Page 57 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"I have." Georgiana's lips were white. "I told someone. About Ramsgate. Last autumn, at Aunt Matlock's. I told someone everything."

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"Who?" said Darcy.

He had not meant it to come out like that: hard and flat, like a door slammed. He saw his sister flinch from it, and hated himself, and could not unsay it.

"Theo," whispered Georgiana. "Lady Theodosia. In October, at Matlock. You had gone into Hertfordshire. I could not sleep, and I could not eat, and Aunt Matlock kept asking what was wrong, and I could not tell her, and I thought I would go mad." The tears were running down her face again. "And one night Theo came to my room with a candle and sat on my bed and said she could see I was in trouble, and that she had been in trouble too, once, when she was young, and that I could tell her anything and she would never, ever repeat it. She swore. On her mother's grave." Georgiana's voice broke. "So I told her. Everything. Mr Wickham, and Mrs Younge, and the sands, and the letter I was going to leave you. And she held me while I cried and said I was not wicked, only young, and that it would be our secret forever."

Darcy did not move. He was aware of Elizabeth's eyes on him, across Georgiana's bowed head. He did not look at her. He was afraid of what his face would do if he did.

"She would not," said Georgiana. "She would never. Theo would never. She loves me. She must have told somebody else, without thinking, or somebody overheard. A servant. At Matlock the servants hear everything." She looked up at him, pleading. "You do not think it was Theo? Fitzwilliam? You do not think she would?"

He had spent nine years learning to govern his face. It was the one thing his father had taught him well. He used it now.

"I do not know who it was," he said quietly. "And it does not matter this morning. What matters this morning is you."

Elizabeth took Georgiana to bed, and sat with her. Darcy went downstairs, and rang for Pearce, and gave him one order in a voice that made the old butler's eyebrows go up.

The Post was on every breakfast table in Mayfair by nine.

By ten, there were carriages in the square that had no business in it, going round very slowly, their occupants looking up at the windows of Darcy House. By half past, Lady Matlock had come.

She came on foot, across the square, without her maid, which Darcy had never known her do in his life. She was very pale, and her mouth was set in a hard thin line, and she walked into his study without being announced and put the Post down on his desk.

"Is it true?"

He told her. There was no point in anything else now.

She listened with her gloved hands clasped very tight in her lap, and when he had finished, she sat for a long moment without speaking. Then she said, in a voice he had never heard from her, "Why did you not tell me? Last summer. Why did you not tell me, Fitzwilliam? I would have helped her. I would have—" She stopped. "She was in my house for six months, crying every night, and I did not know why."

"I did not want her shamed."

"And now she is shamed before all London." His aunt closed her eyes. "Lady Sandridge sent round at nine. The Queen's household has seen the paragraph. It will be made known to me, very kindly, before tonight, that Georgiana would do better to wait for another year. I shall have to withdraw her name."

The door opened. Lady Catherine stood in it, in black, like the wrath of God.

"You will do no such thing, Audrey."

"Catherine, you do not understand how these matters—"

"I understand very well. I was presented before you were out of the nursery." Lady Catherine advanced into the room. "If you withdraw that child's name, you tell the whole of London it is true. If she walks into that Drawing Room on Thursday with her head up, then it is a lie told by some scribbler in Fleet Street, and the Queen has been insulted by it."

"And if she cannot walk in with her head up? You have not seen her." Lady Matlock's voice rose. "Neither have I. But I can imagine."

They both turned to Darcy.

He thought of Georgiana on the floor of the blue room, shaking without a sound.

"She will decide," he said. "Not you. Not I. When she is able. And if she cannot bear it, then she will not go, and I will not have one word said to her about it by anybody. Is that understood?"

There was a silence. The two old women looked at him, and then, for the first time in his memory, at each other, with something that was almost fellow feeling.

It was then that Pearce knocked, and came in, looking unhappy.

"I beg your pardon, sir. Lady Theodosia Rowe has called. She has asked most particularly to see Miss Darcy. I have told her, as you instructed, that Miss Darcy is not at home. And that Mrs Darcy is not at home." He hesitated. "Her ladyship is in the hall. She is very much distressed. She begs to be allowed to go up."

Lady Matlock turned in her chair. "Theodosia is here? And you have refused her? Fitzwilliam, she is Georgiana's dearest friend. She will want to comfort her. She is the one person—"