Chapter 14 #2
“How will I know he is gone? I will not tell you where to direct a letter to me. Wickham does not trust you not to tell my brother where I am.”
Elizabeth thought for a moment. “Your room was at the front of the house? Its curtains are closed; I will open them the day your brother leaves and close them the day before he is expected to return. Come to the mews and ask for me. Tell me what you are looking for, and I will collect them for you.”
“Oh.” Georgiana stared at her for a long moment. “Well, I cannot remember exactly what is there, and I ought to only collect what is of the most value. I will recognise them when I see them.”
It was getting late, and they had loitered by the wall for too long to escape attention. “Very well,” she said, trying to keep her patience. “You may come inside to collect your things. Good day, my dear.”
She hurried home to be ready to return wedding visits with Darcy.
He would come back by one, and thoughts of Georgiana could not fluster her.
It would only add to Darcy’s anxieties, and the goal of meeting with Georgiana was to ultimately ease them.
How was Wickham caring for her? Was he spending his money on prostitutes and drink while his wife sat alone in a small room without enough food?
What could she have said differently in Gretna Green to sway Georgiana?
If she was this out of spirits with worry for her, how must Darcy feel?
She had to preserve Darcy and his sister’s relationship by convincing Georgiana to leave her husband, regardless of the consequences. It pressed on her heart as deeply as had her desire to chase after Georgiana to prevent her from marrying that dreadful man.
Someday, she would return from one of these meetings with Georgiana, and it would be a balm to Darcy’s heart.
After arranging for his gift for Elizabeth to be delivered tomorrow, Darcy had returned home for another day and evening of wedding-related activity.
Returning calls slid into dinner with friends, and then to a card party at another house.
Everyone wanted to invite the new bride and see her.
Elizabeth was welcomed warmly or treated with distant civility by everyone.
No one slighted her. No one censured her. No one despised her.
As Darcy handed her from the carriage at the end of the evening, he asked her, “Are you weary of being the newest curiosity?”
She laughed. “Hopefully in the course of another week, London society will decide once and for all if I am very pretty indeed, or only rather pretty, or not pretty at all. Then all the fuss will be done, and we can stop accepting every invitation that comes our way.”
If he was a more gallant and less reserved man, he might have been quick enough with praise for her prettiness, but she now handed her cloak to the footman and made her way up the stairs.
To his surprise, she stopped at the drawing room door and bid him goodnight rather than walk up the next flight to her own room.
“Are you not tired?” he asked her.
“Despite your claims to Miss Bingley, I am behind hand in my work. It won’t take me more than an hour to finish. Then tomorrow I am free to walk in the Green Park with Mrs Ballston and her daughters, be seen and thought respectable, and then prepare for Lady Summerlin’s ball in the evening.”
“Are you expecting a great deal of preparation tomorrow?” he asked sceptically.
“Hours, Darcy.”
He did not bother to tell her it was unnecessary. He knew enough of ladies’ thoughts before a ball that she would prepare for it the same way and with the same length of time, regardless of his opinion. “I will keep you company as you work, if you like.”
She looked a little surprised, but thanked him and found her work basket by a chair near the fire. Little moments like this still charmed him. He was a man with lady’s needlework in his drawing room. It did not trouble him, and it surprised him how happy it made him.
“What are you smiling about?” she asked as she pulled out pieces of linen.
“Nothing at all,” he said.
For all his reserve, he liked to be in company, especially company that did not require him to speak if he had nothing to say.
He was glad to collect a few friends around him for an evening.
But now he was happy to enjoy his wife’s companionship.
She combined decency and elegance with a humour that could make him laugh in spite of himself.
“I have been thinking of Georgiana since we came to town, and how to support her,” she said, bending over her work.
“If she ever leaves him, I will support her.” His sister was likely in London; the letter he had not answered said they would make their way back.
“I thought we agreed on weathering whatever consequence if she left her ne’er-do-well husband.
” Did Elizabeth not want to risk her newly found social status by taking on the support of a woman who left her husband, even if he was a philandering gamester?
“Oh, we did,” she said. “I meant about supporting her now. She must have very little.”
“Wickham has not sixpence of his own,” he retorted, “and that is all the better because it could force Georgiana to properly appraise her situation and come home.”
“But would not a little money make her more comfortable in the meantime? For a better servant or nicer lodgings?”
He shook his head, rising to pace. “I need to end every entreaty and expectation that I will make Wickham’s fortune. He will use any generosity against us, and against her. If either of them asks you for money, you must refuse to help them.”
Elizabeth seemed to have heard him, but was too intent on her fine stitches to reply.
Her question rather surprised him. “His situation is all of his own making, you know,” he went on.
“He could have been a clergyman, he could have lived off the three thousand pounds I gave him, he could have been a lawyer. He is wasteful and selfish, to say nothing of his deplorable vices and how he treats women. And Georgiana chose him.”
He had thought himself calm and cool, but his voice wavered. His sister was lost to him, and he did not know how to mourn the loss.
Elizabeth raised her head and wore a sad look. “It is not your fault,” she insisted. “I only pity her circumstances. Wickham has not sued for her fortune, yet they must be destitute.”
“He preyed on her, and she wilfully ignored every warning, but I should have done better.” He went round and round in his mind, wondering what he might have said to her in Scotland to persuade her.
He ought to have ignored Mrs Younge and dragged her from Ramsgate the instant he knew Wickham was there.
“No one could have anticipated how badly Georgiana wanted to avoid being paraded about for a husband, or how desperate she was to feel like she was special to a man.”
“Do you really think so?” he asked.
Elizabeth started under his direct question and dropped her eyes to her work. “I can only guess. She is rather shy. Regardless, it was her choice, her failure, not yours.”
She was intent on whatever it was she was making. It grew late, and she must want to finish whatever she was working on. Darcy felt weary as well, and he stopped pacing to sit across from Elizabeth.
“Georgiana is now a lost cause, a casualty,” he said while staring into the low fire.
“And we are here to show the world that you are not. Your acceptance is not a certain thing, after all, however well you are doing thus far. I cannot show her and her husband any approval. It would diminish our own characters.”
“Is it not honourable also to aid your sister, no matter what she has done?”
He felt her hint in her tone. “Actions prove integrity,” he said carefully.
“I do not condone vice, and not even for Georgiana’s comfort would I admit them to my home or support them.
I want her away from that man, and giving her money does not serve that end.
Wickham will never be satisfied if he thinks he can come to me for aid.
He would bleed us dry for his own entertainment while keeping her in poverty. ”
Elizabeth looked down at her work, exhaling a slow breath. Did she disapprove? Or was she afraid her new husband was unyielding?
“You must think me dull, I am afraid,” he finally said. This entire affair made him feel much older than his twenty-seven years.
“No,” she insisted, snapping her head back up to look at him. “You are a man of conviction.” She met his eye, and he believed her. “You are a little serious, reserved,” she added with a smile. “Not dull.”
He returned her smile, enjoying her approval, and noticed she was sewing shirtsleeves.
“Are those for me?” he cried. “I thought my valet sent them out to a seamstress?”
She laughed. “Who is to make and mend the family’s wardrobe now that there is a lady of the house? All the body work now falls to me. Fortunately for you, I am a neat worker.”
Why did it feel strangely intimate for her to make his shirts? “But do you care for such work?”
“Well, I do like to be industrious,” she drawled, and he knew a tease was coming. “But I believe I would teach you to handle a needle if I could, and make you help yourself.”
“I do not think I could gather a collar and set it in the right place to save my life. I can at least read to you while you do.”
“Would you?” she asked hopefully. “I have Self Control, from your library.” She pointed to a table. “A ribbon marks the page, if you do not mind reading it again?”
He sighed exaggeratingly and lifted his eyes, and Elizabeth laughed as he retrieved the book. “Do you not enjoy books of information, travelogues, poetry, anything else?”
“I will read every travelogue Pemberley has, but I thought you said you appreciated novels?”
“I do. I just think this one is too fanciful to be enjoyable. The situations are all improbable, no matter how good the moral is.”
“Oh, I agree with you,” she said in her arch way. “But I still want to finish it.”
He read two chapters while she sat at her work. As time passed, he noticed how she grew more attentive to him rather than the shirt. At first he was amused, then gratified by seeing how she gradually slackened in the needlework.
The shirtsleeve fell from her hand while she sat motionless over it, her gaze fixed on his face.
Darcy felt a heat creep up his neck as his chest tightened.
What would it feel like to have Elizabeth look at him with that rapt attention, that adoring look, and have it be because she felt something deeper for him than respect or friendship?
Her slightly opened mouth and bright-eyed look brought to mind all manner of things it was too soon to think about.
He felt her gaze fixed on him for minutes as he finished the page, making his heart race away, till the attraction drew his own gaze upon her, and he closed the book. The air felt heavy with his own longing, but he could not know what she felt.
“It was kind of you to read to me,” she whispered.
The charm was broken. “I do not need your gratitude for reading to you while you make my shirts.”
“You read very well, even if you dislike the book. Every character and description came alive.” She put away her things and avoided his eye. “I am glad you did not want to read aloud something like Fordyce.”
He threw her a look. “Do you need much correcting?”
“Well, I did run away with a man from a watering place.”
She was trying to make him laugh, but she had to know he did not blame her for what happened. “You ran away with me because you wanted to save your sister, and then you wanted to save mine.”
Her eyes stayed on his, a smile still on her lips. “If I cannot be grateful for your reading, then I am exceedingly grateful that you are willing to make our marriage a success.” She blushed and looked away as soon as the statement was out of her mouth.
“Both of us are committed to a true partnership, Elizabeth,” he breathed.
“After the way I criticised you, I might expect you to be very resentful of having to marry me.”
He smiled, but she was still looking away from him. “Both of us speak our minds. I am rather glad to not have to guess what you think.” She laughed a little and raised her eyes to his. “We are—we are fond of each other, yes? I think we could be happy together.”
As he said it, he wondered if love was possible for them.
“We will be,” she agreed. Then she rose and he stood with her.
In a lighter voice, she added, “Your reading was capital, and my pleasure in good reading is extreme. Perhaps you might try Shakespeare next time? If your reading of that silly novel was so enlivening, then his speeches must be animated and enlightening in your voice.”
He would sit by her side and read a thousand sonnets if she smiled at him like that. “I am at your command.”