Page 37 of The Marriage Articles

“That was not a headache,” Elizabeth said.

“No, it was the name.” He hesitated.

“Under the terms of our agreement, I owe you the truth, and I will give you this. The name is not a safe one in this house.” He made himself meet her eyes. “I will explain it when I may. But I must speak to my sister first.”

She rose, and he rose with her. “Go to her, and when you have seen her, come back and tell me whether she is well.”

He went. At the top of the flight he stopped. His hand found the banister and the weight of it pressed into his palm, the polished wood solid and indifferent under his fingers. Six weeks of quiet, six weeks of a house that had begun to feel like something he had not dared to hope for, and now this. The man had a talent for appearing at the worst possible moment, and the worst possible moment was always, without fail, when things were beginning to go well. He waited until he was certain his voice would be his own. Then he opened the door.

Georgiana stood at the window with her back to him, her shawl slipped from one shoulder, very still. She was not crying. That was worse, in its way. Mrs Annesley rose from the chair by the writing table, inclined her head to him, and passed out of the room without a word. He closed the door behind her without sound and waited.

“I should not have run out,” she said at last, to the glass. “Forgive me. I should not have done it. I am quite well.”

“You need not apologize to me, Georgie.”

“Fitzwilliam, you must not think...” She stopped and began again. “It startled me. That is all. I was not prepared to hear it spoken so.”

“I understand.” He kept his voice low. “Listen to me. George Wickham took advantage of your youth and your fortune and your good nature, and the shame of it, where there is shame, belongs to him in its entirety. You were fifteen years old. I will not have you castigate yourself for his misdeeds at my table or anywhere else.”

“He is in Hertfordshire.”

“Yes.”

“Then Elizabeth will ask, and you will have to tell her, and she will know what I am, what I did, how easily I was...” The tears came at last, and they were not, he understood with a clarity small and cold, for Wickham at all. “She has been so good to me. I have only just got a sister. She will know now how stupid I was, and she will never...”

“Stop.” He took her by the shoulders, gently, the way he had steadied her as a child learning her pony. “She will not think badly of you. Whatever judgement falls from that story, none of it will fall on you. She has a particular genius for aiming her contempt exactly where it is deserved, and none of it is deserved by you.”

He reached and drew her shawl back up over her shoulder where it had slipped, and settled it, and his hands were steady, which surprised him, because very little in him was steady. “I will deal with him, Georgie. Once and for all. He will not come within reach of you or of this family again. You are safe in this house, and you are protected in it.”

“Will you tell Elizabeth?”

“Would you rather tell her yourself? I would stand with you.”

“No.” It came quickly, and then more slowly, with an effort at courage he honoured by not remarking on. “No, I cannot. If you tell her, that is well, I am content for you to tell her. But I do not know how I shall look at her after. I do not know how I shall sit across from her at dinner, knowing she knows.”

She wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand. “Will you ask me down, when you speak to her?”

“Would you come?”

“No.” She drew the shawl closer about herself. “I think I should like to lie down for a while. Truly lie down, this time. Tell her, tell her I am sorry I ran out.”

He kissed her forehead, as he had not done in years, and she leaned into it for the length of a breath, and then he went out and closed the door as softly as he had opened it.

In the passage he stood a moment longer. Below him the house went about its business, the dining room being cleared, the candles being trimmed, his wife waiting somewhere in the lighted rooms with a question he had promised to answer and could not yet fully answer.

Wickham was in Hertfordshire. A man of Wickham’s talents could do infinite mischief in a fortnight. Meryton was full of girls with portions and mothers with ambitions. He had kept George Wickham at a distance for too long, and now the man was, at this moment, charming Elizabeth’s sister within reach of everything he held dear. The managing was over.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Darcy paused at the library threshold and did not go in at once. Elizabeth was at the desk by the far window. The fire had burned low and the candles were short. The lamp behind her threw her shadow across the rug in a long shape. She had a book open against the candlestick and her finger marking the page, and when she looked up at him he saw that she had not been reading so much as waiting.

“How is she?” she said, before he had spoken at all.

“Asleep, or near it.”

He came into the room and shut the door behind him. “She is afraid of what you will think of her, once you know what there is to know.”

Elizabeth set the book down.