Page 39 of The Marriage Articles

Georgiana’s hands tightened until the knuckles paled. “I allowed him liberties,” she said. “I believed him. I believed every word he said to me, and I was so pleased to be believed in return. I was foolish.”

“You were fifteen.”

“I was old enough to know better.” Georgiana’s lips pressed together. “I should have known.”

“Should you? He had been your father’s godson, had he not, and known to your family all his life. He came to you as a friend. A young lady of fortune is a target for men without means, and the men who hunt her do not announce themselves. They arrive as friends, and they are very good at deception, because it is the only profession they have ever practised with diligence.”

Elizabeth leaned back. “I will tell you what I think, and you may do as you like with it. Nothing worse happened, and for that you may be glad and learn what there is to learn. But do not let one bad experience cast you down, or teach you to measure every man you meet by the worst you have known. There are good men. Your brother is one.”

She stopped.

The words had gone out unexamined. Mr Darcy was a good man. She had known it for weeks, she realized, without ever saying the word aloud. She let the thought pass. There would be time for it later.

“Do you truly mean it?” Georgiana said. She had looked up, her eyes bright and dry.

“I do.”

“You are not saying it to comfort me?”

“I have never in my life said anything merely to comfort anyone,” Elizabeth said. “It is a defect of character I inherit from my father, along with my nose.”

Georgiana laughed. It came out of her suddenly, a real laugh, surprised and unguarded. Elizabeth laughed with her. For a moment the library was only a warm room with two women in it who had decided, without consulting one another, that the morning might be salvageable.

“Now. I have a proposal, and it is a serious one, so attend. Today you and I shall do something together. Only the two of us. You may choose what it is, and I warn you, I shall hold you to your choice, so choose well.”

Georgiana looked at her. “Choose?”

“Anything you like. A drive in the park, if the chill keeps off. The shops, if you are disposed to extravagance. Or we may sit here and drink tea.” Elizabeth spread her hands. “It is your day. I am entirely at your disposal, which, I should tell you, is not an offer I make generally, so you are not to waste it.”

“You would spend the day with me?”

“I can think of nothing I should like better.” Elizabeth set her cup aside. “So choose, before I change my mind and choose for you.”

The brightness came back into Georgiana’s eyes, but it was a different sort now. She looked towards the window, where the pale daylight lay on the square, and then towards the pianoforte in the corner, and her hands in her lap had come loose without her seeming to know it.

“Well,” she said, and a small smile was beginning. “If I may truly choose...”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Darcy folded the solicitor’s note a second time and was relieved. It was a comfortable word, relieved, and he had been turning it over since the note came the evening before. Yet the thing he felt most strongly, as he came down the stairs with the case settled and the man gone, was that he did not wish to eat his breakfast alone.

The breakfast room lay to the left of the hall. He went to the right.

The morning air came at him the moment the door opened, colder than he had allowed for, with that close dampness a town keeps in its stones overnight. He had dressed for indoors, a light jacket over his shirt, the clothes a man wears between his bedchamber and his coffee. The square before him was nearly empty. Beyond the garden rails the houses of the fashionable stood with their curtains drawn, every one of them containing somebody who would think the hour barbarous.

It was the hour his wife preferred. She was at the garden gate with the footman behind her, and she turned at the sound of his step on the gravel. Darcy crossed to them and told the footman he might go. The man went. Darcy fell into step beside his wife, taking the liberty for granted.

She glanced at him. The glance travelled down and came back up.

“You are not dressed for the cold,” she said. “That jacket was made for a house, sir, and this is a May morning that has not yet made up its mind to be warm. You will catch a chill.”

“I do not get chills,” Darcy said. “Walking will keep me warm.”

One eyebrow rose. He had come to know that eyebrow. She did not argue. On she went, quick as she always walked, and he lengthened his stride to keep beside her.

They passed the gate and took the path along the railings. The grass was wet, and her hem was already darkened at the edge, which she had plainly noticed and plainly did not regard.

“Wickham sailed for Canada two days ago. The commission is sold, the debts are cleared, and the man is gone.” He kept his eyes on the path. “It is finished.”