“I respect you, and I never doubted you respect me,” she cried.
“You do not respect me, certainly not enough to trust me and tell me the truth. You are hiding something, even if it is how unhappy youare. Secrets will destroy us, Elizabeth.” He waited as though he expected her to speak, but how could she tell him what she had done? She let Wickham take advantage of her, and he would expose them to scandal or extort Darcy forever.
Darcy searched her face, then gave her a disapproving look. “If you will not tell me what is the matter, if you continue to deny that there is something wrong, then you may as well go home.”
Elizabeth sat down, breathless and speechless. After a moment, she stammered, “But home is where you are.”
“That cannot be true because one should be the happiest at home, and you are not happy being my wife.”
“I am!”
Darcy paced again. “I thought you would leap at the chance for a little distance between us. Until you are actually happy, or at least content and not resigned and miserable, why not go back to your family? We owe them a visit, anyway. We can both go for a week to appease them, pretend all is well, and then I can return to town.”
“Alone?” she whispered.
“Most certainly,” he said resolutely. “I would rather be alone than live alongside someone who cannot stand me.”
It devastated her to hear him think she hated him. How could he love her in return now?
She was paying Wickham for his silence to keep her husband happy, to prevent any loss to his reputation, and so he would not condemn her for her foolishness. But she was losing Darcy anyway, and now there was no chance he would reciprocate her feelings.
Elizabeth burst into tears. She sobbed into her hands, rubbing her eyes and nose on her sleeves until Darcy thrust out a hand to give her his handkerchief. It was the only consolation he gave her. Although tears blurred her vision, she saw how resolute he was. The only way to convince him she did not hate him was to tell him the truth.
Her swelling heart needed relief, but her tears did not give it to her. If all her happiness was to be lost, Darcy might as well hear it from her first. He would either pay Wickham to stay silent and hate her for putting him in the position to even speak to that man, or he wouldrefuse to pay Wickham and hate her for getting herself into a position where Wickham would embroil them in scandal.
What if Darcy believed she had been unfaithful? He would divorce her for adultery. She felt sick all over, her head throbbed, and if she had to stand right now, she would surely faint.
He was right: they could not go on like this. Elizabeth dried her eyes and caught her breath. “I will tell you all, but be patient, for I must start at the beginning.” Her voice faltered, and her eyes were turned to the ground. “It is mortifying and grievous, and you will hate me when I am done.”
She felt Darcy stand in silence for a while and lifted her eyes. His pensive expression turned questioning, but he pulled a chair across from hers, sat, crossed one ankle over his knee, and stared at her.
“When Georgiana returned to town, she wrote to me of her dire circumstances, and I met her and gave her two guineas leftover from the money I had in Ramsgate. She said she was in meagre lodgings in Edward Street, but I never learnt which one. She would not say because she did not want you to find her. I hoped I could get her away from Wickham with a little more effort, and if I met her to give her money, I then had the chance to convince her. Then she asked me for more, and I gave her three more pounds a few days later.”
“Did you not understand why I cannot allow Wickham and Georgiana into our lives, in our home, or among our friends and family?” he asked accusingly. “To give them money, to even permit them to be close to us, is admitting I approve of vice and a complete want of principle.”
“But the sorrow you feel at losing Georgiana would continue to hurt you, and I did not want that for you. You mourn her loss, and I was certain a few more conversations with Georgiana, and a little more time in whatever conditions he kept her in, would bring her home to you. The money was an excuse to see her.”
“Any money he gets will be spent on women and cards, and not on my sister,” he retorted. “You were not helping at all.”
“Yes, I know that now. But I then thought I could persuade her to desert him, so when Georgiana asked to come into the house to collect her own things, to sell them, I let her.”
His gaze sharpened. “You waited until I was in Derbyshire?”
“But it was all a scheme,” she whispered. “Wickham sent her to find things of mine to steal and to take my letters too. And he created a distraction at the front door to lure me away so she had time to do it.”
“Your letters?” he asked, looking confused.
Elizabeth sniffled and dried her eyes again. “She took my letters and journal, and made her way to my room and took the diamond aigrette from its box before I returned. She snuck them out along with her gowns and trinkets.”
He set his jaw and blew out a breath through his nose. “You were foolish to trust her, but you are this distraught over the theft of the diamonds? Did you think I would despise you for being duped or charge you for their loss? Wickham will sell them and gamble away the money and keep Georgiana in the same squalor he has her in now.”
She was not being clear. Her thoughts were in chaos. “No, no, there is more. Wickham told her to take my letters to find something he might use against me. He hoped I might have admitted something scandalous to a friend. Perhaps something about the real reason we married, something to paint you in a bad light. And, and he found something in my journal.”
Silence poured off of him. His knuckles had gone white as he gripped the chair arms. “What did you write? Something disparaging about your unwanted husband and rushed marriage?”
The contempt in his voice was oppressive, and she had to suppose it belied the hurt he felt at the thought of her being so cruel. Between her tears and the stony look in his eyes, it was difficult to speak, let alone admit, what she had written. He would not want to hear it now.
“No. I wrote…I wrote about how eager I was for you to return, about kissing you in the library, and I was rather”—she dropped her voice—“clear in wanting a proper union with you.”
