Chapter 13 #2
The second round of cards was worse. Wickham had abandoned any pretence of playing and was giving Elizabeth his undivided attention.
He leaned toward her. He spoke in low tones that made her duck her head to hear.
He told some anecdote that made her press her lips together, fighting a smile, and the fighting-a-smile expression was one that Darcy recognised because she had given it to him at Netherfield, once, when the pig had sneezed on his book, and seeing it directed at Wickham was a pain so specific he could have located it on a map of his body.
He lost three hands in a row. Mrs. Long won the pot and expressed her delight with a volume that rattled the teacups.
The supper was laid out at half past nine.
Cold ham, cheese, bread, and a syllabub that Mrs. Phillips announced with the pride of a woman presenting a state dinner.
Darcy stood with his plate and ate nothing.
Wickham was at Elizabeth's side again, filling her glass, pulling her chair back from the table, performing the small courtesies that Darcy could never perform because his hands forgot what to do when Elizabeth was near.
He overheard a fragment of their conversation.
Elizabeth was telling Wickham about Truffles.
About the pig's behaviour at the Netherfield Ball.
She was making a comedy of it, the way she made a comedy of everything that embarrassed her, and Wickham was laughing with his head thrown back, and Darcy stood very still because he remembered the ball differently.
He remembered the pig at his feet and Elizabeth's face above the piglet's head and his hands touching hers as he passed the animal over, and it had not been a comedy.
It had been the closest he had come to honesty in years.
Wickham glanced at him across the supper table. The smile again. The knowing, patient smile. He leaned toward Elizabeth and said something too low for Darcy to hear, and Elizabeth's expression tightened, and Darcy knew, with absolute certainty, that Wickham was talking about him.
At ten o'clock, he could bear no more. He found Bingley, who was talking to Jane by the window with the expression of a man who had found paradise in a small parlour in Hertfordshire and saw no reason to leave.
"I am going."
"Already? The evening is young."
"The evening is unbearable. I will take Caesar. Have your carriage follow when you are ready."
Bingley looked at him. Some flicker of understanding crossed his open, uncomplicated face. "Are you well, Darcy?"
"Perfectly well."
He was not perfectly well. He rode back to Netherfield in the dark, the cold November air sharp against his face, and the ride was not long enough to quiet his mind. The lanes were black except where the moon caught the frost on the hedgerows. Caesar's hooves rang on the frozen road.
At Netherfield, the library was dark and empty. He lit a single candle. The rug beside his chair was bare. No small pink body curled on it. No sound of steady breathing. No warmth.
He sat in his chair and stared at the empty rug and thought about Elizabeth's face when she looked at Wickham. The openness. The laughter. The trust she gave so freely to a liar while the man who cared for her sat across the room and could not find the words.
He thought about Georgiana. Last summer.
The letter she had written from Ramsgate, the one that arrived at Pemberley three days before Darcy rode south and found Wickham installed in his sister's good graces.
Fifteen years old. Trusting. Lonely after their father's death.
Wickham had seen a girl with thirty thousand pounds and no protection and had moved on her with the precise, predatory charm he was now directing at Elizabeth.
Georgiana's voice when Darcy confronted her.
The way she had crumbled. The way she had apologised, as if she were the one who had done something wrong.
She had not been the same since. She played the pianoforte with the curtains drawn and flinched when strangers spoke to her, and Darcy had sworn he would never let Wickham near anyone he cared about again.
He was breaking that promise. He was standing in rooms with the man who had nearly ruined his sister, and he was doing nothing, because the truth was a weapon that would wound Georgiana as surely as it wounded Wickham, and Darcy could not fire it.
He could not tell Elizabeth. He could not expose his sister's near-ruin to save his own reputation. The truth sat locked in his chest beside all the other things he could not say, and it pressed against his ribs like a stone.
The candle guttered. The rug stayed empty.
He thought about the pig. Small and warm and uncomplicated in her affections.
Truffles had loved him without reservation and without conditions, and she was at Longbourn now, probably asleep on Elizabeth's bed, and he missed her with an intensity that was absurd for a grown man to feel about a piglet.
He sat in the dark library and listened to the silence where the pig used to be, and he was afraid.
Not of losing Elizabeth's good opinion, though he feared that too.
He was afraid that Wickham would hurt her, that the charming smile would lead somewhere dangerous, and that his own silence would be the reason.