Chapter Sixteen
Mr. Wickham was in Ramsgate when we summered there from London. I do not know if that was an accident or if he orchestrated it that way, but he secured invitations to some of the same events I attended. His intentions were clear, but I had no interest. He is not… I do not… I did not want a match.”
Elizabeth was watching me patiently, encouragingly, but I could see the speed of Darcy’s thoughts racing behind his eyes. He was desperate to interrupt with questions, but I hoped he would let me get through what I needed to say.
“There was a ball. It was nothing important, just a small affair, but there was another girl there that I was friendly with.” I left out Helena’s name.
She had achieved the life she’d always wanted, with a titled husband and a baby, and I wasn’t willing to compromise that.
“Partway through the evening we left the ball and found a room and…”
I looked at the floor, focusing on the frayed wear at the end of my dancing slipper ribbon. I could not watch Darcy’s face as I admitted to this. What I might see there had the power to break me entirely.
“And Wickham interrupted us a few minutes later. He caught us in an intimate moment. I had kissed her.” I was almost whispering the words, but I knew from Darcy’s quick inhale of breath that he had heard me.
“She already had high prospects, and Wickham knew that, so he threatened me with his knowledge of the encounter. I was to elope with him, to allow him access to my dowry, or he would use the scandal to cast a shadow over the Darcy family name and he would ruin the other girl’s impending marriage.
I had a choice, and I made what I thought was the right decision for everyone. ”
Kitty’s fingers were twitching beside me, but I couldn’t take them. Not unless I wanted to force this relationship into the light, too.
“Did you know?” Darcy said, his voice so measured and low that I couldn’t detect an emotion in it.
I looked up and found him directing his question to Elizabeth. She shook her head.
“I had no idea.” She was watching me carefully, tears collected in the corners of her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Georgiana.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” Darcy directed that same flat tone to me.
Fear. Frances. Concern that he would look at me exactly like this, like he no longer recognised me.
I cast my eyes back down to the floor, unable to give him a satisfactory answer.
I didn’t continue my story any further, not wanting to bring Kitty into it.
Elizabeth had all the information to continue the thread in her own mind.
Darcy could have drawn together the clues to a likely conclusion and guessed at Kitty’s role, but I didn’t offer it up.
I was not in the business of laying bare other people’s secrets, and I didn’t know what Kitty wanted to say.
Sitting beside me in the carriage, she added nothing.
I had spoken for the entirety of the journey home, twisting my fingers into complicated knots. When we pulled into the drive of Longbourn House, Darcy sat for an endlessly long, painfully silent moment, before leaving the carriage and heading for the house.
“I think he just needs time to process. I’ll speak to him,” Elizabeth assured me, a stable hand on my knee. “That was incredibly brave.”
Then she was gone, too. Kitty wasted no time before pulling me into a hug, and I gratefully sank into the contact.
“What do you think he’ll do?” she asked.
I could only shrug. This was unlike anything I’d ever presented my brother with before.
He’d dealt with me being an easily led child, or so he thought, but I was wilful in this version I was now asking him to accept.
I had made dangerous decisions to protect a girl I was fond of, and I knew, with Kitty’s hand in mine, I would do it again without a second thought.
As grateful as I was for the privacy of the carriage, it was far from the most comfortable place to pass time if other options were available.
Kitty and I soon vacated it in favour of her bedroom.
I didn’t feel much like maintaining my distance, so I climbed into Kitty’s bed while she was stripping down to her chemise.
When she turned and found me curled up under the blankets, she laughed.
“Excuse me,” she said, mock scandal in her voice. “I do believe that’s my bed you’re in.”
“My mistake.” I made no attempt to move. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share?”
“If I must,” Kitty said with a long-suffering sigh. She sat on the edge of the bed, combing through my hair with her fingers. “Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
I shook my head, leaning into her touch. With her to ground me, Wickham felt a million miles away.
“It was just more threats,” I told her. “He wanted me to… to act as his mistress.”
The earlier fury in Kitty’s eyes returned just as brightly.
“Yet you wouldn’t let me kill him?” she all but growled. “He is married to my sister, and you want nothing to do with him and—”
I took her hands, stroking my thumbs over them gently to calm her down.
“I punched him,” I reassured her, startling a laugh out of her.
“Excellent,” she announced, flopping down beside me on the bed. “He deserves it. I hope you broke his nose.”
I thought she was rather overestimating how much damage I was capable of causing him, but I was going to take it as a compliment.
Kitty settled beside me, tucking her face against my neck and wrapping an arm around my waist. It felt nice.
Safe. I was loath to ruin the tableau by revealing that Wickham’s threats had not been made against me alone, but she deserved to know.
I told her everything he had said, how he’d watched us dance and drawn invasive but ultimately true conclusions, and threatened to reveal that knowledge.
It seemed doubtful he would make good on the threat.
It would earn him nothing from me but Darcy’s ire and would ruin the reputation of Wickham’s wife’s sister, which would not be in his interest. I explained that to Kitty, hoping to mitigate any anxieties she might have, but she just held me closer.
“Let him tell people,” she said. “I don’t care.”
“They could keep us apart,” I warned her. “We have no power here.”
“Elizabeth knows. She’s on our side. And Mary,” Kitty pointed out, because I’d told her about that, too, hoping to balance out the bad news with the good.
“But they are not the ones who can make the decision to send us to an asylum,” I reminded her.
“You think that’s what Darcy will do?” Kitty asked, playing with the ribbons around my wrist.
“He sent away a maid for having relations with another woman,” I said, my words almost whispered in my reticence to admit the man I looked up to most had done something I disapproved of so fervently.
“It was the first thing he did after our father died. I dread to think what happened to her, with nowhere to go.”
My hands were shaking. Kitty took them in her own and squeezed tight.
“He would never do that to you,” she said with enough conviction I could almost believe her.
I hoped she was right, but women had been sent away for far less by people they had once trusted. No one, except perhaps Elizabeth, would even disagree with Darcy if that was what he decided. I could only hope his love for his wife outweighed any newfound hatred he might have for me.
Whatever my brother chose to do, I hoped he wouldn’t enact it until morning. No one had yet come rushing into the room to drag Kitty and me apart, so I was optimistic we had at least until then.
Trying to ignore the feeling of doom in the pit of my stomach, I curled closer around Kitty and closed my eyes. Her hair was soft against my cheek and her body warm through her chemise. It was enough to help me forget Wickham’s threats and Darcy’s silence.
When I awoke the next morning to find I hadn’t been wrenched away from Kitty’s side, I let myself believe it was all going to end happily. Perhaps if Darcy could not accept what I had said, he could at least forget it. Life could go on as normal, with everyone pretending nothing had changed.
Neither Darcy nor Elizabeth made an appearance at breakfast. I couldn’t stomach much.
I just about managed to nibble at a crust of bread liberally layered with jam.
Kitty ate enough for both of us, either unconcerned by the way our future hung in the balance, or turning to toast and slices of cold ham to comfort her fears.
Once she’d relented in her attempt to eat her parents out of house and home, she disappeared in search of Lydia.
Kitty wanted to find out what she knew, to press her for information on why Wickham was in Meryton and how long he planned to stay.
She never expressly said it, but I was almost certain she also wanted to know what, if anything, Wickham had told Lydia of the night before.
Preferring to stay far out of the way of any members of the Wickham family, I retired to the study.
Not ten minutes after I’d settled down with a book, the door was pushed open to reveal Mary.
She sat herself down opposite me, sliding the chessboard into the centre of the desk without needing to ask.
“Did you enjoy last night?” she asked, lining up her pawns.
I thought I could hear a tone of teasing in her voice. Perhaps she imagined it had been an evening of dancing with Kitty, secret brushes of fingers and stolen moments. I would have loved it to have been nothing but that, but I didn’t much feel like admitting to the dismal truth, either.
“Yes,” I said, focusing on how it had been before Wickham’s unwelcome entrance.
I doubted I was all that convincing, but Mary seemed happy to believe the lie, or at least keen to swap chatter for chess. We were halfway through a game when a knock came at the door. Mary called out for the person to enter, likely assuming that it was Kitty again. Instead, Darcy walked inside.