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Elizabeth should have been writing letters to her mother and Aunt Philips but instead she was guiltily luxuriating in her sitting-room, which her doting new husband had had fitted up in shades of yellow for her, so that she felt as if she were living at the heart of a buttercup. When she saw her new sister pass the open door, she seized the opportunity to put off her long-delayed task still further and called out to her.
Georgiana hesitated at the doorway and Elizabeth spoke, seeking to draw her in. "Georgie, I wanted to ask if you enjoy a plump partridge as much as your broth-" She cut herself off, seeing that Georgiana stepped into the room on tiptoe as if she were an unwelcome intruder instead of one whose birthright was that glorious house. "Whatever is the matter?"
For Georgiana, who had bloomed under the care of an elder sister, was back to looking timid and fretful; so must she have appeared when Fitzwilliam had first rescued her from Wickham's covetous clutches.
"Will received a letter from Aunt Catherine," Georgie admitted, her eyes fixed on the tip of Elizabeth's nose, as close as she could evidently manage to meeting her sister's gaze.
"It cannot be pleasant reading," Elizabeth mused, "but I trust — I know — he has too much sense to let it put him off his dinner, particularly when you and I have conspired to make his favourites appear on the table." She gave Georgiana a cheery grin but the girl did not appear particularly heartened. Elizabeth reached out and took hold of Georgie's cold hand. "There is nothing to fear from her letter. I have no doubt Lady Catherine" — nothing could induce her to call the woman Aunt Catherine — "is angry and has given full vent to her feelings on the page, but I promise you, she has written only because it is the one thing she can do. She cannot disinherit any of us. She cannot reverse the marriage. She cannot remove you from your brother's house, your home. She cannot even visit and be assured of a welcome. So she writes, and she is in truth defeating only herself, as I have it on the best authority that your brother listens to no one but himself in judging my faults and virtues." She squeezed Georgie's hand and smiled, gladdened that the girl met her eyes this time. "Do not fret."
Georgie took a deep breath and tried, very evidently, to believe her. "Mrs James made an apple cake this morning. Will likes that best of all."
"And you?" Elizabeth asked.
"I'm very fond of it too," Georgie admitted, the colour rising high on her cheeks, "and Will always lets me have it nursery-style, with fresh cream."
Elizabeth admired her husband's tactic of offering cream in place of the wine Fitzwilliam would never believe his sister old enough to drink. "That sounds delightful," she said. "See what riches Lady Catherine has talked herself out of the chance to enjoy?"
Georgie barely nodded, but she squeezed Elizabeth's hand back. "Try it with the cream, Lizzy," she invited, mastering her shyness to use the pet name, looking surprised at her own daring.
"I believe I shall," Elizabeth said. "Were you on your way to practise the pianoforte? If you leave the parlour door open, I will be able to hear you as I write to my other sisters." She was rewarded, at long last, with a smile.