Page 56 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

Then she saw them. Both of them, together, at a quarter past six in the morning, her brother unshaven and in last night's clothes, Elizabeth in her wrapper with dark circles under her eyes. And the song went out of her face like a candle.

"What is it?" she said. "Who is dead?"

"Nobody, dearest," said Elizabeth. "Nobody is dead. Let us come in. Sit down."

Georgiana did not sit. She backed away from them, into the middle of her pretty blue room, with the hairbrush clutched against her chest, and her eyes went from one face to the other. Elizabeth saw her read them. She was a Darcy; she was quicker than anyone gave her credit for.

"It is about me," Georgiana whispered. "Is it not? It is in the paper. About me."

Darcy made a sound in his throat.

Elizabeth had planned what to say. She had planned it all night on the sofa, over and over, the gentlest words she could find. She found now that there were no gentle words. There was only the truth, and the kindest thing she could do was to say it quickly.

"Yes," she said. "It is about Ramsgate."

The hairbrush fell on the carpet.

Georgiana did not cry at first. That was the worst of it. She went perfectly white, as white as her petticoat, and she stood quite still, and she said, in a small flat voice, "Everyone will know."

"Not everyone—"

"Everyone." She looked at her brother. "The Queen. Aunt Matlock. Uncle. Everyone at the Drawing Room. Everyone who reads the Post." Her lips were trembling. "Show me."

"Georgiana—" said Darcy.

"Show me! I want to see what they said!"

Elizabeth looked at her husband. He shook his head, a little, desperately. But Georgiana's hand was out, and it was shaking, and Elizabeth thought: she will see it anyway. At breakfast. At Aunt Matlock's. In some drawing room, over somebody's shoulder, with people watching her face. Better here. Better with us.

She took the folded proof out of her pocket, and put it into Georgiana's hand.

Georgiana read it. Elizabeth watched her eyes move along the lines. The young lady has thirty thousand pounds, and is said to be very shy. She was not always so. She watched her reach scarcely fifteen, and flinch as though she had been struck.

Then she reached the end, and she began to shake.

It started in her hands, and went up her arms, and through her whole thin body, until her teeth were chattering. She dropped the paper. She said, "Oh," once, in a very small surprised voice, the way a child does when it has cut itself and has not yet understood how badly. And then she folded down onto the carpet among her blue skirts, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and put her face in her hands, and began to cry.

It was not like any crying Elizabeth had ever heard. Not Lydia's tantrums, nor Kitty's sulks, nor even her mother's hysterics. It was a terrible, silent, heaving grief, that shook her from head to foot and made no sound at all, as though she had learned long ago that it was not safe to be heard.

Darcy was on his knees beside her before Elizabeth could move. He took his sister in his arms, and held her, and she did not fight him. She turned her face into his shoulder and clung to his coat with both fists, and shook.

"I am sorry," she was saying, into his shoulder, over and over, in a thin broken whisper. "I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so sorry, Fitzwilliam. I have ruined everything. I have ruined you. I have ruined Elizabeth."

"No," he said. "No. No, sweetheart. No."

"It is my fault. It is all my fault. If I had not—"

"It is not your fault." His voice cracked. "You were fifteen."

Elizabeth knelt down on the carpet on Georgiana's other side, and put her arms round both of them. She did not say anything. There was nothing to say. She only held on.

They stayed like that for a long time, the three of them on the floor of the blue room, while the sun came up over the square and the house woke up around them.

At last, Georgiana's shaking eased a little. She lifted her blotched wet face from her brother's coat, and looked at Elizabeth, and there was something in her eyes that had not been there before: something beyond grief. Fear. And shame. And something else, that Elizabeth could not read.

"Elizabeth," she whispered. "I have to tell you something. Both of you. I have done something terrible."

"You have done nothing terrible, dearest."