Page 54 of What Change Entails

Miss Darcy turned toward Elizabeth with more confidence than she had shown the previous day. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Miss Darcy.”

“Georgiana,” Lydia corrected instantly. “You cannot continue saying Miss Darcy when she is practically my dearest friend.”

Mrs. Gardiner lowered her teacup. “Lydia.”

“What? She is.”

Color rose in Georgiana’s cheeks, though not unpleasantly. “I do not object.”

“That settles it,” Lydia declared.

Elizabeth shifted her attention from one girl to the other and abandoned the attempt at propriety. Resistance would encourage Lydia further.

Mr. Gardiner folded his letter. “Where is our host this morning?”

“He rode out before breakfast,” Georgiana answered. “One of the tenant cottages near Kympton requires repairs after the storms last month. Mr. Harding wished to review the accounts with him.”

Lydia blinked. “Your brother personally inspects roofs?”

“Generally, yes.”

“I thought wealthy men merely pointed at things and servants hurried away to manage them.”

Mr. Gardiner smiled into his coffee.

Georgiana smiled more openly this time. “My brother prefers to know what is being done.”

“Very inconvenient of him,” Lydia replied. “If I possessed ten thousand a year, I should never inspect anything disagreeable.”

“You would inspect gowns,” Elizabeth said.

Lydia considered this and nodded. “And officers.”

Mrs. Gardiner sighed.

The conversation drifted elsewhere, though Elizabeth’s attention lingered unexpectedly upon Georgiana’s answer. She had never imagined Darcy among damaged cottages and estate accounts. At Netherfield, he had appeared detached from practical life altogether when socializing, moving through assemblies and drawing rooms with the reserve of a man enduring necessary society until he might escape it.

She could not reconcile that memory of him at the Meryton assembly with muddy boots and roofing accounts. She reached for toast and told herself the distinction ought not matter.

It mattered anyway.

Breakfast continued with interruptions from Lydia, who demanded to know whether Pemberley possessed secret passages, whether Georgiana had ever hidden from callers, and whether all large estates contained “at least one tragic family portrait.”

“There is an ancestor in the gallery who frightens children,” Georgiana admitted.

Lydia leaned forward eagerly. “Which one?”

“Admiral Darcy. He lost an eye.”

“Oh, excellent.”

Mr. Gardiner shook his head over his coffee. “You will disappoint every respectable relation you possess before twenty.”

Lydia scoffed. “Just the tiresome ones.”

The doors opened before Mrs. Gardiner could answer.