"Because of Elizabeth?"
"Because of Elizabeth."
Georgiana smiled. It was the slow, blooming smile of a girl discovering that happiness was possible, that the people she loved could be happy, that the world was not entirely composed of Wickhams and betrayals and locked rooms. "I am glad."
Elizabeth arrived at breakfast twenty minutes later, and the moment she walked in, their eyes met, and the charge between them was so vivid that Georgiana looked from one to the other and suddenly became very interested in her toast.
"Good morning, Miss Bennet." His voice was formal, the habitual mask, but his eyes were saying something else entirely: last night, the garden, your hands, your laugh, the sound you made when --
"Good morning, Mr. Darcy." Her voice was equally proper, but color was climbing her cheeks, and when she sat down across from him, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture that was pure nervous habit, and he recognized it because his fingers had been in that hair eight hours ago, and the memory made his chest constrict.
Georgiana, to her credit, said nothing. She turned a page of her book and pretended not to notice that her brother was smiling into his coffee cup like a man who had discovered the meaning of life.
The morning was interrupted at ten o'clock by a letter.
The footman brought it on a silver tray, addressed to Darcy in Colonel Forster's crisp hand, marked urgent. Darcy read it standing in the entrance hall, and Elizabeth, coming down the stairs with Georgiana, saw his face change.
She had seen Darcy angry. She had seen him proud and cold and tender and vulnerable and lost in passion. She had never seen him look like this: white to the lips, his jaw locked, his eyes carrying the particular intensity of a man who has just received the worst news he could imagine.
"Fitzwilliam. What is it?"
He looked up. His gaze went to Georgiana, then back to Elizabeth, and the calculation was visible: what to say, what to shield, how to protect one woman without patronizing another.
"Wickham," he said. "He has been seen in Lambton. With Lydia. She is visiting with the Gardiners and --" He stopped. Handed Elizabeth the letter.
She read it quickly. Lydia Bennet and Lieutenant Wickham had been observed walking together in Lambtonthat morning, unchaperoned, in a manner that Colonel Forster described, with military understatement, as "overly familiar." Mrs. Gardiner had been unaware of the excursion. Lydia had apparently slipped out before breakfast.
"She is here?" Elizabeth's voice was steady but her face had lost its color. "In Lambton? I thought she was in Brighton with the Forsters."
"The regiment moved to Derbyshire last week. Forster has been tracking Wickham's movements since our conversation. He believes Wickham followed the regiment specifically because Lydia was with them."
"He followed her." Elizabeth pressed the letter against her stomach as though it were causing her physical pain. "He is targeting her deliberately. Because of us. Because of me."
"Because of me," Darcy corrected quietly. "Wickham's grievance is with me. Lydia is simply the means."
Georgiana had gone very still. She stood on the bottom step of the staircase, one hand gripping the banister, and her face held a horror that had nothing to do with the current situation and everything to do with a summer in Ramsgate that had never stopped haunting her.
"It is happening again," Georgiana whispered.
Elizabeth moved before Darcy could. She crossed to the staircase, took Georgiana's hand, and said with a firmness that bordered on ferocity: "No. It is not happening again. Because this time, we know. And this time, we will stop it."
Georgiana looked at Elizabeth the way a drowning person looks at solid ground. She nodded, her fingers tight around Elizabeth's.
Darcy was already moving. "I will ride to Lambton. Forster has men watching Wickham, but I want to see the situation myself. Elizabeth --"
"I am coming with you."
"That is not --"
"Do not." She released Georgiana's hand and turned to him, and the woman facing him was not the soft, languid creature who had fallen asleep in his arms under the stars. She was steel. "Do not tell me to stay behind while my sister is in danger. We handle this together. That is what we agreed."
He had a hundred arguments and none that could withstand the look in her eyes. He nodded.
They rode to Lambton in the Pemberley carriage, the journey a tense twenty minutes of silence and strategy. Darcy outlined what he knew of Wickham's patterns: the charm, the escalation, the careful isolation of the target from her support network. Elizabeth listened with a concentration that was almost frightening, cataloguing information, asking sharp questions, building a picture of the enemy with the tactical clarity of a woman who would burn the world down to protect her family.
They found Lydia at the Lambton inn, sitting in the parlour with Wickham, a cup of chocolate untouched in front of her, laughing at something he had said. Mrs. Gardiner was nowhere in sight. A maid hovered uncertainly by the door.
"Lizzy!" Lydia leapt up with the boundless enthusiasm of a girl who had no idea what she had walked into. "And Mr. Darcy! How wonderful. Mr. Wickham has been telling me the most amusing stories about the regiment."
