22. A Letter from Georgiana #3
“Yes. Dismissed without a character after Ramsgate.”
“Could she be with him now?”
Darcy’s throat closed. “Possibly.”
Wickham leaned forward in the saddle. “Then we must assume they have assistance. A frightened young lady may hesitate. A companion can manage servants, lodgings, letters.”
“I trusted that woman with my sister.”
“You trusted what she showed you.”
Darcy gave him a bitter look. “That is a generous distinction.”
“It is a true one.”
They rode another mile in hard silence.
The road dipped through a small village where a blacksmith paused in his work to watch them pass. Darcy’s thoughts ran too quickly for order. London. Richard. Mrs. Annesley. The maid. Wycombe. Mrs. Younge. Georgiana’s letter.
By the time this reaches you, I shall be a married woman.
No.
Not yet.
Not if he reached her first.
Wickham broke the silence. “When I resolved to change, it was because of him.”
“Wycombe?”
“Yes. I saw in him every comfortable excuse I had ever made for myself. He used my name, and I was outraged. Then I remembered your bills, your father’s kindness, every time I let another man bear the cost of my pleasure. I hated him for doing to me what I had done to you.”
Darcy looked toward him.
“I came to you about the living after that,” Wickham said. “I told myself I was being practical. Perhaps I was. But I also knew I had no right to stand in a pulpit and preach honor to any parish. The law was tedious enough to punish me and useful enough to save me.”
“You might have told me.”
Wickham let out a short breath. “Would you have heard me?”
Darcy said nothing.
“No,” Wickham answered for him. “And I would not have blamed you. I had spent years teaching you not to trust a word I said.”
The honesty of it was intolerable.
“I am sorry,” Darcy said.
Wickham’s shoulder jerked.
“I am sorry,” Darcy repeated, this time with greater steadiness. “For what I believed of you. And for what I said at Longbourn. For placing your future at risk. For refusing to hear you when you offered proof.”
Wickham’s throat moved. “I did not expect that.”
“No. I imagine not.”
“I am not innocent of the past.”
“Nor am I.”
That drew Wickham’s attention sharply.
Darcy stared ahead. “I have acted as if my injuries gave me permission to be unjust. They did not.”
Neither man spoke for several minutes.
The horses labored up a rise, and Darcy slowed the pace until they reached the top. From there the road stretched southward and eastward, ribboning toward London under a sky beginning to bruise with evening.
At the next posting inn, they did found the runaways’ trail.
A maid remembered a young lady traveling in a closed chaise, pale and wearing a veil.
An older woman had spoken for her. The gentleman had given his name as Mr. W.
No, she did not know whether it was Wickham, Wycombe, or some other.
He had laughed when the ostler misheard him and said, “Near enough.”
Darcy felt ill.
Wickham’s face lost color. “That is him.”
The innkeeper had heard they meant to change horses again at a village nearer London, but there had been some trouble with a wheel. Delay, perhaps a few hours.
A few hours might be everything.
Darcy paid for fresh horses with no attention to the amount.
As they mounted once more, Wickham said, “Darcy.”
“What?”
“We may reach them.”
“We will.”
“If we do—”
“We will.”
Wickham accepted the correction.
They rode into the lowering light.
Darcy’s mind offered no prayers elegant enough for the moment. Fragments came.
Let me find her.
Let me not be too late.
Let me repair one thing before all is lost.
After some miles, Wickham spoke again, “You have not failed her yet.”
Darcy nearly laughed from sheer misery. “Have I not?”
“No. You are here.”
“I should have been wiser.”
“Yes.”
“I should have listened.”
“Yes.”
“I should have protected her better.”
Wickham did not answer right away. “Perhaps. But if blame alone could retrieve people, I should have been a saint by now.”
The remark was so unexpected that Darcy stared at him.
Wickham’s mouth twitched without humor. “Unfortunately, guilt does very little unless harnessed to action.”
Darcy faced the road again.
“You have become annoyingly sensible.”
“I have had excellent punishment.”
Despite fear, despite urgency, despite the rawness of every admission between them, Darcy found himself breathing a little more evenly.
They had lost years to pride, waste, silence, and assumption.
They might lose Georgiana to the same if they failed now.
He would not allow it.
“I failed you,” Darcy said, the words nearly stolen by the wind. “Perhaps long before Ramsgate. I saw your faults and chose to see nothing else.”
Wickham rode beside him in silence.
“I can hope,” Darcy continued, “that I have not failed Georgiana past repair.”
Wickham’s answer came low and firm. “Then let us find her.”
Darcy leaned forward over his horse’s neck.
The road darkened ahead.
Somewhere beyond it, his sister waited, deceived or frightened or already repentant, and with her perhaps the last remnants of his old self.
He rode on.