She dragged her eyes from the writing table and bent over the trunks, rifling through until she found a small paste pin and a girl’s locket in a trinket box. Georgiana took out the jewellery and replaced the box, but Elizabeth told her to take the small box with her. She did not know if the box was Georgiana’s or not, but the jewellery she found was hardly worth anything, and she might sell the box instead.
Georgiana rose and looked out the window, seeming extraordinarily anxious. She then looked at the clock on the mantel and fidgeted with the writing tools on the table, then thumbed the stack of letters. She was not just timid, but tense.
“How are you keeping, my dear?” Elizabeth asked. “I am worried about you.”
She started and knocked a stack of letters onto the floor, hastily picking them up and placing them atop her journal. “Our accommodations are limited to a tiny parlour and a dark bedroom behind.”
Elizabeth knew they must be living humbly, unable even to afford the comfort of a servant, and, of course, almost excluded from society. “I hate to see you sunk to those conditions. I will repeat my entreaties that you are welcome here whenever you give up Wickham.”
“And why are you so certain he would let me go?” Georgiana asked sharply. “Helovesme.”
She wanted to reply that he would let her go because he had not sued Darcy for her fortune since it was unlikely he would get it, and there was no other reason a philandering gamester would marry a shyfifteen-year-old. But her sister-in-law’s situation was already terrible; there was no reason to be cruel to her.
After another look at the clock, Georgiana pulled out two gowns from the trunk and stuffed them into the box. “You love my brother,” she said shakily. “You are a married woman. Could you leave him, even if all the world despised you for marrying him?”
Darcy was such a good man that she could not think of a single reason anyone would think he was not worthy of her or that she ought to be slighted for marrying him. “The difference is, I did not marry imprudently. I would not have married a man who had so many marks against him, whom my family begged me not to marry.”
“Wickham choseme. He tells me I am beautiful, and that of all the women he has ever admired, he loves me the best.”
Elizabeth felt overwhelmingly sad. “Is this what you think love is?”
Love was letting his wife sleep in after a late night, and reading to her while she did needlework, and refusing to allow anyone to say a disrespectful word to her. Love was a choice to commit to helping, respecting, and caring for another.
This was all so disheartening. And it made her miss Darcy all the more.
Georgiana ignored her and placed her reticule on the table and put the trinket box into it. The chamber door was still open, and Elizabeth heard a commotion of raised voices from below. There was some sort of fuss on her doorstep. She hurried away and went to the stairs and saw the housekeeper coming up as Elizabeth went down.
“I am sorry you were disturbed, ma’am. Some man wanted to enter the house. He insisted he would wait for Mr Darcy and cared not a whit that he was not here. One of the footmen chased him off.”
What sort of gentleman would behave like that? “Did he say who he was or what he wanted?”
“No,” she cried fretfully. “He acted like he ought to be let in through the front door, and he might have been if his manners had been any better. He looked and acted the gentleman at the start, but then grew insistent, and then rude. Once Tom took a few steps toward him, he ran off.”
That was alarming. “If he ever returns, ask for a card, but be sure tosend him away. I will leave it to Mr Darcy to decide if he wishes to see him.” She suspected he would want nothing to do with so indecorous a man.
Elizabeth assured the housekeeper the disruption was not her fault, and sent her down to her own room with promises that the whole incident would be forgotten. When she returned upstairs, she was surprised to find the front bedroom empty. She went to the next room and opened the door to Darcy’s chamber, which was empty, and then into her own bedchamber and found Georgiana looking over her toilet table.
“What are you doing in here?” she demanded.
Georgiana whirled round, looking pale. “This was once my mother’s room. Perhaps something of hers is here, something I could sell until Wickham convinces my brother to give me my fortune.”
She spoke the words as though reciting lines from a play, flat and quick and without meeting her eye. She was acting so timid and strange, and Elizabeth wished she had never allowed her to come.
“There is nothing here that is not mine,” Elizabeth said tightly, ushering Georgiana from the room and shutting the door behind her. “If there is anything of Lady Anne Darcy’s, it would be at Pemberley. You may write to your brother to ask him to send anything set aside for you once you decide you want us to know where you are living.”
She led them back to the front bedchamber and firmly put the lid on the box. “Have you found everything? Your books and trinkets and gowns?”
Georgiana practically shook under her stern tone and threw her bulging reticule over her wrist and clutched the box to her chest as she hurried down the stairs. Elizabeth opened the door herself and firmly shut it behind her.
Elizabeth looked through the window in the entrance hall, watching her go. She regretted losing her patience. Georgiana was just a foolish child who made an adult decision that would have lasting consequences. She deserved pity, not unkindness, especially if Elizabeth wanted to be a safe place for Georgiana to turn to when Wickham gave her an illness or she realised she was destined to live in penury.
Someday, maybe Georgiana Wickham would learn that love was so much more than a man telling her he preferred her over other women.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Today was the first day since Darcy had been at Pemberley that he had not been in discussion from morning to evening with his tenants, his steward, his servants, his neighbours, or his housekeeper. There was much business to conduct at this time of year, and accounts, rents, and improvements occupied all of his time.
But it was better to push together his engagements and responsibilities in rapid succession so he could return to Elizabeth all the sooner.
