The journey north to Newcastle, a weighty four days across a landscape increasingly scarred by the Blight’s insidious touch, was completely different from their previous, tension-filled travels — at least between herself and Darcy. They shared one seat of the coach, their proximity no longer awkward, but comforting.
Still, she knew that their private peace could not dispel the fraught silence that still separated Darcy from his sister.
While Darcy engaged with his cousin in discussions of strategy as it might apply to combating the Blight’s encroachments, and with Elizabeth in quieter exchanges about the land they passed, his interactions with Georgiana remained almost non-existent. He did not address her directly, and his gaze, when it chanced to fall upon her, was never anything but studiously neutral. It was plain there remained a deep rift of pain and resentment between brother and sister.
Lost in her thoughts on how she could help soften the divide, she started slightly when she felt the shift in him beside her. Beneath the heavy lap rug that covered them both, his handfound hers. It was a simple gesture, offered without fanfare.
Then his thumb began to stroke the back of her hand in a reassuring rhythm. A secret smile touched her lips, and she kept her own eyes fixed on the pages of her book, pretending to read on. All her senses focused in to the feel of his hand holding hers as she returned the gentle pressure of his grip. He did not glance at her, but she felt the slight pause of his breath, a silent acknowledgment of her response.
It was in moments like these that the journey became a strange mix of burgeoning intimacy with Darcy and a poignant, uncomfortable awareness of the unhealed wound that still afflicted his family.
Later that evening, at some comfortable inn along the way, Darcy came to her chamber. He stood by the fire as they discussed the day’s events. The conversation was easy. Seeing him so open with her, made the contrast with his treatment of his sister all the more painful.
“Fitzwilliam,” she ventured, “Will you not at least speak with her?”
He tensed. “I am uncertain what you mean,” he said evasively.
“Your sister carries a heavy burden of regret. I see it in her every glance.”
“Regret is an entirely insufficient penance for the ruin she brought upon herself, and upon our family name.”
The severity of his words hung in the air, a familiar echo of the man she had first met.
“Is there no room for understanding? She was so young and so tragically misled. She has suffered greatly for her mistakes. As, I suspect, have you.”
He turned away, staring into the fire, his profile harsh. “Suffering does not absolve one of responsibility. She made herchoice. She chose to stay with Wickham. She chose dishonour. Some choices, some betrayals, they cannot be undone.”
“Georgiana made a choice, a foolish, desperate choice made by a girl at fifteen. Is one mistake to define her entire life? Must she pay for it forever in your eyes?”
“It is not a single event in the past,” he replied, in strained tones, “It is a choice she makes every day she remains his wife.”
“And what of your own choice? Every day she remains his wife, you say, as if a woman can so easily leave her husband — ”
“You yourself offered her refuge at Pemberley,” he retorted bitterly, “and she has thrown it over, once again, for a life of squalor with him.”
“And every day,” she countered softly, “you choose not to be her brother.”
Darcy looked at her coldly. Then, slowly, the stern lines of his face began to soften, the ice in his eyes receding, replaced by a look of such deep unhappiness that it made Elizabeth’s own heart ache in sympathy.
“I fear you ask a great deal, Elizabeth,” he said at last, “A great deal more than I know if I am capable of giving.”
“Or,” Elizabeth replied, very gently now, “perhaps you are capable of more than you think. Indeed, I have seen it for myself.”
She went to him, her hand coming to rest on his arm. His gaze drifted to her hand. Then he closed his eyes, a sigh escaping him at the simple, unasked-for tenderness of the gesture.
Elizabeth rose up and kissed him on the cheek.
A shudder went through him, a deep, convulsive tremor that was not of cold or fear, but of surrender. It was the surrender of a man who had been fighting a long, lonely war and had just been offered a moment of respite. His arms came around her, pulling her against him, his own kiss answering hers.
As they drew nearer to Newcastle, the land began to take on an even more desolate aspect. The air grew unpleasant, carrying the cloying scent of decay, of hopelessness, and of a magic that was not just fading, but malevolently dying. The fields lay fallow, the earth curdling beneath the turn of carriage wheels.
“The desolation is absolute,” Darcy said on the final day, as he surveyed the blighted woodland. “The soil looks as if it could support nothing.”
Elizabeth, who had been staring out the opposite window, turned to him. “It cannot. There is little magic left here to draw upon.”
The shared glance that passed between them held a mutual acknowledgment of the immense challenge before them.
Newcastle itself, when they finally reached it, was a city on its knees. Elizabeth, who had steeled herself for scenes of hardship, was nonetheless shocked by the overwhelming scale of the deterioration.
