“I thought that display was concerning Georgiana,” Darcy responded, only partially mollified, “which is another subject we must discuss before we join her.”
“Must we?” Brougham’s jaw hardened. “I would rather not.” He downed the last of his wine.
“I believe we must.” Darcy tensed at his friend’s reluctance. “You were quite correct about her, and your reproofs to me were more than warranted. I thank you for both. I see now that I have lately given into your keeping responsibilities that were rightly only my own and that I must ask you to relinquish.” Abruptly, Brougham turned and walked back to the window, leaving Darcy to frown after his frame outlined against the gathering dusk. “Dy?”
“Do you have any idea what an extraordinary and precious young woman you have in your sister, Fitz?” Brougham leaned against the window frame. “I doubt that I have met her like in any female of our class, or at least in any that my public character has been allowed near! Already she is possessed of the graces an intelligent, discerning man appreciates. What she will be when she has reached maturity takes one’s breath away!”
“She is but sixteen, Dy!” Darcy remonstrated, alarmed at the intensity he heard in his friend’s voice, “and I had your hand that you —”
“That I would not be a danger to her!” Brougham turned back to him. “You have my hand still, my friend. I do not and would never play with Miss Darcy’s heart! I have been at some pains to keep my own feelings at bay, hidden beneath layers of mutual interests and friendship. Upon my honor, Fitz,” he protested vigorously in the face of his friend’s silence, “I have taken the greatest care that Miss Darcy know me foremost as friend. I am only too aware of her age; give me some credit for delicacy, I beg you!”
“But it will be some years before I would even consider giving her in marriage.” Darcy put as much disapproval into his tone as possible. “And the disparity in your ages, Dy!”
“Well do I know it.” He laughed grimly. “I would not have believed it myself. The baby sister of my best friend! How absurd! But there is this, Fitz. I’m old enough to know my own mind and know what love is. After this bloody war is over, I know what I shall do with the rest of my life, and it shall not be performing as London’s prize idiot, I assure you! You know me, Fitz, despite these last seven years. You know that I would cherish Miss Darcy above my own life, and if I ever did not to your satisfaction, you have my leave to thrash me within an inch of it!”
Darcy stared at his friend in silence. He could not doubt that every word Dy spoke was true and from the heart, but the idea that he loved Georgiana and wished to make her his wife was more than Darcy had ever expected to entertain today or any other. “Dy —”
“Please, let us not speak of this further for now,” Brougham interrupted. “She is too young, as you say; and I am entangled in this snarl of intrigue that makes my life not worth a tuppence. Nothing may come of this confession, you know! Any day a notice may appear in the papers. Until this war is done, I can say nothing nor ask anything of you or Miss Darcy. Perhaps, by the time Napoleon is finally dispatched, she will be of age to listen to my proposal. I leave it to you, my friend, to decide in the interim whether you will allow me to make it. Now…” He straightened and gestured toward the door. “Shall we go in to supper?”
“Dy, in all honesty, there is something you must know first.” Darcy made one last attempt to deflect his friend from his determination to wait for his sister.
“Yes?” Brougham stopped with a look of amusement. “Is there some dark Darcy secret that will deter me?”
“Dark?” Darcy bit his lip. “No, but you must know that she…” How was he to put this? There was no delicate way —
A knock sounded on the study door, causing the open expression that Dy had worn during his narrative to be replaced by one of wariness. “Enter,” Darcy called and watched with fascination the stages in the transformation of his friend from the sincere lines of the man he had been during their interview to the supercilious ones of his public persona. In the few moments it required for a footman to open the door and Georgiana to enter, the metamorphosis was complete.
“My Lord Brougham!” The pleasure in her eyes was unfeigned. She cast them down only briefly as she did him her curtsy and turned to Darcy. “Have you closeted with His Lordship long enough, Brother, or shall I have supper sent back to the kitchen?”
“Oh, we are quite at an end, Miss Darcy,” His Lordship interposed. “We have exhausted between us every topic of conversation. I fear it will fall upon you to keep us civil to each other through supper.”
Slipping back into his pose with uncanny ease, Dy proved an excellent dinner guest, entertaining them with anecdotes and absurd homilies interspersed with informative bits concerning the great, the famous, and those who aspired to be so. Darcy could almost believe their earlier meeting had been a dream, so little did the man sitting at table resemble what he had confessed. Still, Darcy watched with a heightened awareness for indications of the strands that might one day bind his sister to his friend. Certainly, Georgiana blossomed under his regard, losing her reticence in Brougham’s company even more than when among their relations; but he could detect no feeling for him other than a delighted friendship. On Dy’s part, there were no secret glances or soulful sighs. He continued to play the amusing rattle Society thought him, sometimes ridiculous, often ironic; yet his edges were softened in their company with occasional displays of his true intellect and powers of discernment.
Darcy knew that his friend would keep his promises, but when Dy took his final bow in wishing Georgiana a good night and pulled him into a conspiratorial huddle at the door to inform him that his “duties” would require his absence from Town for an unspecified period of time, Darcy was not sorry. “What I most regret is that I shall not be here for the unveiling of Miss Darcy’s portrait,” Dy said as he shrugged on the coat a footman held for him and reached for his beaver and gloves.
“You shall miss nothing,” Darcy replied, continuing at Brougham’s upraised brow with “I have concluded that Georgiana has the right of it. Family only, then it shall be packed up for Pemberley.”
“Excellent!” Dy beamed at him. “That was well done of you, Fitz! Although I appreciate Miss Darcy’s dissatisfaction with her portrait, I hope that one day I may have the privilege of seeing it displayed in proper state in your gallery.” He extended his hand, which Darcy immediately clasped in a hard grip.
“Have a care, old man.” Darcy choked on the words of farewell, the inestimable value of the man before him filling him with gratitude and fear. “You play a dangerous game, which it is my heartfelt wish you survive and without injury.”
“I shall, Fitz,” he replied with equal emotion. “You cannot imagine what a relief it has been to come honest with you about it…and the other. I shall be Lord knows where during the next several months, but if you should need to contact me, send a note to the sexton at St. Dunstan’s. He will make sure I receive it.”
St. Dunstan’s? Something from the past stirred inside Darcy at the name. Where had he heard of St. Dunstan’s before?
Dy took a deep breath. “Good-bye then, my friend,” he said and clapped his hat upon his well-ordered curls. “Watch over Miss Darcy, and think of me. I will require an accounting when next we meet.” He laughed, then asked, “What is it that you frown so?”
“St. Dunstan’s! Why should I have heard of that parish before? I certainly do not frequent that part of London!”
Brougham grinned provocatively. “Oh, I should be very surprised if you did! Where have you heard of it? I would imagine you ran across it in the references provided you by the excellent Mrs. Annesley.” He nodded to the footman to open the door.