“I do not disdain you or your feelings. I may be silent, but I docarefor your feelings.”
“But not enough to have the only person near to you who loved your sister mourn with you.” She said this without malice, inflection, or feeling. It unnerved him.
“Mrs Darcy, that is, that is simply unfair...” The compulsion to confess the guilt that plagued his heart was forceful, but if he talked of his sister’s child, it would make the wife that he had to live with hate him. He already hated himself enough without being thought of as monstrous by an admirable woman.
She brought a hand to her chest to rub away the pain that likely still burst from her heart. “Yes, I suppose it is. I ought not to expect us to mourn together. After all, honesty and friendship were not an explicit part of our agreement.” She rose unsteadily. “I am going to lie down.”
“Are you certain that you are well? Ought I to send for Mr Lynn?”
“You know that nothing can be done for me.” She walked slowly tothe door and then stopped. “The only thing that united us is gone, and now we must each shift for ourselves in this house until I am dead.”
Her sad eyes pierced another hole in his heart, and then she was gone. Darcy sat back in his chair, tilted his head to look at the unadorned ceiling, and heaved a weary sigh. Condoling with Mrs Darcy had felt out of the question. Talking of Georgiana and her death would bring to mind the child she lost.
What would it cost him to confess what happened to a woman who would be dead before summer ended? If he confided in her, did that mean he was too weak a man to carry the weight of a guilty burden alone? If it made their short days under the same roof more bearable, it might be worth it.He was not, by nature, a man to lay open the secrets of his heart.
He was, however, rational enough to know that he had to live in Hertfordshire for another month for enough time to have passed for it to be believed he had travelled fifteen hundred miles from Madeira after burying his sister. He had not yet resolved how to explain the presence of a wife to his friends and relations.
I could stay in Hertfordshire until Mrs Darcy dies.
It was the sixteenth of June, and he would have to remain hidden until the middle of July at least. He could tell everyone that he remained in Madeira after he buried his sister. Wartime and the season made it believable that he could not make the voyage home within a month of Georgiana’s death. Mrs Darcy, regrettably, would not live much longer than that.
It might do his soul good to show her a kindness and not take her from Miss Bennet and Miss Lucas and her mother during her final days. He did not closely examine the fact that if he stayed until she died, he would not have to confess his marriage to his loved ones. The benevolent act of allowing Mrs Darcy to die amongst her friends rather than strangers in Derbyshire was severely countered by how it was also for his own benefit and convenience.
But to make it bearable to stay in close quarters and in a confined society, if we stay here until she dies, I shall have to tell her.
Mrs Darcy did not come down to dinner, did not come down in the evening, and did not come down to breakfast the following morning.An hour after he had a tray sent to her room, Darcy knocked on her door and entered to find her dressed in a yellow gown and sitting by the window. There was neither book nor letters nor work near her.
“You are not in black,” he said self-consciously and not knowing how else to begin.
“Mourning is a ceremony for public, Mr Darcy. I notice you are not wearing your armband about the house, either. I intend to sit here in solitude, so I shall not misuse the one black gown I have. I am still waiting for my old silk to be dyed.”
“Should you like to have a new one made?”
“My mourning clothes will not impoverish me.”
Darcy ground his teeth together. “Order whatever bombazine and crepe gown made with as broad a hem as you like!”
“Did you come here to criticise my sartorial choices?” Her gaze was still out the window.
“No,” he breathed the word, and sat without being invited. “I, in general, believe it is beneath me to lay my private actions open to the world. Call it mistaken pride, or reserve, or whatever you will, but it is not in my nature to share private matters.” He now had her attention, and swallowed thickly. “You and I are bound until death, and although that day will be sooner rather than later, we nonetheless must live harmoniously if we can, and the truth shall be a strain on us—or at least on me—to such a degree as to make our living alongside one another impossible if you do not know it all, however shameful it is.”
“The truth about what?” A flash of alertness had come back into the eyes that had been dull since Georgiana’s death.
“You know that last summer I sent Georgiana to Ramsgate for the refreshing sea breezes. I had hoped to see some improvement of her health, but you know she was seduced, and after I recovered her, I learnt she expected a child. I wanted to take her to a warmer climate, but she was weak with consumption and ailing from carrying a child when her body could scarcely support itself. So I hid her where no one knew us to preserve her good name.”
“I wondered why did you not want her to marry the man. Georgiana said she would not have him once she learnt his true nature, but their marriage would have saved her reputation.”
“Mr Wickham is a man devoid of every moral principle. We grew up in the same ... parish, and there was never any mischief that did not have him at the bottom. He mistakes ribaldry for wit, and swearing, intoxication, and gambling for manliness. My sister was not the first girl whose youth and innocence he seduced, and who he left in a situation of the utmost distress. He is the most worthless man in all of England, and would gladly ruin my sister’s happiness for the sake of making me miserable by knowing I could do nothing about it.” He realised he had raised his voice, and now said more softly, “I did not come here to speak of Mr Wickham.”
“You can be assured of my secrecy, and I am insulted you thought I would forsake her memory by speaking about her natural child.”
He drew back. “You think I am here to exact your silence?”
She gave him a confused look, then glanced away. She clearly did, at least in her grief, assume that he found her untrustworthy. “Well, since she was too ill to travel to Madeira, you went into seclusion with her to protect her reputation. It was uncommonly good of you to join her until her time came.”
Darcy gave an empty laugh and rose to pace. “I could not cast her out like Goneril and Regan drove King Lear into the storm, but do not call me uncommonly good, I beg you.”
She gave him a curious, earnest look. “You gave up everything to live in isolation with her until Georgiana had her child. Not only did you provide for her, but you stayedwithher. Although you wanted her to give up her child, you gave her the choice to keep it if she wished it. She would have been entirely alone, without anyone near who loved her, if not for you.”
