Chapter Seven #2
He was still imposing—his shoulders broad enough to shadow the fire-light, his profile sharp and decided—but the former haughtiness was gone. In its place was a frightening intensity of care. He held his sister’s hands as though they were made of glass, yet his own hands were large and capable.
He was, she was forced to allow, remarkably handsome when he was not scowling.
“I cannot remain at Longbourn,” he was saying, his voice deep and deliberate. “If I stay, Wickham could guess you are here. He watches me as closely as I watch him. Wherever I am, he supposes the prize to be as well.”
“So you must go,” Georgiana whispered.
“I must go to London,” Mr. Darcy said. “I must make a great deal of noise about it. I shall ride into Meryton within the hour, stop at the inn, and declare very publicly that I have found you and you are ill. I shall look furious. I shall look desperate.”
He paused. A faint, wry smile touched his lips—an expression so unexpected that it unsettled Elizabeth more than she liked.
“I believe I can look furious,” he added.
“You are very good at it,” Georgiana managed, a ghost of a smile appearing on her own face.
“Just so. Wickham has already addressed me,” he said.
“He is almost certainly in London, or near enough to profit by it. If I go there openly, and make it known that I mean to have this business settled, he will not be able to resist pressing his advantage. He will come forward—he must—if he thinks there is money to be had.”
He glanced at Georgiana. “Once he shows himself, I shall ensure he is silent. But until that is done, you are safer here, where he does not yet know you have been. I shall return as soon as maybe.”
Elizabeth turned from the window, drawn into the circle of their conspiracy. “What of Georgiana?” she asked.
Mr. Darcy looked up at her. His eyes were dark, intelligent, and searching. “Georgiana must remain here. Hidden. It is asking a great deal of her... and of you.”
He turned back to his sister. “I am not commanding this, Georgie. I am asking. Can you remain here, in this room, without me? Can you endure the waiting?”
He was giving her the choice. He was treating her not as a parcel to be stored, but as an ally whose consent was sought.
.
“It is like the spider,” he said softly, his glance lifting to the corner of the ceiling where the cobweb still clung. “We must repair the web, even whilst the wind is blowing. This is your part of the spinning.”
Warmth rose in Elizabeth’s cheeks. He had heard her earlier nonsense about the spider. He had listened, and he understood.
Georgiana drew a deeper breath. She looked at Elizabeth, then back at her brother. The fear was still there, but the dreadful paralysis was gone.
“I can do it,” she said. “If—if Miss Elizabeth will help me.”
“I shall not leave her side,” Elizabeth vowed. When Mr. Darcy looked at her with that grave, wordless gratitude, she was in considerable danger of forgetting that he was, by all reports and by her own experience, the proudest, most disagreeable man in Derbyshire.
The Confrontation
Darcy had endured four days of civility.
Four days of sitting in that chamber whilst Miss Elizabeth Bennet read to his sister, offering Georgiana the comfort he ought to have provided, playing, in effect, the saviour.
Four days of maintaining his composure whilst knowing she had lied to him on that frozen road.
He had been half mad with terror when he stopped her.
His sister had been missing nearly a fortnight, and he had asked—begged—for any word of a young girl, fair-haired and lost. When he had encountered Miss Elizabeth Bennet on that road, she had looked him straight in the face and said, calmly, “I have met no one on this road to-day, sir.”
Georgiana had been at Longbourn when she spoke those words. Safe. Warm. Hidden not two miles from where he stood.
He had meant, during these days at Longbourn, to be nothing more than politely distant.
Gratitude demanded his presence. Pride demanded that he betray no sign of how her falsehood had stung.
Yet every hour in Georgiana’s room, whilst Elizabeth coaxed his sister into speech, had made that resolve harder to keep.
It was intolerable that a woman who had lied to his face should now be the one creature his sister plainly trusted.
It was more intolerable still that he could not wholly condemn her for it.
When Miss Elizabeth rose to leave the chamber, murmuring something of fetching fresh water, Darcy followed her.
He caught her on the stairs.
“Miss Elizabeth. A word, if you please.”
She turned, one hand on the banister. Her expression was composed, but her spine had gone rigid. A loose curl had worked free at her temple. In the dim light of the passage it stirred against her cheek as she moved, a small, unstudied softness at odds with the iron in her bearing.
“Mr. Darcy.”
“Out of doors. This conversation requires privacy.”
Her chin lifted in that determined tilt he had already learnt to recognise. “Very well.”
The garden was stripped by winter to frozen earth and brittle stems. A bitter wind swept across the gravel path. Miss Elizabeth drew her shawl closer about her shoulders, but said nothing, waiting.
Darcy had meant to be cold, controlled, cutting. Instead, the words came out rough.
“You lied to me.”
“I did,” she replied, her voice steady.
The admission, offered without hesitation or excuse, robbed him of speech for a moment.
“My sister was hidden in your house whilst I feared her dead,” he said, his voice rising. “You looked me in the eye and lied to my face whilst I was tearing myself to pieces with fear. Have you any notion what those days were?”
“Of what it is to fear for a life?” Elizabeth met his gaze without flinching. “Yes, Mr. Darcy, I have. Your sister was in my care, terrified lest the man hunting her should find her and drag her back.”
“I am not Wickham!”
“I did not know that,” she said quietly. “I knew only that a frightened girl had begged us not to betray her hiding place. She was shaking so violently she could scarcely speak. Her wrists bore bruises that told their own story. She would not even tell us her true name, she was so afraid.”
The picture struck him like blows, but Elizabeth went on, her voice gaining strength.
“What was I to think? For all I knew, you were in league with the very man she had escaped. You expected me to deliver her up to an angry gentleman merely because he demanded it?”
“I was trying to keep her alive,” Darcy said hoarsely.
“As was I.” Elizabeth’s composure cracked a little.
“You speak of your anguish, Mr. Darcy, as though it outweighed every other claim. What of hers? What of the nights she lay awake, listening for horses in the lane, persuaded that Wickham would come through that very door? What of her terror? She was afraid of you, Mr. Darcy—of your displeasure, of your judgement. She said you would look at her in silence and see nothing but her fault. Why should I trust a man whom she believed would condemn her?”
The accusation struck him dumb. He wanted to deny it, to explain how dearly he loved his sister, how he had never wished her to fear him. No words came readily.
“That is not true,” he said at last, though the conviction had left his voice.
“It is what she believed,” Elizabeth replied. “Whether it is true matters less, at present, than the fact that she believed it with all her heart.” She drew herself up. “So yes, I lied, to protect a child who had no other shield. I would do so again without hesitation.”
Darcy turned away, his hands closing on the cold stone of the garden wall.
He longed to rage at her, to make her feel something of the hell those days had been.
Yet beneath the anger lay a sharp stab of guilt, an unwilling recognition that she had judged him as Georgiana herself had done—and that both judgements were not wholly unjust.
“You ought to have told me once you knew who I was,” he said at length, his tone forced into control. “Once Georgiana had confirmed my identity, you should have sent word at once.”
“Perhaps,” Elizabeth conceded. “But she was not ready to see you. She needed time to gather her courage.”
“Time I did not have. Time I spent imagining the worst, whilst you—”
“Whilst I helped your sister recover from a dreadful ordeal,” Elizabeth said, stepping towards him.
“Your feelings are not the only ones in question, Mr. Darcy. Your sister is fifteen years old. She has undergone what no young girl ought to endure. She deserved a little space to steady herself before being exposed to your expectations.”
“My expectations?” He rounded on her. “What can you know of my expectations? You have known her days. I have known her all her life.”
“Then why,” Elizabeth asked, her voice dropping, “was she so afraid of you?”
“I thought she was dead,” he said. “I thought I had failed her so entirely that she was lying frozen somewhere, and I should never—” His voice failed him.
Elizabeth’s expression softened, though her manner remained firm.
“Then you know exactly how I felt when you appeared on that road. When I considered that, if I had been mistaken, if you had been Wickham instead of her brother, I should have led him straight to her. You were a stranger. A desperate man on a black horse, demanding news of a young girl. I made the choice I believed right.”
“I suffered for it.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said quietly. “You did. I am sorry for your suffering, Mr. Darcy. Truly. But I am not sorry for my choice.”