Page 54 of Mr Darcy’s Inconvenient Wife

Georgiana's head came round. Mr Wickham laughed, a little too soon.

“My dear Miss Darcy, you cannot possibly—”

Elizabeth went on as if he had not spoken. She told it as Anne had told it to her, without dressing any of it up. She told how he had waited in the lane by the palings at Rosings, and how he had talked to Anne as nobody else in that house ever talked to her. She told how he had chosen the days when Lady Catherine was from home, and how within a month he had talked Anne into going to Scotland. She told about the stables, and the empty loose box where Mr Darcy had hidden his cousin so that she might hear the truth for herself. Then she told what Anne had heard.

“He said that no man could be expected to love a girl who coughed all through dinner, but that he could love Rosings very well indeed. And then he asked your brother how much he would pay him to go away quietly.”

Nobody said anything. The fire spat. Georgiana's hand had begun to shake.

“Fitzwilliam never told me.”

“No. It was not his secret to tell. He let you cry for two days rather than tell it.”

Georgiana stared at her. Elizabeth watched her remember the library door at Pemberley closing behind her when she was fifteen, and all the reasons she had found since to forgive the man at the table and blame the one who had shut it.

“There is one thing more, and it does me no credit at all.” Elizabeth made herself smile. “In Hyde Park I let you go on thinking well of him. I thought very well of him myself. I sat in Meryton for months and listened to him tell me how cruelly your brother had used him, and I believed every word of it, and I repeated it to anybody who would listen. He is very good at it, Georgiana. He is better at it than anyone I ever met. There is no shame in having believed him. I am a good deal older than you, and I believed him too.”

“He said...” Georgiana's voice cracked. “He said you would want me gone.”

“I know what he said. I read the letters.” Elizabeth held the cold fingers tight.

The girl's mouth crumpled, but she did not cry. She turned slowly on the settle and looked at Mr Wickham as though she had never properly seen him before.

“A man who loved you would come to the front door in daylight and ask for you,” said Elizabeth. “He would not want you creeping out at dusk in a hackney with your own valise. And he would not be in such a hurry about the chaise.”

Mr Wickham stood up. When he spoke again, all the warmth had gone out of his voice.

“That is a very pretty speech, Mrs Darcy. You were always good at speeches.” He came round the table and went down on one knee in front of Georgiana, so that Elizabeth had to look at the top of his head. “Georgiana, look at me. I put you up on my pony when you were six years old. I cut you that whistle. Do you know what I have given up for you? I have left my regiment. I walked out of the barracks a week ago without leave, because you wrote that you were miserable and I could not bear it. Do you know what they do to deserters? If I am taken, I am finished. Very likely they will hang me.” He caught at her free hand. “I have thrown away everything for your sake. The least you can do is not throw me away for hers.”

Elizabeth said nothing. She had said all she could, and the rest was not hers to say.

Georgiana looked down at him for a long moment. Then she drew her hand out of his, quite slowly, as though it hurt her to do it, and shook her head.

“Georgiana—”

“No, George.” Her voice wobbled and then held. “I am sorry about your regiment. But I never asked you to leave it, and I will not go with you.”

He stayed on his knee a moment longer than any man ought to, and then he got up and brushed off his breeches, and he was not smiling at all.

Elizabeth stood, and brought Georgiana up with her. The bonnet ribbon hung loose now, crumpled from the glove, and the girl did not seem to notice it.

“Come, my dear. Your brother is waiting.”

Mr Wickham's head turned towards the door. For a moment Elizabeth thought he would put himself in front of it. Then he met her eye, and she saw him understand.

“In the passage,” she said. “He has been there all along.”

She opened the door. Mr Darcy stood a few yards off under the one lamp, exactly where she had left him. By the look of him he had not moved in a quarter of an hour, nor drawn a proper breath. His eyes went first to his sister, and then over her head to Elizabeth, and stayed there.

Georgiana made a small sound and went to him. He put his arms round her and held her against his coat, and for a while none of them said anything at all.

Then he put her gently back into Elizabeth's arms. His hand rested on Elizabeth's shoulder as he passed, only for a moment. He went into the parlour and shut the door behind him.

Elizabeth held Georgiana close in the dim passage, and heard the key turn in the lock.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Darcy