CHAPTER ELEVEN
Isaw nothing at all amiss with Miss Bennet. In fact, I admired her and held her in the highest esteem. When her sister mournfully referred to the changes wrought on her by their situation, I did not understand.
“What has it done to her?” I asked.
Miss Elizabeth glanced appraisingly at me, but I sensed she had come to the end of her confession.
“I suppose you know more than I what the assumption of responsibility at too young an age does to a person. Besides, I have said too much already. To be overly confiding is cloying to one’s listener. No, no. Do not disagree with me, Mr Darcy.”
I smiled at her and gave her the privacy she demanded. We had come to a high spot and lookeddispassionately at the scenery below. Our conversation had been too fraught to allow us to become poetic about the landscape.
Bandit sank down in a patch of grass and panted loudly while Miss Elizabeth walked a short distance away from me. At last she returned and offered me the ghost of a smile.
“Perhaps you would relieve my embarrassment if you now became overly confiding with regard to your sister.”
My turn had come to hedge. I rubbed my neck in discomfort and took a few paces towards the cairn which marked the hill’s zenith.
“Pardon me, I should not have asked that of you,” Miss Elizabeth said quietly, speaking to my back.
I turned and faced her. “The subject is painful, and I am habitually closed-lipped about it, but I trust your confidence as you have trusted mine. The case with Georgiana, you see, is exactly that of your own sister’s.”
“What? How can that be?”
“I do not exaggerate. She nearly eloped with a fortune hunter, only hewouldhave married her, and in doing so, he would have plagued me and tortured her for the rest of our lives.”
“There seems little difference in our circumstance to be sure. We would both have been made utterly miserableand gossiped about in perpetuity. But how did your sister meet such a man? My mother was never vigilant, but surely Miss Darcy had better supervision?”
“The lady I hired as her companion was known to the villain. Mr Wickham conspired with her, undoubtedly for profitable gain, and when my sister went on holiday, he followed her and was given free access to her by the woman I hired to keep her safe.” I absently snapped a dead twig off a scrubby dogwood and tossed it down the hill. "You are likely wondering what my sister was thinking to allow herself to be courted without my knowledge, but you see, the man was the son of my father’s steward and had known Georgiana all her life.”
“What a vile trick! I suppose you killed him for it.”
“I certainly wished to, but my sister’s reputation was my first concern. I could not risk having it bandied about that I duelled with her seducer.”
“I suppose not. But how did the plan not succeed? It sounds as though it was a very close-run thing.”
“It was as close in my situation as your having the headache in your sister’s case. I had a cancellation in my plans and some intuition drove me, I suppose. Do not laugh—I cannot account for it otherwise. On a whim, I went to Ramsgate to surprise Georgiana and to take her out to the shops or wherever she wished to go.”
“Did you find this man in herparlour?”
“She confessed to me her plan to elope with him. He had been my childhood companion, and my sister did not know I knew him for a degenerate as he grew up. She expected me to be delighted and to convince him of my sufficient approval to allow for a respectable wedding.”
“Your poor sister,” she said. “You must have been incandescent with rage.”
I could not help turning back to look at her and was on the verge of saying I had behaved with great control. But in truth, I suppose I had turned purple with fury.
“I am sure I was. Georgiana nearly fainted when she discovered that her supposed friend was a rake and a scoundrel.”
“At least she was remorseful. Lydia became recalcitrant and would not admit her mistake. The more we tried to make her see the degree of her folly, the more stubbornly she clung to her feelings of injustice. She positively raged at my father for interrupting her happiness.”
Bandit rescued us then from our mutually awful recollections. He stood, shook himself, and tentatively wagged his tail.
“I see you are ready for more exercise, sir,” I said, and thinking to relieve Miss Elizabeth of some of the oppression of memories her disclosures had likelystirred, I spoke with specious condescension. “Take my arm. There are some loose stones just there.”
She huffed playfully and said, “Perhaps you should takemyarm, Mr Darcy. I have walked this path in all weather and even well after dusk. Besides, should you stub your toe for lack of familiarity with this path, you will further scuff your boots.”
“What a shrew you are to bring up that painful subject,” I said, but I claimed her arm with the confidence of a gentleman, and she relented sufficiently to turn Bandit’s lead over to me.
“How did your sisters come to be sent to school?” I asked, after a suitable interlude in which we walked briskly downhill.
