CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The journey north to Newcastle, a weighty four days across a landscape increasingly scarred by the Blight’s insidious touch, was completely different from their previous, tension-filled travels — at least between herself and Darcy.
They shared one seat of the coach, their proximity no longer awkward, but comforting.
Still, she knew that their private peace could not dispel the fraught silence that still separated Darcy from his sister.
While Darcy engaged with his cousin in discussions of strategy as it might apply to combating the Blight’s encroachments, and with Elizabeth in quieter exchanges about the land they passed, his interactions with Georgiana remained almost non-existent.
He did not address her directly, and his gaze, when it chanced to fall upon her, was never anything but studiously neutral.
It was plain there remained a deep rift of pain and resentment between brother and sister.
Lost in her thoughts on how she could help soften the divide, she started slightly when she felt the shift in him beside her. Beneath the heavy lap rug that covered them both, his hand found hers. It was a simple gesture, offered without fanfare.
Then his thumb began to stroke the back of her hand in a reassuring rhythm.
A secret smile touched her lips, and she kept her own eyes fixed on the pages of her book, pretending to read on.
All her senses focused in to the feel of his hand holding hers as she returned the gentle pressure of his grip.
He did not glance at her, but she felt the slight pause of his breath, a silent acknowledgment of her response.
It was in moments like these that the journey became a strange mix of burgeoning intimacy with Darcy and a poignant, uncomfortable awareness of the unhealed wound that still afflicted his family.
Later that evening, at some comfortable inn along the way, Darcy came to her chamber. He stood by the fire as they discussed the day’s events. The conversation was easy. Seeing him so open with her, made the contrast with his treatment of his sister all the more painful.
“Fitzwilliam,” she ventured, “Will you not at least speak with her?”
He tensed. “I am uncertain what you mean,” he said evasively.
“Your sister carries a heavy burden of regret. I see it in her every glance.”
“Regret is an entirely insufficient penance for the ruin she brought upon herself, and upon our family name.”
The severity of his words hung in the air, a familiar echo of the man she had first met.
“Is there no room for understanding? She was so young and so tragically misled. She has suffered greatly for her mistakes. As, I suspect, have you.”
He turned away, staring into the fire, his profile harsh. “Suffering does not absolve one of responsibility. She made her choice. She chose to stay with Wickham. She chose dishonour. Some choices, some betrayals, they cannot be undone.”
“Georgiana made a choice, a foolish, desperate choice made by a girl at fifteen. Is one mistake to define her entire life? Must she pay for it forever in your eyes?”
“It is not a single event in the past,” he replied, in strained tones, “It is a choice she makes every day she remains his wife.”
“And what of your own choice? Every day she remains his wife, you say, as if a woman can so easily leave her husband — ”
“You yourself offered her refuge at Pemberley,” he retorted bitterly, “and she has thrown it over, once again, for a life of squalor with him.”
“And every day,” she countered softly, “you choose not to be her brother.”
Darcy looked at her coldly. Then, slowly, the stern lines of his face began to soften, the ice in his eyes receding, replaced by a look of such deep unhappiness that it made Elizabeth’s own heart ache in sympathy.
“I fear you ask a great deal, Elizabeth,” he said at last, “A great deal more than I know if I am capable of giving.”
“Or,” Elizabeth replied, very gently now, “perhaps you are capable of more than you think. Indeed, I have seen it for myself.”
She went to him, her hand coming to rest on his arm. His gaze drifted to her hand. Then he closed his eyes, a sigh escaping him at the simple, unasked-for tenderness of the gesture.
Elizabeth rose up and kissed him on the cheek.
A shudder went through him, a deep, convulsive tremor that was not of cold or fear, but of surrender. It was the surrender of a man who had been fighting a long, lonely war and had just been offered a moment of respite. His arms came around her, pulling her against him, his own kiss answering hers.
As they drew nearer to Newcastle, the land began to take on an even more desolate aspect.
The air grew unpleasant, carrying the cloying scent of decay, of hopelessness, and of a magic that was not just fading, but malevolently dying.
The fields lay fallow, the earth curdling beneath the turn of carriage wheels.
“The desolation is absolute,” Darcy said on the final day, as he surveyed the blighted woodland. “The soil looks as if it could support nothing.”
Elizabeth, who had been staring out the opposite window, turned to him. “It cannot. There is little magic left here to draw upon.”
The shared glance that passed between them held a mutual acknowledgment of the immense challenge before them.
Newcastle itself, when they finally reached it, was a city on its knees. Elizabeth, who had steeled herself for scenes of hardship, was nonetheless shocked by the overwhelming scale of the deterioration.
What looked to have been a bustling quayside was deserted, the ships rotting at their moorings.
The streets were filled with a listless, desperate-looking populace, their faces gaunt.
The air was thick with the stench of decay and a despair so painful it was almost a physical entity.
And then there was the sickness – a wasting, slow draining of life that left its victims hollow-eyed and weak, their essence dimming.
Wickham met them at an inn near the city gates. He looked more careworn than when he had arrived at Pemberley, though a flicker of relief crossed his features upon seeing them. His greeting to Darcy was curt, but his gaze on Georgiana held nothing but concern and a deep tenderness.
“Welcome to Newcastle, Darcy. Mrs Darcy. Colonel,” Wickham said, “Or what remains of it.” He helped Georgiana from the carriage, his touch surprisingly gentle. “There is light in your eyes again,” he said softly, just barely audible, “I had begun to fear I might never see it again.”
The inn Wickham led inside was a study in slow decay, its sign creaking on rusted hinges, its painted name long since weathered into illegibility.
A man with blank eyes took their coin, leading them into a common room where the air smelt of damp rot, stale ale, and the metallic tang of the Blight.
The fire in the hearth was a smoky thing that offered a meagre glow but no discernible warmth, doing nothing to combat the chill that had seeped into the building.
“This is nothing,” Wickham said, gesturing to the room, his voice bleak. “Merely the antechamber. Come. See the city you have travelled all this way to save. He paused, turning to Elizabeth. “I would spare you the sight if I could, Mrs Darcy. It is not fit for a lady’s sensibilities.”
“I did not travel all this way only to be shielded from the truth,” she replied.
Wickham hesitated, looking to Darcy as if for a final verdict.
“Mrs Darcy has expressed her will on the matter,” Darcy said curtly.
With that decided, Georgiana was left to rest at the inn while the others followed Wickham out into the desolate streets. His tour proved to be a descent into a creeping hell.
They saw the ancient cathedral, its once magnificent stained-glass windows, now dark and shattered, like the vacant eyes of a skull. “The Archbishop offered prayers,” Wickham commented darkly, “But the Blight was not overly impressed with them.”
They saw the Merchants’ Guildhall, its proud facade crumbling. “The Arcane Office poured half the city’s remaining magical reserves into reinforcing those wards,” Wickham said with a shrug. “They held for three days and then collapsed entirely.”
The true horror, however, lay in the city’s heart.
The carriage could not navigate the narrow, refuse-strewn alleys that served as the city’s tenements, so they proceeded on foot.
The air grew heavy with the stench of sickness and unwashed bodies.
The people huddled in doorways, their skin holding a greyish pallor as if the dust of the decaying city had settled into their flesh.
A cough echoed from the shadows. The children were the most heartbreaking sight.
They did not run or play; they sat listlessly or lay wrapped in threadbare rags.
They saw the areas where the Arcane Office had attempted interventions, only for the Blight to return with renewed ferocity.
Scorched earth marked the spots where cleansing fires had been attempted, but now, a virulent, grey-black moss grew there, a defiant mockery of the mages’ efforts.
The Blight here was not just present; it was triumphant.
“They tried, Darcy,” Wickham said, as they stood before what had once been a public garden, now a barren mudflat. “The Arcane Office men. They came with their books, their rituals. But it never lasts. The Blight always comes back. Stronger. Hungrier.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing, his gaze fixed on the blighted ground.
Later that night, the thin walls of the inn offered little rest. A distant, hacking cough echoed from the street, a sound that seemed to cling to the dampness of the room. Sleep was an impossibility.
Darcy stood at the grimy window, his shoulders rigid with a tension that radiated into the small space. Unable to bear his silent torment a moment longer, Elizabeth went to him, slipping her hand into his.