24. Truths Long Concealed
twenty-four
Truths Long Concealed
Darcy wrote first to Colonel Fitzwilliam.
He began twice before laying aside each sheet.
The first attempted to soften the truth until it scarcely resembled truth at all.
The second descended into particulars too painful to commit to paper where postboys and servants might chance to glimpse them.
At last, he decided upon plainness, stating that Georgiana had been recovered safely before any marriage had taken place, that Mr. George Wycombe had escaped during the night, and that Colonel Fitzwilliam’s presence in London was earnestly desired upon a matter affecting both his ward and the honor of their family.
Nothing more could prudently be entrusted to an express.
The letter to Lady Matlock proved no easier.
He knew his aunt well enough to anticipate every question before she asked it.
How had Georgiana been persuaded? Why had Mrs. Younge remained at liberty?
How had Darcy failed to perceive the danger sooner?
The last question echoed most insistently because he had already asked it of himself a hundred times.
He folded the letter before doubt tempted him to alter another line.
“I have not said enough.”
Wickham accepted the sealed packet and examined the direction. “You have said exactly what cannot wait.”
“She will imagine the worst.”
“She would imagine the worst if you wrote that you wished to see her.”
Darcy conceded the point with a weary motion of his head.
The innkeeper himself undertook to dispatch the express.
Darcy paid liberally and instructed that fresh horses be secured without delay.
The man bowed repeatedly, his earlier uneasiness replaced by eagerness to satisfy a gentleman whose purse had already exceeded the value of every room in the establishment.
When the door closed behind him, the breakfast remained untouched.
Wickham broke a piece from a loaf and regarded it with little enthusiasm before setting it down again.
“You should eat.”
“So should you.”
“I intend to.”
Neither did.
A knock interrupted them.
Mrs. Younge entered under the watchful eye of the innkeeper’s wife.
She appeared greatly altered from the woman who had accompanied Georgiana into the yard the previous afternoon.
Her gown remained elegant enough, but haste had left loose strands escaping beneath her cap, and the confidence with which she had defended Wycombe had deserted her.
She curtsied.
“Mr. Darcy.”
He did not invite her to sit.
“I believe we have several matters requiring explanation.”
She clasped her hands together.
“I have little to add.”
“I think you have a great deal.”
Her eyes shifted briefly toward Wickham before returning to Darcy.
“I acted for what I believed Miss Darcy’s happiness.”
“Then begin there.”
Mrs. Younge drew a careful breath.
“George has been my godson since infancy. His mother was my dearest friend.”
“So you renewed the acquaintance after leaving Pemberley.”
“Yes.”
“You sought him.”
“He sought me.”
Darcy made no comment.
She continued with evident reluctance.
“He had known Miss Darcy at Ramsgate. He admired her exceedingly.”
Wickham let out a sound that might have been a laugh.
“Admired thirty thousand pounds exceedingly.”
Mrs. Younge winced.
“I believed his attachment sincere.”
“Did you?” Darcy asked.
She hesitated too long.
“I believed... there was affection.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Her composure faltered.
“I believed he intended to marry her.”
“And afterward?”
She stared at the carpet.
“I did not trouble myself overmuch with afterward.”
Darcy’s expression remained unchanged, though anger gathered beneath the calm with increasing force.
“You encouraged my sister to distrust me.”
“I encouraged her to think for herself.”
“You informed her that I wished to be rid of her.”
Mrs. Younge’s lips parted in protest before closing again.
“I may have spoken... imprudently.”
“You told a lonely girl that her brother considered her an inconvenience.”
“I feared she would never act while she relied upon your approval.”
“And that suited Mr. Wycombe.”
She did not answer.
Wickham rose from his chair and wandered toward the window, apparently occupied with the stable yard below. His voice, when he spoke, remained conversational.
“Did he ever intend to take her as far as Gretna Green?”
Mrs. Younge faced him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The question is simple.”
He looked back over his shoulder.
“Had he truly reserved rooms? Arranged witnesses? Or was each day’s journey merely another promise until he could persuade Miss Darcy to surrender more than her fortune?”
Color drained from Mrs. Younge’s face.
“I... I do not know.”
“You never asked.”
“No.”
“Because you preferred not to hear the answer.”
She lowered herself suddenly into the nearest chair as though her strength had abandoned her.
“I did not think him so heartless.”
Darcy regarded her steadily.
“Yet you thought me sufficiently heartless to abandon my sister.”
Tears sprang into her eyes.
“I was wrong.”
“You were.”
“I believed...” She pressed trembling fingers against her brow. “She spoke so often of how alone she was, how frightened of London she was. How every plan for her life had already been decided. George listened to her. He praised her judgment. He treated her as a woman rather than a child.”
“And you encouraged the comparison.”
“Yes.”
She whispered the word.
“I did.”
The room grew still.
At length Darcy spoke again, though the fury which had animated his earlier questions had cooled into something harder.
“Did you know the terms of my father’s will?”
Mrs. Younge looked up.
“The marriage settlement?”
“Yes.”
“I knew guardians must consent.”
“And Mr. Wycombe?”
A long pause followed.
“Yes.”
Darcy’s fingers tightened upon the arm of his chair.
“He knew before he persuaded my sister to leave.”
“He believed...” She swallowed. “He believed Miss Darcy’s distress would compel you to relent afterward.”
“Or that a completed marriage would leave me no alternative.”
She gave the smallest nod.
Wickham moved away from the window.
“I should like one more answer.”
Mrs. Younge looked at him warily.
“Why my name?”
Confusion crossed her features.
“I do not understand.”
“At Ramsgate.”
He stepped nearer.
“Why did Wycombe permit Miss Darcy to conceal his surname once Mr. Darcy had mistaken it for mine? Why continue the deception?”
Mrs. Younge closed her eyes. “Because it protected him.”
“And condemned me.”
“I know.”
“You knew then.”
Another nod.
“I told him it would not endure forever.”
“He laughed,” Wickham said.
She stared.
“Did he not?”
After a long moment she answered.
“Yes.”
“He said no one would trouble to distinguish between one scoundrel and another.”
No one spoke after that.
Outside, wheels rattled across the cobbles as a carriage entered the yard.
Darcy crossed to the window absently, watching servants unload trunks belonging to strangers whose lives continued untouched by the misery occupying the little inn. For an instant he envied them that ignorance.
Behind him Mrs. Younge began to weep in earnest.
He did not turn.
There had been a time when such tears would have stirred compassion.
This morning they found little purchase.
Mrs. Younge’s weeping subsided by degrees, the sound diminishing into small, exhausted breaths. Wickham had retreated to the hearth, arms folded, watching her with an expression Darcy could not fully read—something short of pity, though not without understanding.
Darcy left the window at last.
“You will never speak to my sister ever again. That much I trust requires no explanation.”
“No.” Her voice was hollow. She flinched but did not protest. “What will become of me?”
“That is no longer my concern.”
The words came harder than he intended, and something in her face told him they had landed with their full weight. He did not soften them.
“I banished you from my household after the events of the summer. Still, you conspired to ruin a girl of sixteen not once, but twice, for the sake of a man who abandoned her the moment her fortune proved unreachable. I have shown you more patience this morning than the offense deserves. Rest assured, I shall now follow through with my previous threat and make certain you cannot serve another respectable household.” No, he would do more than that.
Mrs. Younge rose unsteadily. “I will trouble you no further,” she said, and left the room with what remained of her dignity gathered about her like a borrowed cloak.
The door had scarcely closed before Wickham exhaled.
“She will find some other situation within the year. Women of her particular talents rarely starve.”
“That is not comfort.”
“It was not intended as such.”
Darcy pressed his knuckles briefly against his eyes. The night’s exhaustion had settled into every joint, and the morning’s revelations sat upon it like a second weight.
“I must go to her.”
Wickham did not ask whom he meant.
Georgiana had risen and dressed by the time Darcy knocked again, though the effort had cost her. She sat near the small window of her chamber, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes reddened but dry. She did not look at him when he entered.
“Mrs. Younge is gone,” she said.
“Yes.” Darcy had given her over to the magistrate for theft. The woman had, while in his service, taken several valuable items from Darcy House, discovered after the Ramsgate debacle. She would spend time in debtor’s prison. He ought to have done so last summer.
Georgiana’s fingers tightened in her lap, but she said nothing.
Darcy drew a chair near hers, close enough for conversation, not so close as to crowd her. He had learned, in the space of one dreadful night, that his sister required room now in a way she never had before.
“Georgiana.”
“I know what you mean to ask.”
“Then I will not make you ask it of yourself.”
She lifted her chin, though her eyes remained fixed upon some point beyond the window.
“You wish to know why I let you believe it was Mr. Wickham.”
“Yes.”
For a long moment she said nothing at all. When she spoke, her voice had steadied into something colder than grief—something nearer to confession delivered on her own terms, rather than dragged from her.
“Because it was easier.”
Darcy waited.
“You came into that hall so angry, Fitzwilliam. So certain. You said his name before I had drawn breath enough to correct you, and for one moment—one dreadful moment—I understood that if I let you believe it, none of the rest would matter. Not Mrs. Younge or George. Not what I had done. You would simply be angry at a man you already despised, and I should not have to watch your face while you learned the truth of me.”
“The truth of you.”
“That I deceived you for months and met him in secret. That I meant to marry without your consent or Richard’s and would have succeeded had Mrs. Younge’s maid possessed less conscience than her mistress.
” Her voice cracked at last. “It was easier to let you hate Mr. Wickham than to let you see how thoroughly I had deserved your disappointment.”
Darcy sat with that for a moment, turning it over as he might a stone too sharp to hold comfortably.
“You let an innocent man’s name be ruined in Meryton rather than tell me the truth.”
“Yes.”
“You let Miss Lydia Bennet’s family live under a cloud of accusation for weeks.”
“I did not think of them at all.” Her voice was very small now. “I am ashamed to say it, but I did not.”
“And when the bill arrived—the false debt—”
“I did not know of it until Richard mentioned it in a letter, weeks after. By then it seemed impossible to speak. Every day that passed made the silence larger.”
Darcy closed his eyes.
He had spent a fortnight demanding that Elizabeth trust his judgment against all evidence her own eyes presented her, while the entire foundation of that judgment had rested on his sister’s silence—a silence maintained not from fear alone, as he had told himself, but from calculation.
“I have wronged Wickham grievously,” he said, half to himself.
“I know.”
“And you allowed it.”
“I did.” Georgiana finally looked at him, and there were tears standing in her eyes again, though she did not let them fall.
“I am not asking you to forgive me easily, Fitzwilliam. I do not think I have earned easy forgiveness. But I would rather you be angry at the truth than continue being kind to a lie.”
He studied her—this girl who was no longer quite a girl, who had lied to him with more deliberate calculation than he had believed her capable of, and who now sat delivering her own indictment without flinching from a single clause of it.
“You have caused a great deal of harm,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“To Wickham. To the Bennets. To yourself most of all.”
“Yes.”
“And you did it, in part, because you believed I would not have listened regardless.”
Georgiana’s composure wavered. “Would you have?”
The question found him with nowhere to retreat.
He thought of Elizabeth beneath the oak tree. Honor without humility can become frightening.
“No,” he admitted. “I do not believe I would have. Not then.”
Georgiana’s shoulders eased fractionally. The guilt remained, but relief accompanied it when she realized he meant to carry some portion of the burden too.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
“So am I.”
He reached for her hand, and this time she did not withdraw it.
They did not speak of Wycombe again that morning, nor of Mrs. Younge, nor of the long ride still ahead of them toward London and whatever reckoning awaited there with Richard and Lady Matlock.
There would be time enough for all of it—for lawyers, for careful management of what could be kept from wider knowledge and what could not, for the slow work of rebuilding whatever trust had been so thoroughly dismantled on both sides.
But downstairs, when Darcy finally descended to settle the reckoning with the innkeeper, he found Wickham standing near the door with his hat already in hand, watching the yard where fresh horses were being led out into the grey morning.
“You mean to ride on with me,” Darcy said. It was not quite a question.
“I mean to see Miss Darcy safely to London, if you will permit it. After that—” Wickham hesitated, and something rueful crossed his face. “After that, I find I am rather more eager to return to Hertfordshire than I ever expected to be of any place in my life.”
Darcy nodded slowly.
“Lydia,” he said.
“Lydia,” Wickham agreed. “And Mr. Philips’s ledgers, which will not forgive my absence, however dramatic its cause.”
Despite everything, despite the exhaustion and the wreckage of the night behind them, Darcy felt something that was close to a smile.
“I owe you an apology that will take considerably longer than this ride to deliver properly.”
“Then we have several miles in which to begin it,” Wickham said, and led the way out into the yard.