“I haven’t played since I was a kid,” I told her. “I’m not very good.”
“Come sit with me anyway,” she replied. “It makes me feel less lonely.”
I couldn’t say no to a request like that, so I sat beside her as she began to run her fingers over the keys in a simple, yet beautiful song I didn’t recognize. I loved watching her fingers make music right before my eyes. It was like magic.
“Well, at least you know someone at the party now,” I told her as she slowed her fingers and ended the song. “You know me.”
She grinned, her green eyes sparkling. “You work at St. Austen’s?”
“I do,” I said with a grin. “I’m a nurse there.”
“Do you know anyone in the Cardiac ICU?” the young woman asked, her voice excited.
“That’s the floor I work on,” I replied with a grin. “There’s a lot of good people on my floor.”
Her fingers picked a new melody, this one light and bright. It made me happy just listening to it.
“I’m Georgiana, by the way,” she told me, adding a small flourish to the end of the musical phrase.
I nearly fell off the bench. I should have known.
“Georgiana Darcy?” I asked.
The universe hated me.
“Yeah, how’d you know?” she asked, giving me a friendly grin. She paused, the music stopping suddenly as her grin somehow grew wider. “You must be Elizabeth!”
She turned on the bench and wrapped her arms around me in a giant hug. She was stronger than she looked. Mr. Darcy’s younger sister was sitting next to me and knew my name. This couldn’t end well.
“Oh. You know me,” I said lamely, unsure of what to do next.
“Only by what my brother has told me,” she confessed. “He doesn’t say nice things about a lot of people, but he always speaks very highly of you.”
I nearly fell off my chair again. “He does?”
She nodded. “I’m so glad to meet you. It’s actually one of the reasons I agreed to come to the party in the first place.”
“Really?” I still couldn’t get over the fact that her brother said nice things about me, not just to one person, but two. Fritz and Georgiana both had heard nice things from me.
“My brother always has to go to these parties,” she explained. “I don’t like going to them all, but I wanted to meet you. So, when he offered, I came.”
“I’m flattered,” I told her. I had no idea what I was supposed to say next. I knew I should get up and run as fast as my heels could take me. If she were waiting for her brother, he would be here any moment. The idea of seeing him made my stomach do strange things.
“Is your brother here?” I asked, glancing around the empty room like he might appear in a puff of smoke and surprise me.
“He will be. They expect it, between the presents he has donated and other money. Did you know that he even bid up all the items that nobody was bidding on at the silent auction a couple weeks ago?”
How could I forget the antique journal that he snatched away from me? “You don’t say,” I said through gritted teeth. “What a gentleman.”
She beamed. “He sure is. Right now, he’s upstairs on a phone call,” she explained. “Something with the merger going on. Catherine has been on him nonstop to make this thing happen.”
I seemed to remember Charles mentioning the name Catherine as well.
“Catherine?” I asked. “Who is she?”
“The COO of the company,” Georgiana explained. She made a sour face. “She’s a terrible human being, but an excellent businesswoman. She has run the company since before Will inherited it.”
“Oh,” I replied.