Page 93

“He did not require you to deserve it.”

Darcy looked up at her. The reply had come quietly, with none of the sharpness he had learned to expect when she disagreed with him. He was grateful for it and unable to answer.

Elizabeth waited.

“Wickham died before Anna was born,” he said at last. “There was a quarrel over gambling. My cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, made inquiries himself. He confirmed the death. It was not a report which I accepted because I wished it true.”

“I did not suppose it was.”

“No.” Darcy drew a breath. “No, you have given me no reason to say that.”

For too long he had rehearsed answers to questions no one had asked him. Some had become so familiar that they emerged before he could distinguish them from an actual objection.

“Georgiana came north before the birth. The Hargreaves had known her since she was a child. Martha offered to care for her, and the cottage could be made comfortable and private. She was glad to be near people she knew.”

He could say that truthfully. She had smiled when Martha came to meet them. She had asked after Thomas and laughed at a story of the dog. Those things had happened, too, however often he returned to the rest.

“Anna was born in March. Georgiana chose her name.”

“Anna,” Elizabeth repeated.

“For our mother, Anne. And something of her own name. She said a child ought not to require more than four letters before anyone could call to her.”

A small smile appeared upon Elizabeth’s face. Darcy tried to return it.

“She was pleased with that. She had written out several names beforehand, and rejected every one I preferred.”

“Very properly.”

“Yes.”

He looked at the cap. His sister had spent an afternoon examining Anna’s first cap, smaller even than this one, asking whether the child could truly fit into it. He had been able to laugh with her then.

“She seemed to recover after the birth. Not all at once, but there were good days. In April she took a fever. The physician attended her. We sent for further advice.”

Darcy stopped. Elizabeth did not supply the ending. She knew it, and still allowed him to say it when he could.

“I could not save her.”

“I am very sorry.”

He bent forward, resting his elbows upon his knees. The room was perfectly quiet. Nothing in it required his attention. No bell, no visitor, no account could rescue him from the next thing he wished her to understand.

“She asked to come home.”

Elizabeth remained still.

“Before the fever. She asked whether she and Anna might come here when she was stronger.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I must consider the arrangements.”

The answer sounded as contemptible as he had feared. He had explained it to himself in better words many times. There would be servants to instruct, inquiries to anticipate, a history to provide for the child which would not destroy her mother’s reputation. He had known what society would make of Georgiana and had wished to keep every cruel voice beyond her hearing.

He had not given her the answer she asked for.

“I meant yes,” he said. “I believed I meant yes. Only not yet, not until I had decided how it might be managed. She had to ask whether there would be a place for her own child in her own home, and I told her to wait.”