Chapter Text
It had been a long time since it was so difficult for Darcy to get up and out of bed. He was used to the sleeplessness, the restless dreams, even the waking at early hours. At least then he could get up and stare aimlessly at his computer screen or a blank page for a few hours. That, at least, had some slight amount of productive feeling to it.
But, rather than helping his mood, somehow Georgie’s presence had made it even worse. He didn’t blame her—indeed, he had no idea why her presence was weighing on him so heavily. Or, perhaps, it was unrelated, some unlucky quirk that his depression decided to rise to a peak just at the time he could finally enjoy a few days with his sister.
When he looked out the window the morning of Christmas Eve, the sky was a flat, dull gray color, which he thought complimented his mood rather thoroughly. Just to indulge himself in the grayness, he struggled into a thickly knit gray turtleneck before he walked downstairs, his shoulders sloping all the way.
As if in direct defiance, Georgie was dressed in a hideous—and hideously bright—Christmas sweater. It was striped with alternating bands of snowflakes and piano keyboards, where the black keys had been knit with green instead. “Oh, you’re up.” There was something flat in her tone. It wasn’t excitement or regret at his presence, but her words did hint at some additional thought.
He nodded, glancing around the room. “Oh, you found the tree.”
“Yes. It’s a bit sad, isn’t it? But I guess it will have to do.”
Darcy shrugged and sat. The tree was no more than two feet high, an artificial pine with built-in lights normally meant to be a secondary tree, perhaps set somewhere on a little table in the midst of many other decorations. It sat on one of the armchair side tables with a scrunched up, cream table runner wound around the base, approximating a tree skirt.
When the old Mr. Darcy was still alive, they had always had a real tree, usually some giant thing that he, usually accompanied by one or both of his children, would pick out personally. Then, they would festoon it with ornaments, ribbons, and strings of lights, before showing it off at a series of Christmas parties, some for business, others for friends, before culminating in a family party the night of.
But after he died, there hadn’t been much point—in the tree or the parties. With Georgie in England, Darcy found himself spending most of his Christmases at the Fitzwilliam residence. He had had one, particularly underwhelming holiday alone and at home. The sad little tree was the only remnant of that night.
And they hadn’t even bothered to put it up the previous year.
He was still staring at it when Georgie said, softly, “I was going to take Apple out for a walk. Do you want to come with us?”
“No.” Once again, his tone was harsher than intended. “No,” he quickly clarified, “I’d like to try and get some work done today.”
Georgie sighed. “Oh, but it’s Christmas Eve today… Shouldn’t you take the day off?”
Darcy only shrugged and shook his head slightly. She sat quite still, staring at him for several seconds. He realized she wouldn’t stop until he left, so he pushed himself out of the chair and left for the library, which he had usurped as his office long before he inherited the house. Even as a child, he had gone in there often with a notebook, scribbling out nonsense stories that had never again seen the light of day.
The library was down the hall from the main living room, the door just behind the stairs. It was a particularly large room, longer than it was wide. He had had his father’s desk moved in, pushed towards the far end of the room. The shelves were built of dark wood, all antique or build to look that way, most of them from the original building of the house.
Somehow, his little laptop always seemed so out of place, too modern for the setting. The brightly colored spines of his personal books, all gathered together in the shelves just behind the desk, also stood out. Their sleek plasticized spines and glossy dustjackets differed boldly from the older, duller leather and clothbound volumes that had been with the family for generations. In the times he felt his loneliness or emotional discontent most keenly, it felt almost as if the eyes of the past were on him, watching his back, his every movement and keystroke, every word he typed on the screen.
Depending on the day, it could be a good feeling or a bad. On the good days, they supported him, encouraged him. On the bad, they judged every word he wrote.
He was beginning to regret his agreement to a quiet night in before the day even reached noon. While he wasn’t particularly interested in doing anything festive on the anniversary of their mother’s death, he was in no mood to sit in semi-silent contemplation.
The cursor blinked on the nearly empty page, but he could barely focus on the words he was trying to write. He felt restless and the quiet of the room pressed against his ears like a vacuum. He tapped his fingers against the edge of the desk, the lip of the computer—anywhere but on the keys. His attention was then caught by the tidy stack of papers on the corner of the desk—the application for the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He had printed them several weeks before, but hadn’t made any headway on filling any of it out. Reaching out, he touched his fingers against the corner, twisting the paper slightly. The thought of going so far away from Georgie—and the convenient airports or trains to get to her—did not set well with him.
There was an unpleasant wriggling feeling in his stomach, not quite to the point of nauseous, but just on the edge. That same, low-level discomfort reminded him forcefully of his first run-in with the endless casseroles, though served originally by his father. They had been accompanied with by the somewhat unpleasant sound of a toddler gnawing on carrots and strawberries with her tiny teeth.
Forcibly, he pushed the thoughts of funerals and family out of his mind. Even if it was the anniversary of a death, that didn’t mean he had to dwell. He rubbed furiously against his eye, pressing so hard with his fist that he saw fireworks, and got to work, imagining himself physically clearing space in his head, pretending it was an overstuffed room to be cleaned. He sat almost motionless for a full minute, focusing on his breathing and the mad dash of reorganization in his thoughts. He tried to push the images of his parents from behind his eyes, to exist in the moment rather than suffer for the past. And… when it was all swept from his thoughts, cleared away like cobwebs and dusty boxes, the same intrusions from his drive up to New York took the forefront of his thoughts once again.
Death was an old weight. He knew the press of sorrow and the pangs of loss from old. But this was something new. He had felt the bite of love before, but he had always moved on quickly enough. There was one grudge, but he had never experienced anything like this feeling before.
He had seen Elizabeth last in July, a full five months ago, and she still called to him. Whatever longing he felt for her expounded his discomfort of being at home. When he looked up, away from the computer, he could practically imagine her, sitting in one of the armchairs with a book or standing on the ladder, reaching for a high shelf on pointed toes, her fingers trembling just out of reach of the volume.
Darcy snapped the lid of the laptop closed and pushed his chair forcefully away from the desk. Clearly, there was no work to be done that day. He should have stayed with Georgie when she asked him to… Thinking to make amends, he left the library and returned to the sitting room, straining his ears for the click of Apple’s nails or the much louder sound of Georgie playing scales or some other warm up.
The room was empty and he felt his shoulders slump. If it was possible, he felt even more down and disappointed. Contrarily, although he desperately wished for his sister’s company, he did not want to search her out—if he did so, she would know something was wrong. He stepped further into the room, casting his eyes over the couches, half wondering if he should wait her out. There was evidence of Georgie’s recent inhabitance in the room—a dog toy on the rug, a new book on the coffee table…
With a jolt, he recognized the cover of the book, a glossy, eye-catching hardcover. It was the same one Elizabeth had been reading during that complete disaster of a hiking trip in the cabin. Before he could even think, he had snatched the novel up in one hand, gripping his fingers tightly against the dustjacket; they pressed hard against the raised letters of the author’s name. When he noticed his thumb was denting the silvery “P,” he quickly dropped the book back down to the table, but it was too late and her image was invoked.
He could still see her bright brown eyes as they peeked over the top of the book to watch him laughingly. “Frightened of a book?” she would ask him if she were there. And how would he have answered?
With a yes or with a lie? Another half-truth?
Unable to answer this imagined phantom, he retreated from the room, back to the library.
~~~~
He did not see Georgie again until dinner time. He had half hoped she would eventually be drawn to the piano, but every time he returned to the sitting room, walking a wide berth between himself and the offending book, the bench was empty. By 6 o’clock, Darcy realized he was starving; he had eaten nothing all day but his late (for him) breakfast. He left the library for good, heading towards the kitchen. Despite his famished state, the thought of the necessary energy it would take to cook a meal was both daunting and unmanageable.
Instead, he began to sift through the upper cabinets, looking for something quick to prepare. Unfortunately for him, an enjoyment of cooking and a preference for healthy eating left his kitchen quite bare of most ready-to-eat foods.
The sliding door in the sitting room, always stiff when the weather was chill, groaned open. He heard the jingle of tags on Apple’s collar and a soft laugh, then the footprints of girl and dog. He turned in time to meet them in the doorway.
Georgie’s cheeks were flushed with the cold. Her knit hat was pulled down low on her head and the ends of her hair sprung up from the bottom of it, flipping upward. She was in the process of pulling off her gloves as she approached. “Oh, good, you’re making dinner. I’m absolutely starving.”
He paused, glancing down at the can in his hand. “Thinking about it. Do you want to order in? I don’t know if anything is open Christmas Eve, but…” He put the can down on the countertop; eating whatever was in it was even more unappealing than the thought of cooking.
Between their two phones, they tracked down an open restaurant and called in the order. When Darcy hung up, he turned back to find Georgie staring at him expectantly. Apple sat by her side, mimicking the gaze; he found it slightly unnerving. “What?”
“I was hoping you’d light a fire!”
“If you’re cold, just turn up the heat,” he snapped. Almost instantly, he regretted his tone.
She seemed to take his remorse for granted, though, and only rolled her eyes. “It’s not because I’m cold. It’s not Christmas without a fire, Fitz.”
Darcy raised his eyebrows. “I think you’ve spent too many winters in drafty old English houses. It’s hardly cold enough to warrant—” He stopped speaking as she gestured out the window, where fat white flakes were lazily drifting towards the ground. “All right, all right. At least it’s snowing now…”
She beamed as he knelt on the stone edge of the fireplace, filling it with logs and smaller sticks. While his back was towards her, he took a moment to scold himself; Last Christmas was awful enough. You can’t let your moping ruin this Christmas for Georgie as well. He pulled the matches from the edge off the mantlepiece. Once it was lit, he stoked it a little higher and then slipped the grate firmly around the front so Apple wouldn’t burn himself by accident.
When the food arrived, he ate in near silence, allowing Georgie to go on about anything and everything that crossed her mind, from the upcoming semester’s classes to Apple’s confusion over the slightly frozen lake on the edge of the property.
When she tried to help him clear up the leftovers and dishes, he flatly refused, stopping just short of shoving her out of the kitchen. His impulse was only half altruistic; on one hand, he wanted to far outweigh the previous Christmas, giving her the break he knew she deserved, but on the other… He wanted to indulge himself in a good few minutes of wallowing.
He stood above the sink, head bent slightly, as he piled up the dishes. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? He knew, logically, that he would more than likely never see Elizabeth Bennet again.
He watched as the water sluiced off the remnants of sauce from one of the plates. Perhaps, he thought, as he rubbed the soapy sponge over the dish rather than putting it in the dishwasher, it is the same as being stuck in traffic. With nothing else to think about, I wander back to the unpleasant.
Not that thinking about Elizabeth was strictly unpleasant. The act itself was almost guiltily enjoyable. But the afterwards, when he fell back into his senses, and remembered she was far away and he had told Bingley that the other Bennet was a poor choice for romance… It all became unpleasantly muddled.
With a sigh, he wiped his soapy hands off on the towel. What would she say about the predicament? Laugh at him, most likely. Poke fun at his solemnity until he stumbled into embarrassing himself. The thought nettled enough to make him question, in a more scathing fashion, yet again why he could not keep the image of her dark eyes or open, laughing mouth, out of his mind.
The warmth and quiet of the sitting room was almost immediately comforting; as he stepped into the room, if just for a brief moment, it felt like a great pressure had eased from his chest. Georgie was humming something to herself. She sat, cross-legged on the floor with a brush, a nail file, and a set of heavy-duty clippers. Apple held out one paw over a towel as she snipped and clipped away at his claws buffing out the sharp edges.
His uptick in mood lasted almost until he reached the couch. Then, he caught sight of the book again. He paused then, eyes flicking back to his sister. “Georgie, is this your book by any chance?” He tried to keep his voice light and nonchalant, hoping not to give away how his heart beat uncomfortably in his chest when he looked at the cover, one finger tapping just below the title.
“What?” She glanced up at the volume. “Oh, yeah. Lia lent it to me for the break. Sorry if it’s not up to your usual literary standards or anything, I just wanted a mental break.”
He waved the excuse off and sank into a corner of the couch. He watched her for a while, his eyes pulling in and out of focus, his knuckles digging into his cheek. His brooding made nearly blind to the expression of concern on her face, the way her eyes tightened as they followed his sharp movements; first he tossed the book, a little roughly, back onto the table, and then he returned to his previous spot on the couch, crossing and knotting himself up into the corner. She could see his face only in profile, cast orange by the flickering firelight. She could see the tension points at the corner of his mouth, the creases of his forehead, and the furrowing of his dark eyebrows.
In a quick moment of decision, Georgie rolled up the dog grooming tools into her towel, making more noise than strictly necessary. The metal clippers clinked against the tines of the sturdy brush. She let out an exaggerated yawn, stretching her free arm out and away from her body. “I think I might turn in.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Already?”
“Well, if I don’t get to bed early enough, Santa might not come!” She winked, eliciting the smallest of smiles, a mere twitch at the corner of her older brother’s lips. Apple followed her out of the room and up the stairs to bed.
~~~~
Slowly, Darcy flickered his eyes open, taking a great gasp of air. It was only a dream. There was something hot and wet pressing insistently against his cheek. He blinked a couple times, clearing the sleepy blear out of his gaze to find Apple painting expectantly in his face.
"Ugh." He wiped his cheek on a corner of the bedsheet and slid away. Unfortunately, Apple seemed to take the newly freed space on the bed as an invitation and he clambered up, resting his muzzle against one of the pillows. Darcy narrowed his eyes at the dog. "Did Georgie put you up to this?"
Apple whined very softly and nudged his nose until the pillow was pressed against the headboard and he could put his head on his folded paws.
Stifling a yawn, he said, "Not talking, are you, hmm?"
The dog only stared. Stretching, he raised himself up in the bed and glanced towards the side of the room; the door was closed. He still couldn’t rule out Apple having done it on his own—as a nearly former service dog, he had been taught how to open and close doors on his own. Darcy made a hmm sound again and ruffled his fingers through his hair before pulling on a sweatshirt and running a brush through the mess. The clock on his nightstand said 8:48 AM and there were no new messages on his phone. He put the phone in his pocket and stepped into his slippers before turning back to Apple who was still lying contentedly in the warm spot from his body.
“Well? Are you coming?” When he put his hand on the doorknob, the dog leapt out of bed, kicking the covers back into a tangle. He trotted ahead down the hallway, looking back more than once, his tail wagging excitedly, to make sure Darcy was following behind.
“Are we friends now?” he asked the dog softly at the top of the stairs.
Apple whacked him in the leg with his tail before he bounded down the stairs.
Georgie was sitting on the floor in the sitting room, right next to the tiny Christmas tree and in front of her tidy stack of gifts. Several of them were already unwrapped and there was a light sprinkle of snow-like tissue paper crinkles around her feet. She was wearing a dark green dressing gown and pale pink, silk pajama set. Her hair was loose around her face, combed but not quite tame.
“Guess who I found in my bedroom when I woke up,” Darcy said as he strode into the room, Apple still keeping pace.
"Happy Christmas, Fitz," she said smilingly, using one of the colloquialisms she had picked up in England and not addressing his comment.
"Did you put him up to this?" Darcy asked, nudging the dog gently with one slipper-clad foot.
Apple glanced back at him and then bounded forward with a woof, lying his body at Georgie’s side. He slipped his muzzle on her knee. She put one hand on the top of the dog’s head. "I have no idea what you mean. Maybe Apple didn't want you staying in bed so late. Especially on Christmas day." She paused and fiddled with a bit of tape stuck to her finger. Then she peered up at her brother through a lock of hair that had fallen into her face, a sly little grin on her lips. "Besides what happened to Mr. Early-to-Bed-Early-to-Rise?"
Instead of answering, he merely grunted a noncommittal sound and threw himself on the couch a little more forcefully than intended. He was looking at the mantle, but he heard her expression in her voice, much softer and smaller than a moment before. “What about your presents, Fitz?”
When he looked at her, fully, she could see the bags under his eyes. She waited for him to speak; after several moments of silence, he slid off the couch to join her on the floor. She promptly tossed a soft package at his face. Apple’s tail thumped against the floor. “See, it’s not so difficult,” she said gently as she slid a set of packages towards him. “Just try to have a little fun.”
He smiled weakly back, before dropping his eyes to the gift now sitting in his lap. When he pulled the paper open, it revealed a set of writer themed ties, the first with typewriters, the second, ravens, and the last with open books. Georgie giggled behind her hand. “I hope you like them.”
“I do. Thank you, Georgie.”
It was more interesting for him to watch her than pay attention to his own gifts. She squealed when she unwrapped a new pair of hiking boots—“You’ll have to break them in,” he warned—and a foldable, thin plastic water bowl—“To make sure Apple has clean water next time we go on a camping trip.” She almost cried when, after opening a blank music composition notebook, two New York Philharmonic tickets fell out into her hand.
“You’ll have to thank Bingley for that one,” Darcy informed her. “I told him how you feel about von Weber.”
While she remained nearly incoherent, he looked at his own presents and was not displeased to find the majority of them to be books. He ran his finger along the edges of a particularly fine edition of The Necromancer, or The Tale of the Black Forest, close to chuckling. Ever since he had given a passionate mockery of the more ridiculous Gothic novels in their last year at Lancaster, Bingley had made it a point to find as many prime examples of the genre as possible.
Looking very pleased in the middle of her pile of wrapping paper, Georgie grinned. “I guess I should go get dressed, huh?” Without waiting for an answer, she scooped her gifts into her arms and exited, Apple on her heels.
The energy left the room with her. Darcy waited until he heard her reach the top of the stairs before he began to pluck up shreds of wrapping paper, balling them up and tossing them into a plastic bag. He took it out to the kitchen trashcan before sitting back on the couch. He opened the cover of his new book, but his eyes refused to focus on the words.
When Georgie returned, her hair was pulled away from her face with a row of brightly colored clips. She was wearing a fashionably oversized burgundy sweater and there was a small stack of additional wrapped gifts in her arms. She knelt carefully by the tree and started arranging them in a little pile.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m setting up Apple’s gifts. I’m going to record him opening them for my YouTube channel.”
“I…”
“Don’t worry, those videos are super popular because they’re adorable.”
“There are… That is, multiple people post that kind of content?”
“Oh yeah, everywhere.”
“Right. I think this is the part where I say I’m out of touch with today’s youth culture.”
“Don’t worry, you’ve been out of touch with the youth since you were 12.”
He leaned forward in his chair, slightly needled by her words. “Even if you happen to be right, you don’t have to say it out loud.”
Georgie only clucked her tongue at him and poked around some of the packages, putting them into a more attractive shape for the camera. Darcy shook his head at her and pressed himself out of the chair, leaving the unread book on the seat.
It was cold outside, but he barely felt the slight breeze through the knit of his sweater. Snow was falling again, just as gently as the evening before. Most of it wasn’t sticking to the ground, melting as soon as it hit the paving stones, leaving the surface slightly darkened. He tipped his head back, blinking when the flakes fell against his eyelids and lashes. The cold brushed pleasantly against his aching temples.
Darcy had slept very poorly, his night populated by dreams that prominently featured Elizabeth, Wickham, and Georgie. Wickham had smirked at him, laughing openly, as he held Elizabeth’s hand and they walked away from him. He tried to follow them but, from the opposite direction, he heard Georgie calling for him, crying. When he turned, he couldn’t find her, and while his back was turned, Elizabeth retreated further and further. Finally, he ran after her, calling her name for what felt like hours until she turned around to look at him.
“What do you want?” Elizabeth had asked, all while holding Wickham’s hand. The other man smiled almost manically.
“You have to let go of him.”
“Why?”
“Because… Because he hurt—” His words cut off with a gasp of breath. Every time he tried to say Georgie’s name to warn Elizabeth, the pressure tightened on his throat until he thought he would surely suffocate.
He had awoken to the feeling of choking, only pulled out of it by the warm, wetness of the dog’s tongue. He let out a groan and pressed his fingers to his forehead, massaging the skin. He should have tried harder in July, to warn Elizabeth. Wickham wasn’t safe for anyone, but if word got back that Darcy had broken his word and spoken about the previous December…
Well, Wickham wasn’t the only one who would be injured.
How would she have taken the news, if he told her and if she believed him? He amused himself for one particularly indulgent moment with the image of Elizabeth punching Wickham in the face; he wouldn’t put it past her. It was almost enough to make him smile.
~~~~
This time, he purposefully avoided Georgie. Looking too closely at her made him think of the dream again. He tamped it down with a shudder and hid in his bedroom like a teenager. Sitting on his bed with his legs crossed in front of him, he opened The Necromancer and tried to read. Every time his focus drifted, he forced himself back to the present, reading the same line five or six times until he fully took in its meaning.
He had made it barely 30 pages in when there was a soft knock on his bedroom door. He opened it to Georgie. “Do you want some cocoa?” She clasped her hands in front of her stomach, her shoulders drawing in towards her body, and her eyes large and hopeful.
He acquiesced and followed her to the kitchen. She made it on the stove with hot milk and spoonfuls of dark powder from a black can labeled “drinking chocolate.” As she stirred, the heavy scent of chocolate filled the room.
He waited until she left the kitchen before reaching up into one of the upper cabinets that held the liquor. He poured a somewhat excessive amount of amber liquid into his chocolate and stirred it up with a spoon.
He slurped it from his slightly-too-full mug as he followed into the sitting room. Apple came up to him at once. Somehow, lying in Darcy’s bed seemed to have done the trick better than any amount of bribery or petting and scratching he had performed up until that point. Apple actually nuzzled his nose directly into Darcy’s hand and licked his wrist before bounding off to sit at Georgie’s side.
Darcy took his usual spot on the couch. Georgie had built up the fire herself sometime during the day and it was flickering merrily behind the grate. They sat in silence, save for the sounds of drinking and Apple’s panting, for several minutes. Georgie watched him from the other side of the room, her knees drawn up onto the sofa, her hands clasped around a pink mug. Apple had his muzzle resting on the cushion at her side. “What’s wrong, Fitz?”
“Wrong? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t be stupid, Fitz, you’ve been acting weird all week. Besides,” she added, dipping her head so she could sip noisily from her cup, “you’ve spiked your hot chocolate. You only drink hard liquor when you’re especially upset.” She put the mug down on the side table.
At least he had the grace to color, helped on by the warmth of the room and the whiskey mixed into his mug. He took a hasty drink so he wouldn’t have to respond immediately and almost spluttered on the alcohol. He had definitely put too much in; he had done it quickly, hoping she wouldn’t notice. His shrug was more miserable than the nonchalant gesture he intended it to be, his shoulders drooping back down as he finished the gesture. “I’m fine. I’m sure it’s just… being home.”
She narrowed her eyes, leaning forward slightly. “No, it’s not ‘just being home.’ You get over that in, like, three days.”
Darcy felt a surge of anger at her for prodding him when he asked her to leave it, and he said so, snapping back a retort of, “I’m fine,” before his response had fully registered. Georgie stood very still, quite taken aback, even raising one hand to put distance between them and to keep him away. Apple let out a soft growl in the back of his throat, not even lifting his head to look at Darcy. Darcy took a deep breath. “Georgie, I’m sorry. That was very unfair of me. I just don’t know if I can explain what the problem is.”
Her voice warbled slightly. “Okay. I didn’t mean… You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to say anything.” She added in a whisper, “Don’t be mad.”
His next emotion was no longer directed at her but at Wickham. He could see on the exposed top of her arm, just below the shoulder, a long, thin scar—the remains of stitches and the memory of an argument. The last physical evidence of Wickham on her personage.
And, ever cyclical, his thoughts returned to Elizabeth again. Not her eyes or her voice or the feel of her fingers on his hand, though—none of the things he loved about her. Instead, the image of Wickham’s arm on her head, his hand brushing her shoulder, came to mind again. Was that the real source of his discontent? The way he had left her in Wickham’s grasp? And his dream…
Darcy drew a deep breath, searching for courage. “Her name is Elizabeth,” he admitted abruptly, staring very hard towards the window, refusing to meet his sister’s eye. “And I will probably never see her again.” It was snowing harder.
Georgie’s eyebrows drew together. She remembered the name from his letters, the long lines he wrote about her. His references to her had stopped abruptly just before he returned to Pemberley, and he hadn’t mentioned her at all since. While it had been obvious there was something about her, she hadn’t realized his feelings were still so strong. “Why not?”
“Because she… lives far away.” He paused. As true as it was, they both knew the distance was not the problem. Georgie knew her brother too well to ever believe a few hours’ drive would get in the way of anyone he truly cared about.
She waited silently for the real reason.
Eventually, Darcy hung his head. “And because I think her sister is untrustworthy.”
Georgie stood then, moving over to sit next to him on the couch. “Well, that’s just her sister, isn’t it? Why should that stop you and Elizabeth?”
He looked at her then, fully in the eyes. Although she couldn’t read the reason, she changed her approach before he stumbled into an explanation. “Fitz, will you tell me about her?” She put her hand on his wrist. “I know you don’t always like to talk about things, but I’m here now. Wouldn’t that be so much easier than a letter?”
He bit the inside of his mouth, looking down at his sister. They had spent so much of their lives communicating through letters, the written word, that it had somehow become difficult to talk to her when they were in a room together. He could talk to Bingley… so why couldn’t he speak to Georgie? “When I first saw her, I didn’t think she was at all beautiful,” he started slowly. “But I was wrong.” It was less difficult to admit out loud this time. “She’s very clever. And funny—witty, that is. She likes to pull apart hypocrisy and fallacy but it’s so enjoyable to watch that sometimes it didn’t even matter that it was me she was picking apart.” He didn’t notice, although Georgie did, the slow, gentle smile that stole over his face as he continued to speak about Elizabeth. “She likes being outdoors. When I went with Bingley to the cabin, she was the only one who really hiked. Even if she did go off by herself. She’s very small, but she never let that stop her from athletics and running…” He sighed. “She has a very… different sort of family, but she stands above them all, I think.”
“She sounds… like she would have been good for you.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. It could have gone just as badly as last time, though.”
“Oh, Fitz, you idiot,” she said, not unkindly. “You should have told her what you’re feeling. You’ll never know if you don’t try! Just be honest.”
He shrugged again, letting his gaze fall. “Well, it’s too late for that now…”