Page 64 of A Question of Character

“And Mrs. Younge knows where I am to be found.”

“Yes.”

“And you will write.”

“If I have anything worth writing.”

“Write even if you do not.”

Georgiana tilted her head. “You would enjoy a letter containing nothing?”

“From you, yes.”

That made her face change in a way he had not expected. The playful answer she had prepared did not come. Instead, she stepped forward and embraced him, quickly, because servants were present and she was nearly sixteen and conscious of both facts.

“I shall write,” she said.

Darcy kissed the top of her head. “Good girl.”

She pulled back, making a face. “I am much too old for that.”

“Never to me.”

“Then perhaps I shall write very dull letters in punishment.”

“I shall deserve it.”

Mrs. Younge smiled with appropriate indulgence, and Darcy, reassured by the ordinary look of them both, went down the steps to his horse. The groom held the bridle while Darcy mounted. From the saddle, the house looked smaller than it had the day before, the windows bright under the morning sun, Georgiana standing in the doorway with one hand shading her eyes.

“Do not hurry back,” she called. “Ramsgate has plenty of diversions.”

The words were lightly spoken, but color rose in her cheeks before she finished them.

Darcy laughed, suspecting that she had embarrassed herself by sounding too eager for independence. “Behave yourself.”

“I always do.”

“That answer was too prompt.”

“It was deserved.”

Mrs. Younge raised a hand in farewell. Georgiana did the same, her ribbons fluttering in the wind.

Darcy touched his hat brim to them both, directed his horse toward the road, and rode away with Bingley’s letter folded in his coat and the foolish conviction that a few days’ absence could do no one any harm.

Darcy returned to Ramsgate in a temper which, though not violent, would have made Barton remove all unnecessary persons from his path had Barton been present to observe it.

The journey from Kent had been dusty, inconvenient, and made worse by the knowledge that its object had been nearly useless. Bingley’s estate, praised in three pages of exuberant description and two more of hopeful conjecture, had proved to be a neglected house with cracked plaster, damp corridors, warped floors, and a roof that had admitted rain with more generosity than any house ought to display. The gardens had surrendered to nettles. The stables smelled of rot. One drawing room window had been boarded over so poorly that daylight forced its way through the edges in thin, accusing lines.

Bingley, who had arrived prepared to love the place, had tried valiantly to admire it for nearly an hour.

“The situation is good,” he had said, standing beneath a ceiling stained brown in three places.

“The situation is excellent,” Darcy replied. “Unfortunately, the house is also part of the estate.”

Bingley had laughed because good humor was nearly a moral habit with him, then addressed the estate manager with renewed hope. “I suppose the worst of the repairs are already planned?”

The man, a narrow fellow with ink upon his cuff and no shame in his face, gave a small cough. “No repairs are presently intended, sir. The house is let as viewed.”