9. The Wickham Weight #3
She cut a slice and set it on Prue’s plate, then another for herself and Georgiana, because that was the custom: one ate cake with callers, one smiled, one did not allow trembling hands or a betraying face to reveal that the earth had shifted beneath one’s feet.
The cake tasted of sawdust and ashes, but she swallowed, chasing it with tea that burned her tongue—a welcome sensation, for it offered something to feel besides the cold creeping through her chest.
Prue’s eyes sharpened, and she looked from Georgiana, still flushed and rigid, to Elizabeth. Her expression shifted into something more assessing, like a bloodhound who had caught a scent.
“I have upset you both,” she said slowly. “I did not mean to, that is, I only thought, since the manuscripts—”
“The manuscripts.” Elizabeth seized the word like a rope thrown to a drowning woman. “Yes, you mentioned Lady Amelia was writing something. A novel, you said?”
Prue hesitated, clearly torn between pursuing the interesting distress she had stumbled upon and accepting the conversational escape she had been offered. Curiosity warred with manners, and manners lost, just barely if one were being charitable.
“A Gothic romance, they say.” She leaned forward with renewed eagerness.
“Terribly lurid. Secret lovers, a crumbling abbey, and a heroine imprisoned by a villainous guardian. Lady Amelia read portions aloud at her salons. Miss Entwhistle can inform us, as she does not have a mother who would not allow her to go. Let me see if I recall. There was something about a locked tower, a mysterious letter, and a hero who arrived on a black horse at midnight.” Her eyes sparkled, the earlier tension already fading.
“I would give anything to read the finished manuscript. If it exists. If Mr. Darcy kept it.”
“I shall ask him,” Elizabeth said, and her voice still worked, her hands still held the saucer without trembling, and her fork still crumbled the seedcake into dust. Small mercies, these, and she would count them later.
Georgiana had not recovered as quickly. She sat pale and silent, her cake untouched, and her eyes fixed on some middle distance Elizabeth recognized—the look of someone replaying a conversation and finding themselves at fault.
“Goodness, look at the time.” Prue glanced toward the window, where the sun had climbed higher than morning-call propriety allowed.
“Mamma will be frantic. I promised to return before noon, and I have stayed an age, talked far too much, and upset everyone.” She rose in a flurry of skirts and apologies.
“I shall call again when I have learned to govern my tongue, if you will still receive me.”
“Of course, we shall receive you.” Elizabeth rose too, grateful for the motion and the excuse to move toward the door, away from the morning room and its scattered revelations. “You have been most… informative.”
“That is one word for it.” Prue’s laugh was rueful. “Georgiana, dearest, forgive me. Mrs. Darcy, Elizabeth, I am a terrible gossip and a worse friend, but I mean well, truly I do.”
“I know you do.” Elizabeth took her hand briefly and released it. “Come again… whenever you can escape your dear mother.”
Prue departed in a clatter of pattens and trailing apologies, her voice carrying back promises of future visits and better behavior. Elizabeth stood in the hall until the sounds faded, until the front door closed, until silence settled over Pemberley like a held breath.
When she returned to the morning room, Georgiana had not moved.
“Elizabeth, Mrs. Darcy…” The girl’s face crumpled. “I am so sorry. Prue does not mean harm; she simply…”
“Talks.” Elizabeth lowered herself into her chair, though her legs had begun to feel unreliable. “Yes, I noticed.”
“She should not have mentioned George.” Georgiana stopped, her hands twisting in her lap. “My brother will be displeased. He guards certain histories rather closely, George especially. There are… reasons I cannot…”
“I can imagine, and we need not discuss them.” Elizabeth rose, pressing her palms flat against her skirts to still whatever tremor might be waiting there. “If you will excuse me, I find I have a headache coming on. The excitement of callers, no doubt.”
There was no headache but a name lodged beneath her ribs, a ring concealed in her writing desk, and a husband unaware that the father of the child she had promised to raise had once pressed his wife against a wall and made her believe in fairy tales.
“I shall rest before dinner,” she said, and left before Georgiana could see the lie written on her face.
She climbed the stairs to her chamber with deliberate steps, each one carrying her further from the morning room and its scattered revelations. Her writing desk waited by the window where she had placed it, its brass lock catching the afternoon light.
Sitting before it, she opened it, drew out her journal, and wrote the date: Miss Prudentia Duntze called this morning. She is warm and exceedingly talkative and will, I think, be a friend.
She did not write: George Wickham.
She did not need to. The name already lived within the desk, pressed into a handkerchief, wound around a signet ring hidden beneath the false bottom where no prying eye would find it. She closed the journal, locked the desk, and rested her hands flat on the polished wood.
The connecting door to Darcy’s chamber stood closed as it had been every night since her arrival. How long could two people live under the same roof, each guarding secrets, before the guarding became the marriage itself?