“I believe her,” he said instantly.
Fitzwilliam gave him a sceptical look. “You said her father thought she might not remain respectable, and Lady Catherine offered to pay her to engage in an affair.”
“She was not unfaithful. She is impulsive. Naïve. But not anadulteress.” Darcy sank back into his chair. “I did not see this coming. She went behind my back, giving money to that man through my sister’s hands after we agreed not to, and the lying worsened from there. I know we married for the wrong reasons, but what sort of friend even acts that way?”
“Intimacy and friendship were a lot to hope for, given your beginning.” Fitzwilliam finished his own glass. “Even fidelity might have been an unrealistic expectation.”
Darcy gave him a flat look. “If she intended to be unfaithful, why would she choose a gamester with the pox who ruined a fifteen-year-old girl and tricked her own sister?”
“I suppose she has better taste than that. Even though, apparently, she wrote some rather lusty words aboutyou,” Fitzwilliam said, shaking his head as though disbelieving such a thing could happen.
He wondered what was in the journal. How candid and curious had she been? It must be explicit if Wickham could so easily twist it. He must be confident he could get money from him or ruin him. A wife’s infidelity did not have to be proven, merely suspected. Newspapers would print the lurid details of the alleged infidelity, just like they had printed about Georgiana’s elopement with a scoundrel and Darcy’s marriage and the new hair ornament he bought for his bride.
“If you believe her,” Fitzwilliam went on, “then it is not impossible to restore your marriage, although the world will censure her if Wickham exposes her.”
“I believe her,” he repeated.
“Then I wonder if her keeping it all secret is harder for you to overcome.”
“It is,” he murmured. It was still a betrayal. It felt like there were types of infidelity beyond sexual misconduct. Emotional infidelity. Financial infidelity. Her withholding the truth and taking money from him hurt the most. “I am so angry. I had to leave lest I said something I could not take back.”
He was incensed that she thought she knew better than him and gave Georgiana money, but he was also livid that she lied to him day in and day out. But equally heartrending was that when Elizabeth found herself in a desperate situation, she had not turned to him.
He chanced a sip of the whisky, but then winced as it hit his churning stomach. “My wife did not trust me enough to help her.”
“Were you a husband she could tell the truth to?” his cousin asked gently.
“Of course!”
Fitzwilliam held his gaze with an expressive look, and it forced Darcy to think. Had he been a husband his wife could confide in? Could she talk to him about a threat to their reputation? Could she talk to him about Wickham? Or did she think anything short of perfection would cause her to lose him?
Since they had to marry, he had tried to prove that he did not resent her, that he wanted to be her friend and partner. But he was the one who brought Elizabeth to town with the express purpose of parading her around to prove she was not a disgrace to his family. She had been forced on display to shift attention away from his sister’s fall from favour, and her good behaviour and respectability were judged in the public sphere.
For him, being on display in town was a nuisance, but he knew how to act and what to say. She was the one who had to adjust to an unaccustomed environment where her new husband’s standing depended on how well she was viewed. Darcy could be himself; she had to be practically perfect. He had never even told her she was excellent at it, that he was proud of her.
And she did not even know that he was in love with her, and that Wickham’s claims would not be enough for him to abandon her.
“I was not as easy to appeal to as I could have been,” he realised, “considering how much importance I put on our reputation, on how well she was received.” But did that mean he deserved to be lied to? Perhaps not, but it also did not mean he deserved her trust. He groaned and ran his hands over his face. Everything was in a muddle now.
“Do not be too hard on yourself,” Fitzwilliam said as he clapped him on the shoulder. “You had no courtship, after all. Marriages that are preceded by long courtship are the ones that generally abound with the most love and constancy.”
“A long courtship full of hopes and expectations might have atleast habituated us to a fondness and a trust of one another.” Passion might have struck root and gathered strength before marriage too. Now it had to be grafted on later like everything else—unless it was too late for fondness and trust and passion and all the rest.
Fitzwilliam picked up Darcy’s abandoned glass and drank it himself. “What will you do?”
He heaved a sigh. “She fears I will divorce her if Wickham presents what evidence he has: an obscene letter, an intimate gift, he was seen at her house, and they were witnessed together in public. And of course amid the hasty marriage of both me and my sister, the gossips are already alert for anything that hints of a scandal.”
“Is she afraid you will divorce her because she wants to protect your good name or because she has an affection for you?”
“I want?—”
“I did not ask whatyouwant; I know what you want.” Darcy glared at him, and Fitzwilliam scoffed. “You still love her, you want to take care of her, and if she has not been unfaithful, then you will stay married to her.”
“How could you know that, especially when I am here rather than with my wife?”
“Because you left. You left because you were not master of yourself and were afraid to say or do something irrevocable. You love her and don’t actually want to hurt her or lose her.”
He did not disagree. Darcy wondered how his cousin could see he loved his wife, but Elizabeth could not. Maybe because Fitzwilliam’s happiness did not hinge on those feelings, and because the words needed to be said and heard to make it real.
