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He sat with Anna near Martha and Ruth. Martha laid the familiar blanket across the child’s knees before returning to her chair.

The first notes were familiar. He had heard Elizabeth practising through the drawing-room door several afternoons that week, sometimes beginning the difficult phrase again after a pause long enough to suggest she had addressed an observation to the composer. Now she played it without stopping.

Anna listened.

Darcy looked down at her face. Her fingers still held his coat, but she had ceased pulling. He hummed two notes very softly, more for her than for himself, and her eyes came back to him.

There had been a morning when Georgiana played the same tune too fast because she wanted to go out. He could hear her impatience in the memory and see the smile she gave him when he accused her of abandoning half the notes. She had not always been the frightened girl he remembered at Ramsgate, or the mother asking a question from a sickbed.

She had been his sister for sixteen years.

Anna moved against him. He adjusted the blanket across her knees, keeping her little hand clear of the fold, and listened to Elizabeth finish the air.

He wished Georgiana could have heard it.

The wish hurt. It did not require him to leave the room.

When the last notes ended, Anna made a small, pleased noise which caused Jane to smile before anyone else spoke.

“You have your first opinion,” Darcy told Elizabeth.

“Then I shall be satisfied with it.”

She looked at him for a moment longer than courtesy required. He could not thank her as he wished before the company, but she seemed to understand that he had enjoyed hearing the music.

Mrs. Westcott asked whether the music could be obtained for her daughter. Elizabeth showed her the sheet, and Miss Westcott came to examine the pencilled marks beside it. Conversation resumed without any need for Darcy to supply another account of Anna’s presence.

After a little while Anna turned toward Martha and stretched out one hand.

Darcy gave her back before she was obliged to ask more forcefully.

“Shall we take her into the other room?” Martha asked.

“Yes. Thank you.”

Ruth rose with her. Jane said good-bye to Anna, who had tucked her face against Martha’s shoulder and could offer no acknowledgment. Charles held the door, and they went out by the way they had entered.

Darcy stood as though to follow them. He stopped when Mrs. Westcott spoke.

“Your sister used to enjoy that piece.”

“She did.”

“I remember her playing it when my daughter first came here.”

For a moment he feared the conversation would become an account of Georgiana’s final illness. Mrs. Westcott looked instead toward the instrument, where her daughter and Elizabeth were comparing the two passages upon the page.

“She was very kind to a nervous visitor,” the lady said. “My daughter had practised diligently and was afraid of forgetting everything when she sat down. Miss Darcy found a piece they could play together.”

Darcy had not known that.

“I am glad you told me.”

“They enjoyed it very much. We all did, though it was plainly more agreeable to them once the rest of us began talking.”

He smiled. “She never liked being watched too closely.”

“Very few young people do, unless they have arranged the watching themselves.”