Page 37 of What Change Entails

He had been proud of his care for her.

Perhaps care required more listening than arranging.

The road curved westward. The country began to look like home. Stone walls. Uneven fields. The shapes of distant hills he knew before they fully emerged. A clump of trees on a ridge. A bend in the road where the view opened, then vanished again.

Pemberley was near.

With every mile, Darcy became more aware of the house waiting ahead. Not the grandeur visitors saw first, nor the consequence others attached to his name. Home. His father’s library. His mother’s favorite path. Reynolds’s firm affection disguised as household order. The stream running clean below the lawn. Rooms where Georgiana had learned to walk, to read, to play.

He had once thought Pemberley revealed him well.

Then Elizabeth Bennet had refused him, and the certainty had cracked.

If she ever saw it, what would she think? The question had haunted him at odd hours. During correspondence. At dinner. On horseback. In rooms where no one spoke her name. She would admire the grounds, perhaps. She had an eye for natural beauty and no patience for ostentation. She might approve the house’s situation. She might laugh at the portraits, challenge him over some improvement, tease Georgiana into speaking, walk the paths he had walked since his childhood.

Then he would recall her face at Hunsford and set the thought aside with deserved humiliation. He might never see her again. That possibility had once been necessary for self-command. Now it was merely bleak.

If he did not see her again, he could still become less deserving of her censure. That, at least, remained within his power. He could listen before deciding. Ask before assuming. Correct what pride had made easy to ignore. Be better to Georgiana. Better to Bingley. Better, perhaps, in small ordinary ways no one would ever connect to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

He was not a man of dramatic resolutions, but he could begin.

“Fitzwilliam!”

Georgiana’s voice carried back from ahead. She had stopped at the crest of the road, her mare shifting beneath her. Beyond her, the land fell away in a familiar sweep. Trees gathered thick along the valley, and above them, still partly hidden by distance and the road’s curve, stood the first pale glimpse of Pemberley’s stone.

Georgiana pivoted in the saddle, her face alight. “We are nearly home.”

Darcy rode up beside her.

They remained still for a breath. Then Georgiana grinned, touched her heel to the mare, and raced ahead down the road before he could remind her of caution.

“Georgiana!” he called, though there was no real reprimand in it.

She did not slow. Darcy watched her fly toward Pemberley with loose ribbons, bright cheeks, and the first true freedom he had seen in her for longer than he cared to admit.

Then he urged his horse after her.

Chapter Five

Georgiana had not meant to race. She knew better than to press her mare along the approach when the path curved near the east side of the house. She knew every turn of it, every dip where rain gathered after a storm, every place where grooms sometimes appeared without warning when coming from the stables. Her brother had reminded her often enough, and usually she obeyed such reminders before he had occasion to speak them.

But Pemberley had appeared between the trees.

After days of travel and weeks of London company before that, the sight of home had risen before her with such force that caution loosened. The pale stone caught the afternoon light beyond the sweep of lawn, and the windows flashed as the road descended. The stream shone below, half hidden by summer foliage. Everything smelled of warm grass, horse, and leaves bruised beneath hooves.

Home.

Her mare gathered herself eagerly beneath her, and Georgiana let her go.

Behind her, Fitzwilliam called her name. She heard him. She did not stop. For the first time in months, perhaps longer, no one watched her with expectation. No one asked whether she was tired before she had decided it herself. No one arranged her shawl, improved her answers, praised her complexion, or spoke of what would suit her. There was the rushing path, the mare’s stride, and Pemberley growing larger through the trees.

Fitzwilliam would scold her. Not severely. He would draw his brows together and speak of caution and uneven ground. Perhaps he would ask if she intended to break her neck within sight of the house and alarm Mrs. Reynolds beyond repair.

She almost smiled at the thought. That would astonish him. Earlier in the evening he had shown genuine amusement more than once, and she had not expected it after the strange weeks following his return from Kent.

He had come back altered, though Georgiana could not initially have explained why. Her brother had always been serious. That was hardly remarkable. Responsibility clung to him as naturally as ease did to Bingley. After Kent, the gravity in him had deepened into something heavier and more distant. He would sit with letters open before him and stare at the same page for several minutes together. His rides lasted longer than before. At dinner, he answered politely enough, then withdrew into himself in a manner that discouraged further conversation. Even Bingley’s relentless cheerfulness rarely reached him there.

Miss Bingley attributed it to exhaustion and estate concerns. Georgiana accepted the explanation for a while. Then small inconsistencies began troubling her. The shift in his expression whenever Hertfordshire arose in conversation. The fractional hesitation before he answered any mention of Rosings. Once in London, Miss Bingley had made some cutting remark regarding the “wildness” of country families, and Fitzwilliam had lowered his glass with such force that the stem struck the table sharply enough to interrupt the entire conversation.