound that broke him further than the weeping had. He kept his hand on her shoulder a moment longer before he let her go.

Jane Bennet was a step behind Georgiana. Richard was a step behind her.

He marked, before he had quite noticed himself doing so, that Richard was standing closer to Jane Bennet than the architecture of the hall required. But he would think about it later. There would be time, now, to think about a great many things he had not been able to permit himself to think about, and his cousin’s evident standing in relation to his wife’s sister could wait until the second cup of coffee at the earliest.

He went to Jane and took both her hands, and the gratitude in his face must have been more than he had thought he was permitting it to be, because she coloured and laughed a little to hide tears.

“You have my life’s thanks.”

“Then keep your life, Brother, and we shall call the account square.”

It was so exactly the answer her sister would have given him in her place that he laughed as he turned to Richard.

Richard had not, by the look of him, slept at all. He had been at the courthouse until almost four, on a horse for the better part of the small hours, and at this house since perhaps five. He met Darcy’s eye and inclined his head fractionally. Darcy returned it. There was nothing he could say to his cousin, in the open of the hall and at the foot of his uncle’s stair, that would have been adequate to what Richard had done for him the last twelve months.

Richard cleared his throat. “Welcome home, cousin.”

Darcy merely squeezed his cousin’s hand. Somehow, someday, he would find a way to say one quarter of what he meant.

His uncle had been standing by the breakfast-room door throughout, with the air of permitting weather to occur in his own entrance hall for one exceptional morning.

Darcy crossed the hall and held out his hand.

The earl looked at it as if the English tendency towards demonstrative feeling had at last become intolerably continental. Then he took it.

“You have done too much, my lord.”

“Nonsense. I have done exactly as much as was required by self-interest. The family name is a perfectly rational object of investment. Come and have your coffee. The household has been waiting an hour, and the eggs have gone past saving. Your wife is hungry. So is your sister. So am I, and by the look of you, you ought to be, too.”

They left London eight days later.

The delay was necessary, legal, and entirely unwelcome. Darcy had papers to sign. Pemberton had to finish ruining Sterling properly. Marsh and Foss required protection. Elizabeth endured the interval with less patience than pregnancy had improved in her and Darcy with none at all, except where her comfort was concerned.

Once the road north opened, the country seemed to widen around them with each mile. Pemberley appeared at last in afternoon light, the stone pale gold against the green descent towards the water. None of the descriptions she had heard had included what mattered most — the shock of seeing, after so much turmoil, a place capable of looking like permanence without arrogance.

She drew breath. Darcy’s hand closed over hers.

“Well?” he asked quietly.

“Caroline Bingley did not exaggerate enough.”

He laughed, and the laugh did not stop at the corner of his mouth as it usually did, but reached his eyes and stayed there.