Page 69 of The Crown’s Gift

"And now?"

"Sometimes it means William is trying very hard not to speak first."

Elizabeth glanced at her.

Georgiana smiled faintly. "He told me you were honest with him at Hunsford. Not everything."

"He should not place responsibility for his change upon me."

"He does not. He says you made it impossible for him to ignore himself."

They continued to Darcy's portrait.

"He was pleased you came," Georgiana said.

"He was surprised."

"He was both."

Elizabeth looked at the painted smile. "And what do you wish?"

Georgiana considered the question seriously. "I wish he would laugh more. I wish you were here when he does. But I do not wish you to marry him because I am lonely."

The maturity of the answer moved Elizabeth.

"You are not the frightened girl Wickham deceived."

"I am sometimes. Then Mary writes something sensible and I remember fear is not my whole character."

They embraced before returning to the drawing room.

Georgiana and Elizabeth played Mary's Scottish airs as a duet. Darcy turned pages. At one passage Elizabeth missed a note and stopped.

"Mary would be appalled," she said.

"Mary would make you practice the left hand for a month," Georgiana replied.

Darcy leaned nearer to find the place. His shoulder brushed Elizabeth's.

Neither spoke.

The music resumed more softly.

The next morning Darcy invited Mr Gardiner to fish. Mrs Gardiner and Elizabeth joined Georgiana for a drive through the park. They passed tenant farms, a small school, and cottages newly roofed after a winter storm.

At one farm a girl of seven ran to the carriage waving a bunch of crushed flowers.

"For Mr Darcy's sister," she said.

Georgiana accepted them with grave thanks and knew the child's name. "Her mother was ill last year. William sent the physician from Lambton every week."

"He never mentions such things," Mrs Gardiner observed.

"He thinks doing one's duty is not a subject for praise."

Elizabeth remembered Darcy's objections at Hunsford. Duty had been the frame through which he saw every relationship. Love required something more flexible: generosity without account, trust without proof in advance, vulnerability that could not be managed like land.

He was learning. So was she.