My heart leaped in my chest. I swallowed, shoving my hands into my pockets.
We walked.
“It was my fault, anyway,” she said finally.
I glanced at her. “What was?”
“Well, the compromise, obviously. I was upset. I don’t usually cry like that in front of people, you know.”
“Of course I know,” I said. “No one does. It’s not done.”
“Exactly,” she said, sighing. “But it all seemed… utterly awful, I suppose. Still does. I have been thinking about it all night, and I am at a bit of a loss as to how to even face the day. Or all the rest of them, as it may be. Or the same day, actually, yes?”
I nodded. “Ah, you’re in that phase of it, then. I remember that phase.”
She stopped walking and faced me.
I stopped too.
She folded her arms over her chest. “Well, if it’s a phase, what comes after it?”
“The fun part,” I said with a little shrug. Then I grimaced, because hadn’t I decided the fun part was dangerous? Wasn’t that why I was wearing my cravat?
“Oh, I just remembered,” she said, reaching into the front of her bodice. “I found this.” She held up my pocket watch. “I think you must have left it at the parsonage at some point.” She held it out.
I just stared at it.
She shook it at me.
I took it. It was warm from her flesh. She had just had this between her… I cleared my throat and shoved it into my pocket.
She was walking again. “Well, I am just thinking, Will—can I call you Will?”
“Certainly, everyone does,” I said, coming after her.
“I am stuck here. I shall never see my father again. I shall never see my sisters. I shall never see Jane, and I dearly love Jane. She and I are ever so close.”
I fell into step with her. “You know, we could take a carriage to go and visit.”
She looked at me. “Yes, fifty miles of good road?” she said faintly.
“Well, I am only saying, it’s not so dire as that.” Of course, I’d thought similar things about Georgiana, truthfully.
“I thought you were going to go kill Mr. Wickham today, anyway.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose I forgot about that. I shall absolutely kill him at some point, I suppose. It just seems pointless since he’s not going to stay dead.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “This is what we have come to, though, you see? Grim jokes such as this. Mr. Darcy, you and I shall never get any older. We shall have no lives, nothing beyond this. We cannot marry or have children or grandchildren or—we are stuck.” Her voice broke.
“It’s quite a bad phase,” I said. “This is when I shot myself, in fact. It’s… I’d spare you this part if I could.”
“I’m not in any danger of doing damage to myself,” she said quietly.
“Well, that’s quite good,” I said.
We walked together, saying nothing, for some time.
“But I don’t know how to bear it up either,” she said finally. “Tell me about the fun part, if you please.”
