Miss Darcy's Companion: A Pride and Prejudice Variation by Joana Starnes

him to allow free rein to very distant recollections. Lady Anne’s warm laughter as she guided Georgiana’s first tottering steps. The sound of her voice, all but forgotten, as she read to him of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Sunlight glinting in her hair as she sat in a window seat, weak and frail, not many months before her passing…
    Darcy closed his mind to the latter recollection and sought others. Fitzwilliam roaring with laughter when he saw him lose his footing and fall into the lake, just on this very spot – at least until he scrambled out, dripping with muddy water, to give chase and wrestle his cousin to the ground into a heap of flailing limbs. The log where they used to sit, munching on bread and hunks of meat and cheese and sometimes sweet treats pilfered from the kitchens. The thick branch overhanging the water, from which they used to swing on a rope and willingly or accidentally drop into the lake.
    The den could not be far now – and indeed it was not. Another twist in the muddy path and the tall reeds were no longer obscuring the view of the sloping bank before him. The den was a dark shape leaning against a towering lime tree, but it was the brighter spots of colour that drew his attention. Wrapped in their shawls and spencers, the young ladies were sitting together on a rug, surrounded by the halo of beeches clad in their autumnal garb of burnished amber. Bonnets were carelessly abandoned and golden tresses shone alongside warm auburn ones, as they both sat intent upon their sketchbooks.
    Miss Bennet glanced up first and spotted him, and her hand flew to her lips in a rather odd request for silence – that is, until Darcy noticed the ball of fur rustling in the leaves. They were both seeking to sketch the intrepid squirrel that had ventured close, an acorn in its grasp, but with a flash of russet the object of their rapt attention literally turned tail – and a long and very pretty tail it was – dashed to the nearest tree and vanished out of sight into the foliage.
    “Oh dear. I seem to have scared your model away,” Darcy smilingly offered. “Am I still allowed to join you or must I do penance at a distance?”
    “Hm… Let me see,” Georgiana pouted in delightful mock deliberation.
    “I bring gifts,” he added, a willing partner in her childish game, and offered the small basket that Mrs Reynolds had more or less thrust upon him. There was a small flask in it, wrapped in a chequered cloth, and some rich fruitcake. His sister’s eyes widened.
    “Brandy?”
    “Good heavens, no. Tea, Georgiana, tea! I have not taken leave of my senses yet to ply the pair of you with brandy, and it would be a strange accompaniment to fruitcake anyway. Mrs Reynolds sent it. She thought you might like some sustenance and a warming drink,” he explained, producing three cups from the bottom of the basket.
    Giggling, Georgiana shuffled closer to her companion to make room on the rug for him and they sat together, nibbling on fruitcake and warming their hands on their full cups.
    “Are you ready to walk back?” Darcy inquired when the fruitcake was gone and the small flask was empty, but Georgiana shook her head.
    “Not yet, if you do not mind. I would like to work a little further on my landscape. What say you, Lizzy? Or are you getting cold?”
    “Not at all”, Miss Bennet negatived, and Darcy stood.
    “Very well. Then I shall have a look at the den instead. So, you would like it watertight, would you?”
    “Can it be?” Georgiana asked, charcoal in hand and her eyes on the landscape.
    “It was once, so I daresay it could be so again,” Darcy said casually and walked up for a closer inspection.
    Whatever was once used to fill the uneven gaps between the branches must now be rotting on the floor, but the structure seemed still sound and the ties could be strengthened with new rope. The steward, Mr Davies, should be able to send someone up to see to it.
    He leisurely ambled back,