2. A Girl Trusted Wrongly
A GIRL TRUSTED WRONGLY
ELIZABETH'S POV
The two days that followed were ordinary in a way Elizabeth found almost unbearable.
Walks were taken, meals eaten, letters written to Jane that said nothing of what actually occupied her mind.
There was no safe way to put any of it on paper without breaking a confidence she'd only just been given.
She watched Georgiana without looking like she was watching.
By the second evening the effort had worn her thin.
Her chance came in the music room, where Georgiana had gone to escape the general company. Elizabeth followed on the excuse of turning pages that didn't need turning. Georgiana's fingers moved through a Haydn passage with more feeling than accuracy. Elizabeth let her finish.
"He listens to you," she said, once the last chord had faded. "Mr. Vale, I mean."
Georgiana's hands stilled on the keys. "Yes."
"That's no small thing, to someone who isn't used to being listened to."
"You understand." It came out with something close to relief. "He doesn't treat me like I'm still the girl who was nearly ruined at fifteen. He asks my opinion and waits for the answer. He doesn't finish my sentences the way—" She stopped herself, but Elizabeth understood well enough who she meant.
"What has he asked of you?"
"Nothing improper. Letters, only, and not many.
A walk, twice, both times somewhere we could easily have been seen.
He's never once suggested we meet in secret.
" She said it with the particular emphasis of someone repeating a fact she'd been handed rather than one she'd tested herself.
"He says my brother would never consent to a man without fortune, however honorably he behaved.
There's no purpose in his declaring himself only to be refused. "
"Did he tell you that, or did you work it out yourself?"
The question landed harder than Elizabeth meant it to. Georgiana's eyes flicked to her, startled, then away. "He said something of the kind. But it's true, isn't it? You know my brother's pride."
"Your brother's pride has a great deal to answer for, and I've quarreled with him over it myself, more than once. But there's a difference between a man's pride making him slow to trust, and his pride making him refuse to hear a case at all. Has he ever refused to hear anyone out?"
Georgiana didn't answer. Elizabeth noted, silently, how many times only had turned up in the last minute of speech—only letters, only a walk, only twice. The word seemed meant to build a wall too low to call a wall.
"Tell me what he writes to you," she said, gentler now. "Not the words, if you'd rather keep those to yourself. Just what they make you feel."
Georgiana turned it over like she was checking for a trap and finding none.
"That I'm not merely Fitzwilliam Darcy's sister.
That I have opinions worth hearing on subjects other than music.
That I might, one day, choose things for myself instead of being managed by everyone who loves me.
" Her voice caught. "Is it so wrong to want that? "
"Not at all. It's the most natural wish in the world, and I'd think less of you if you didn't feel it.
I only wonder whether a man who gives you that feeling through letters no one else may read is giving you the thing itself, or only the look of it.
The look of it is a much cheaper gift, and a much more comfortable one for him to make. "
Georgiana turned on the bench to face her fully.
For a second the guarded composure slipped, and something younger showed underneath.
"Do you know what it is, to be young and have every person who loves you watching for the next mistake before you've even had the chance to make one?
My brother writes to Mrs. Annesley about my spirits like I'm a barometer to be checked each morning.
The Colonel asks after my 'situation' in that careful voice men use for invalids.
And you—you're kinder than either, but even you came into this conversation already suspicious of him, before you'd heard a single word in his defense. "
"I came into this conversation afraid for you. That isn't the same as having already condemned him. I'm trying, badly, to hold both things—that you deserve to be trusted, and that trust doesn't mean shutting my eyes to a pattern I've seen before, and paid for."
"I'm not saying this to frighten you," she went on.
"I'm saying it because I once mistook a man's flattery for honesty.
I paid for the mistake in ways I didn't expect.
Someone who asks you to keep him secret, even gently, even for reasons that sound sensible, is asking you to trust his account of the world over everyone else's.
That's worth noticing, whatever else turns out to be true of him. "
Too late, she saw she'd pushed past what Georgiana could take. The girl's face shut like a door. "You think he's another Mr. Wickham."
"I think caution isn't an insult."
"Everyone is so careful with me," Georgiana said, and there was real pain in it now, not petulance.
"My brother is careful, the Colonel is careful, even you, who I trusted to be different, are being careful.
I begin to think there's no version of me anyone will believe is capable of judging a man for herself. "
"Judgment gets built by being allowed to look closely at things, not by being hurried past them." But she'd lost ground even saying it. Georgiana turned back to the keys, and the finality of it ended the conversation more surely than words could have.
Elizabeth had nearly reached the door when Georgiana spoke again, so quietly she almost missed it.
"You told me once that a person who made one mistake might still be trusted again." She didn't turn from the piano. "Did you mean it? Or was that a kindness you didn't expect to be asked to keep?"
Elizabeth stood a long moment in the doorway. "I meant it. I still do. That's exactly why I'm asking you to let me help you keep it true."
But Georgiana had already started playing again. The music said nothing more would be answered tonight.