Chapter 16 #2
She had gone to church this morning and walked in Hyde Park with the wives of a few of Darcy’s friends.
Thank goodness her social circle was ever-widening.
Until her aunt and uncle returned and some families in Hertfordshire came to town for the winter, she knew no one else.
But despite that, everything seemed dull now.
This sensation of weariness, stupidity, a disinclination to employ herself wore on her.
How could she care about anything when Darcy had shown her, almost told her, that he loved her?
It was getting late and she needed to do something useful before the sun fell below the horizon.
Elizabeth took her journal into Georgiana’s old room, determined to record her thoughts on the ball and the two days since.
She opened the curtain in case Georgiana walked by and saw she could now come to the house to claim her things, then sat before the window to take advantage of the light.
She tried to remember whom she danced with at Lady Summerlin’s ball and made mention of them as well as what she wore.
She noted the aigrette Darcy had given her and that it had been complimented by many.
Darcy had not danced with her, but she had felt his earnest gaze on her for most of the evening.
Her mind passed over his gift of the diamond hair ornament. It had prompted her to kiss him, but it had not truly been because of the aigrette. It was because she loved him and wanted him to know it, at least through her actions, since she was not brave enough to speak the words before he did.
Her memory passed over what it was like to be hip to hip, chest to chest, lips to lips with Darcy.
She had finished her accounting of the ball and the receipt of her gift, but what to write about everything else?
Her relationship with Darcy felt entirely different since they had kissed before he left.
She had not expected it to happen and had only wanted to assure him she would miss him.
Darcy made it very clear he would miss her too.
Blood rushed through her as she wrote about what it was like to kiss him.
She had been thoroughly, beautifully, sensuously kissed.
Every recollection she wrote about kissing Darcy made her think of a tangle of naked limbs and beating hearts and impatient mouths.
Her hopeful thoughts and curious longings about what would happen after he came back filled the rest of the page of her small journal.
Her whole body felt taut, aching to finish what they started in the library. The fancy of it gripped her, and she knew sleeping tonight would be impossible.
Elizabeth exhaled, feeling hot all over, and closed the journal to write her letters.
She wanted to put a letter in Monday’s first morning post for Darcy—remembering his kisses and imagining what else he might do had distracted her long enough.
She would hint at how much she missed him, but it would be a far less explicit letter than what she recorded in her private journal.
It was a good thing she was already in love with him, because how could she not love a man who kissed like that?
On Tuesday morning, Elizabeth received a note from Lady Summerlin telling her to be sure to read the Morning Post before they met later today. She asked a footman to buy one. In a quarter of an hour he was back, and she was amazed to see mention of herself under the Fashionable World heading.
The lively Mrs D, lately married, was seen at Lady S’s in Portman Place with a diamond spray that must have been a wedding gift from her lovestruck husband.
It seems that lady is accepted in her new circle, but the former Miss D, we understand, is not noticed by Mr D by his time nor his money.
The new Mrs W let loose a shame upon that family by her low marriage but, at the least, the new Mrs D and her diamonds, this editor and good society have decided, are worthy of notice.
Parliamentary proceedings, arts, and crime all had their place in the newspaper, but so did gossip.
There had been mention of Georgiana’s disastrous marriage and Darcy’s sudden one not long after they happened, but this was the first mention of either of them since they came to town.
Although initials were used in place of a full name, the identity of those involved was never secret, and everyone who read this paper would know who exactly “Mr D” was.
Elizabeth could not help but smile as she read the article, even knowing that Darcy would be mortified by any mention of her in the newspaper.
That it was favourable did not matter. He had such a proper sense of delicacy and pride he would hate to see her name in print.
He would not be offended, but he would dislike it, even if it proved she was not a discredit to his family name.
It would, however, be deeply distressing to Lady Catherine, who hoped Elizabeth would be scorned and criticised wherever she went for daring to marry her nephew.
She wondered if Darcy would mention it. He would have arrived at Pemberley last night, and she expected at least a few lines of his safe arrival to be put into the post today.
Some other friend would mention the gossip to him, or he might read it himself, but no distressing lines about his sister’s fall or teases that he was an uxorial man would come from her.
Before Elizabeth went out for the day, a note was delivered from Georgiana saying she would come at three o’clock to collect her belongings.
Elizabeth huffed in irritation, for that meant she had to cut short her outing to Bond Street with Lady Summerlin.
The kind lady wanted to see her finely dressed.
Darcy was right that his mother’s friend wanted to spoil her, and she felt guilty that she had to leave her new friend early.
But it was another chance to restore Georgiana to her brother. How happy would Darcy be to return from Pemberley to find his sister ready to forsake Wickham? Yes, her living apart from Wickham would be a disgrace, but one no worse than what she had already endured.
And whatever Darcy felt for her would only benefit by Elizabeth bringing his sister back, like she had failed to do in Scotland.
At nearly three o’clock, Elizabeth dismissed the footmen and waited by the door herself.
She could not ask her sister-in-law to come in through the servants’ entrance, but she was not exactly welcomed here either.
It was best not to make a parade of her.
Georgiana was prompt, carrying a large reticule and a fair-sized box, and Elizabeth led her directly to the room.
She had only used the writing table by the window and was not sure what else might lie in the trunks or on the shelves.
Georgiana hung by the door, and Elizabeth supposed she was oppressed by fond remembrances of visiting the brother she was now estranged from.
“May I pack anything for you?” she asked.
She shook her head and avoided her eye, her gaze darting all over the room.
“Can I help you find something in particular?” she tried again.
“No.” She was as timid as she had been when she first met Georgiana in Ramsgate. After a long silence, Georgiana finally said shakily, “You must not let me keep you.” Her eyes strayed to the table by the window. “I will leave when I am done.”
“Nonsense, and you must let me help you as well.” Perhaps she was reluctant to actually look through things, since this was never her home. Elizabeth opened the two trunks and gestured for Georgiana to look.
She dragged her eyes from the writing table and bent over the trunks, rifling through until she found a small paste pin and a girl’s locket in a trinket box.
Georgiana took out the jewellery and replaced the box, but Elizabeth told her to take the small box with her.
She did not know if the box was Georgiana’s or not, but the jewellery she found was hardly worth anything, and she might sell the box instead.
Georgiana rose and looked out the window, seeming extraordinarily anxious. She then looked at the clock on the mantel and fidgeted with the writing tools on the table, then thumbed the stack of letters. She was not just timid, but tense.
“How are you keeping, my dear?” Elizabeth asked. “I am worried about you.”
She started and knocked a stack of letters onto the floor, hastily picking them up and placing them atop her journal. “Our accommodations are limited to a tiny parlour and a dark bedroom behind.”
Elizabeth knew they must be living humbly, unable even to afford the comfort of a servant, and, of course, almost excluded from society. “I hate to see you sunk to those conditions. I will repeat my entreaties that you are welcome here whenever you give up Wickham.”
“And why are you so certain he would let me go?” Georgiana asked sharply. “He loves me.”
She wanted to reply that he would let her go because he had not sued Darcy for her fortune since it was unlikely he would get it, and there was no other reason a philandering gamester would marry a shy fifteen-year-old.
But her sister-in-law’s situation was already terrible; there was no reason to be cruel to her.
After another look at the clock, Georgiana pulled out two gowns from the trunk and stuffed them into the box. “You love my brother,” she said shakily. “You are a married woman. Could you leave him, even if all the world despised you for marrying him?”
Darcy was such a good man that she could not think of a single reason anyone would think he was not worthy of her or that she ought to be slighted for marrying him.
“The difference is, I did not marry imprudently. I would not have married a man who had so many marks against him, whom my family begged me not to marry.”
“Wickham chose me. He tells me I am beautiful, and that of all the women he has ever admired, he loves me the best.”
Elizabeth felt overwhelmingly sad. “Is this what you think love is?”
Love was letting his wife sleep in after a late night, and reading to her while she did needlework, and refusing to allow anyone to say a disrespectful word to her. Love was a choice to commit to helping, respecting, and caring for another.
This was all so disheartening. And it made her miss Darcy all the more.
Georgiana ignored her and placed her reticule on the table and put the trinket box into it.
The chamber door was still open, and Elizabeth heard a commotion of raised voices from below.
There was some sort of fuss on her doorstep.
She hurried away and went to the stairs and saw the housekeeper coming up as Elizabeth went down.
“I am sorry you were disturbed, ma’am. Some man wanted to enter the house. He insisted he would wait for Mr Darcy and cared not a whit that he was not here. One of the footmen chased him off.”
What sort of gentleman would behave like that? “Did he say who he was or what he wanted?”
“No,” she cried fretfully. “He acted like he ought to be let in through the front door, and he might have been if his manners had been any better. He looked and acted the gentleman at the start, but then grew insistent, and then rude. Once Tom took a few steps toward him, he ran off.”
That was alarming. “If he ever returns, ask for a card, but be sure to send him away. I will leave it to Mr Darcy to decide if he wishes to see him.” She suspected he would want nothing to do with so indecorous a man.
Elizabeth assured the housekeeper the disruption was not her fault, and sent her down to her own room with promises that the whole incident would be forgotten.
When she returned upstairs, she was surprised to find the front bedroom empty.
She went to the next room and opened the door to Darcy’s chamber, which was empty, and then into her own bedchamber and found Georgiana looking over her toilet table.
“What are you doing in here?” she demanded.
Georgiana whirled round, looking pale. “This was once my mother’s room. Perhaps something of hers is here, something I could sell until Wickham convinces my brother to give me my fortune.”
She spoke the words as though reciting lines from a play, flat and quick and without meeting her eye. She was acting so timid and strange, and Elizabeth wished she had never allowed her to come.
“There is nothing here that is not mine,” Elizabeth said tightly, ushering Georgiana from the room and shutting the door behind her.
“If there is anything of Lady Anne Darcy’s, it would be at Pemberley.
You may write to your brother to ask him to send anything set aside for you once you decide you want us to know where you are living. ”
She led them back to the front bedchamber and firmly put the lid on the box. “Have you found everything? Your books and trinkets and gowns?”
Georgiana practically shook under her stern tone and threw her bulging reticule over her wrist and clutched the box to her chest as she hurried down the stairs. Elizabeth opened the door herself and firmly shut it behind her.
Elizabeth looked through the window in the entrance hall, watching her go.
She regretted losing her patience. Georgiana was just a foolish child who made an adult decision that would have lasting consequences.
She deserved pity, not unkindness, especially if Elizabeth wanted to be a safe place for Georgiana to turn to when Wickham gave her an illness or she realised she was destined to live in penury.
Someday, maybe Georgiana Wickham would learn that love was so much more than a man telling her he preferred her over other women.