She was right, of course, but I resented being silenced, because my thoughts raced with the implications of Georgiana crossing the boundary stream alone, in this weather, without a chaperone, a note, or her brother’s knowledge—leading to conclusions, each one more terrible than the last.
We took her upstairs and peeled the cloak from her shoulders. Beneath it, her grey muslin was wet to her stays, and her hands were blue at the fingertips, and when I took them between mine to warm them, she gripped my fingers with the desperate strength of a girl who had crossed a swollen stream in November rain because the other side of the stream was the only place she could think of to go.
I helped Georgiana out of her ruined clothes, and the helping was intimate in the way that tending to another woman’s body is always intimate—her fingers fumbling with buttons she could not feel, her shoulders shaking beneath my hands, the small, involuntary sound she made when the warm water closed over her, half gasp and half relief, and I knelt beside the tub and held her hand and did not ask anything, because Mama was right—the story would keep, and the girl came first.
Charlotte peeked in and said she had to go, to ensure her mother’s discretion, and my sisters left, each assigned to their task, leaving me alone with Georgiana. She sat in the water, hugging her knees, looking younger than seventeen and older than anyone should have to look at seventeen.
“Elizabeth.” Her voice was small. “She did iton purpose.”
“I know.”
“The music was not sorted. It was scattered worse than before. Pages torn and crumpled and shoved behind books. And then she sent Bingley, or Mrs. Hurst sent Bingley, and then she brought Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long to witness.”
“I know. Charlotte told us.”
“I was on my knees looking for the Clementi third page, and Bingley was handing me a torn scrap of Haydn, and the door opened. They were all there, and Caroline’s face was so kind. So worried. And underneath the kindness was…”
“Manipulation.”
“Yes.” Georgiana’s grip tightened on her knees. “I have seen that face before. Not only hers. A different face, with the same—the same underneath.”
The water stilled, and I did not push or prompt, because this was a story that needed to arrive in its own time, from a girl who had earned the right to tell it when she was ready.
Georgiana looked at me. Her eyes were dark and very steady, the steadiness that was not calm but the held-together quality of a girl who had practiced not falling apart and had become dangerously accomplished at it.
“There was a man, Elizabeth. At Ramsgate. Two summers ago. Not Mr. Bingley, despite Caroline’s intimations.”
I knelt beside the tub and held her gaze, a promise that whatever she said next would not change what she was to me.
“His name was George Wickham. He had grown up at Pemberley, my father’s godson. Father provided for his education, paid for Cambridge—everything a patron does for a promising young man. Wickham was charming and handsome, and he smiled constantly; he had known me since I was in the nursery.”
“Georgiana, you do not have to?—”
“I need to. Because you need to understand why Fitzwilliam does what he does. Why he manages and guards and puts people in categories and closes doors. He does it because of me, Elizabeth. Because of Ramsgate. Because of what I almost did.”
I waited. The rain struck the window in sheets, and in the tub, Georgiana’s shoulders rose and fell with the breath she was gathering.
“Wickham had a piece of intelligence, or so he claimed. About my brother. Something from Fitzwilliam’s Cambridge days, an indiscretion—it does not matter what. What matters is that Wickham used it. He told me he knew something that would ruin my brother’s reputation, and then he told me he would never tell a soul, and thenever tellingwas the leash. He came back again and again, and each time the secret held me closer, because I believed I was protecting Fitzwilliam by keeping Wickham’s confidence, and Wickham let me believe it.”
My gasp was entirely involuntary, and I tried to swallow it back, but Georgiana didn’t seem to notice as she continued, “He proposed an elopement. We would go to Scotland, so that my thirty thousand pounds would secure us both, and that once we were married, the secret about Fitzwilliam would be safe forever because a brother-in-law would protect his interests. He made it sound like safety. He made it sound like love.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Fifteen. A girl of fifteen, with thirty thousand pounds and a brother’s reputation in her hands, and a man many years her senior telling her that the annihilation of her future was an act of devotion.
“I packed a trunk and wrote a letter. I was halfway to the carriage when Fitzwilliam arrived. He had come early, some change of plans, and he found me in the hallway with my luggage and my letter, and the look on his face—” Georgiana closed her eyes. “I have never seen a man break without moving. He stood perfectly still, and the breaking happened behind his eyes. I watched him break, and I have been watching him guard against it ever since.”
“Georgiana.”
“He sent my companion away and faced Wickham. He settled debts—I don’t know the amount or the reason—thentook me from Ramsgate, and we haven’t discussed it since. Because talking about it means facing it, and Fitzwilliam can’t stand that. He refuses to acknowledge that his plan—to protect, manage, and tightly control everyone around me—failed when it truly counted. That he nearly lost me. Now, every day since, my brother has been attempting to compensate for Ramsgate, and this constant effort is wearing both of us down.”
The bath had gone lukewarm. I helped Georgiana stand, dried her, and wrapped the flannel around her thin shoulders. The act of care was so simple and inadequate that it felt like placing a sticking plaster on a wound that ran the length of a life.
“I will never reveal this to a soul,” I assured her.
“I know, and I told you because you must understand my brother.” Georgiana gripped my arm as I helped her step from the tub. “That is why he did what he did at the assembly. Not because he does not regard you, but because the Caroline Bingleys and the Wickhams of the world have taught him that the people closest to Georgiana Darcy are the people most likely to use her, and when you said Caroline was dangerous, he heard you saying that his entire system of protection had failed, and he could not survive hearing that. Not again. Not from someone whose opinion actually mattered.”
