“I can’t see him,” Georgiana whispered.
“No. Nobody else can. Not Kitty, not you, not anyone. Only me.” She squeezed Georgiana’s hand. “But he can see you, Georgiana. He is looking at you right now.”
George was looking at his daughter. Elizabeth had seen many expressions on his face over these weeks: fury, grief, self-loathing, the bitter dry humour he used to keep the grief at bay. She had never seen this. He was looking at Georgiana with such naked tenderness that Elizabeth had to look away.
“Tell her,” George said. His voice was barely audible. “Tell her I am sorry I was not there. After Ramsgate. She needed her father;he was dead. She had to face that man’s treachery alone. I have never forgiven myself for it.”
Elizabeth repeated his words. Georgiana’s face crumpled.
“It was not his fault,” Georgiana said. “He did not know what Wickham was. None of us did, until it was too late.”
“He knows that now,” Elizabeth said. “He learned the truth about Wickham just before he died. He confronted him. And Wickham...” She stopped. This was the part she had dreaded. “Georgiana, Wickham killed your father. He poisoned him. That is why your father has not been able to leave this house. He is trapped here because his murder has never been acknowledged, and he has been waiting for six years for someone who could hear him.”
Georgiana’s grip on Elizabeth’s hand tightened until it hurt.
“Wickham,” she said. The name came out flat, stripped of everything.
“Yes.”
“The man who tried to seduce me at Ramsgate. The man who married Lydia. That man murdered my father.”
“I am afraid so.”
Georgiana looked at her brother. Darcy looked back at her. Something passed between them that did not need words: the shared knowledge of what Wickham had taken from them, the full accounting of it, laid out at last.
“I want to hear him,” Georgiana said. “I cannot see him, but you can, Elizabeth. Will you... can you tell me what he says? Can we talk to him?”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said.
What followed was the strangest conversation Elizabeth had ever been part of, and the most sacred. She sat between Darcy and Georgiana, relaying George’s words as he spoke them, and George spoke to his children for the first time in six years. He told Georgiana about the roses: that seeing Georgiana restore the garden with Kitty had given him more joy than anything since his death. He told Darcy about the study, about watching him go through the papers, about the letters to Annie. He said he had watched Darcy shake every book on every shelf and had wanted to tell him there was nothing to find, and had not been able to.
He told them he was proud of them. He said it more than once, in different ways, as though he needed to be sure they heard it, as though six years of silence had dammed up so many words that they were all coming now, too many, too fast. Darcy listened with his jaw tight and his eyes bright. Georgiana wept quietly, wiping her face with the handkerchief Elizabeth gave her, and asked questions in a steady voice that belied the tears: was he in pain, could he sleep, did he like Mrs Annesley, had he seen Georgiana play the pianoforte? Yes, he said, to the last. He had stood in the music room more times than he could count and listened to her play, and she played like her mother, from the heart.
That was when Georgiana broke. She put her face in her hands and cried. Darcy put his arm around her. George Darcy stood infront of his children, unable to touch either of them, grieving as they were grieving for what had been stolen from them all when Wickham put foxglove in his brandy.
Elizabeth sat and said nothing, because there was nothing to say. She was the bridge between the living and the dead, and bridges do not speak. They hold.
After a long time, George said, quietly, “Thank you, Elizabeth.”
She nodded. He turned and walked through the wall. He was gone. The room was warmer for his absence, and sadder.
The three of them sat in the parlour for a while after George left. Georgiana dried her eyes. Darcy sent a servant for brandy for himself and for Elizabeth, who drank it though it was barely four in the afternoon. She had not eaten since the previous evening. The brandy hit her empty stomach like fire.
“Wickham,” Darcy said, after a long silence. He was standing at the window again, the glass in his hand, looking out at the grounds. “We have the truth of it all now from my father, but the testimony of a ghost cannot count for anything in the living world. We have Mr Wilson’s account, and Mrs Reynolds’ corroboration of those parts of it she knew of, which establish motive and timeline but not the act itself. We have a physician who signed a death certificate six years ago and may or may not remember the details.” He turned from the window. “There is no legal path. Not one that would survive a magistrate’s scrutiny, let alone a court.”
“I know,” Elizabeth said.
“If I could challenge him, I would. I would call Wickham out, put a bullet through him, hang for it if necessary, but that would destroy this family as surely as a trial would. It would not bring my father back.” His voice was steady. The fury was there, banked, controlled, directed inward where it could be managed. “There must be another way. We cannot prove murder, but we can make it impossible for Wickham to harm anyone else. We can cut off his income, his connections, his ability to move through society as though he is an honourable man.” He made a face. “Except we cannot do any of those things, because of Lydia.”
“Lydia will not leave him willingly,” Elizabeth said. “She is sixteen and married and she still thinks she loves him, even though she has begun to fear him.”
“Then we make it possible for her to leave, and we wait until she is ready. Between us, Lord Matlock and I have resources that Wickham cannot match.” Darcy set down his glass. “I will not let your sister remain in danger, Elizabeth. I promise you that. Whatever it takes, however long it takes, we will find a way to bring Lydia home.”
Elizabeth looked at her husband. He was standing in the last of the November light, his face drawn with grief, anger, resolve. She thought: this is the man who proposed to me so badly at Hunsford. Who wrote me a letter so honest it changed my life. Who listened to his aunt call me a madwoman this afternoon and chose me before he knew the truth. Who is now promising to save my sister from a murderer because she is mine and therefore his responsibility. He has never once in his life walked away from a responsibility.
“I love you,” she said. She had not planned to say it. It came out the way the ghost confession had come out: blunt, graceless, true.
Darcy looked at her. “I know,” he said. “I have known for some time. You are not as subtle as you think you are, Elizabeth.”
