Ramsgate. Wickham. Mrs Younge. A letter from a ship's captain of Darcy's acquaintance — a man Wickham had approached about passage to Gretna Green — who, recognising Georgiana's name and suspecting something was amiss, had written to Darcy at once. The letter that had sent him racing from London. His sister's face when he arrived. The words Wickham had planted in her mind that a year of Darcy's best efforts had failed to dislodge.
He told her of the year that followed. The silence. The fear that Georgiana was retreating somewhere he could not reach her. And the gradual, desperate understanding that what she required was not reassurance but proof. Living proof. Proof that the future Wickham had described was not the only future available to her.
He told her of the promise made beside a sickbed to his mother. The words shaped with great care because there had been no other way left between them. And how he had felt he was failing to keep the promise.
"And then I came to Hertfordshire," he said, "and I met you. And you were everything I had been looking for and considerably more than I had any right to expect." He looked at her steadily. "I should have told you from the beginning. I know that. I told myself there would be a right moment, then that I needed to be certain first, then that I would tell you soon,and the time passed and I never did." He stopped for a while. "Just as I had finally resolved to do so was when I saw you with Wickham. Georgiana has told me she confided in you the full truth of that matter."
"She did," Elizabeth said.
"I will not excuse what followed," he said. "There is no excuse. I was wrong and I was proud and I permitted my prejudice against Wickham to accuse you of something of which you were entirely innocent."
"I did not know the man at all," Elizabeth said. "Beyond that single encounter in the street."
Darcy swallowed. "Georgiana told me as much. And you had every right to say what you said on the mount."
Elizabeth looked at the fire for a moment.
"You said it became something else," she said at last. "On the mount, you said your reason became something else."
"Yes."
"Tell me what you meant."
He did not move, yet the air between them altered at once. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than it had been.
"I meant that somewhere between Lucas Lodge and Oakham Mount and your father's garden, I ceased thinking about Georgiana entirely." His gaze settled directly on her eyes. "I thought about you. What you said and what you did not say, and the way you laughed when you were not managing it, and the particular look you gave me when I was being ridiculous, which was rather more often than I would care to admit."
Something shifted in his expression.
"I meant that I looked forward to seeing you in a way that had nothing to do with my sister and everything to do with the fact that you are the most remarkable person I have ever known, and I could not imagine not knowing you." His eyes fell for a moment before returning to hers. "That is what I meant."
The drawing room was very quiet. The fire shifted in the grate.
Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment. She thought of the occasion on which he had defended her without being asked. Every conversation. Every morning on the mount.
She thought of Georgiana two days ago, steady and honest and entirely herself, asking only that Elizabeth hear him out.
She had heard him out. But one thing remained.
"Why did you tell Miss Bingley of my condition?" she asked.
Darcy shook his head before she had finished the sentence. "I never told Miss Bingley anything of the sort. I have taxed her with it, and she denies having had any such conversation with you."
Elizabeth's mouth fell open slightly.
"I know it to be a falsehood," he continued, "because Miss Bingley will do whatever she considers necessary to injure me with any lady she perceives as a rival. I have been aware for some time that she has fancied herself a candidate for my regard, but I did not take her for one so desperate as this."
He looked away, as if unable to meet her eyes.
"As to how she came to know the particulars — I have given it considerable thought since you told me what she said, and I can arrive at only one conclusion. She must have overheard my conversation with my cousin Fitzwilliam. He was urging me, in my private parlour, to reconsider my ill-founded opinion of you, and I told him everything of how we had met. Miss Bingley has a habit of listening at doors and making use of what she discovers. It is the only way she could have obtained such precise intelligence."
Elizabeth was silent for a moment. The explanation was not without merit. She herself read lips, and Kitty had, on more occasions than Elizabeth cared to remember, contrived to overhear conversations she was never meant to hear,including one between their mother and Mr Collins. Though eavesdropping was a habit Elizabeth did not approve of, it was hardly a rare failing. It could indeed account for Miss Bingley's knowledge without Darcy having revealed anything to her.
"You should have told me,” She said.
"I know."
"From the beginning. You should have told me."
