Chapter Sixteen
MR. DARCY SOUGHT out his sister Georgiana first. He had barely told her anything before he left, and this would all affect her, and she might wish to leave, to go and take refuge with one of their aunts somewhere while the storm of the scandal he was about to cause waned.
It would be survivable, of course, he knew that. It would be the worst for Elizabeth, truly, but she would weather it as well. They all would.
And Wickham being gone? Well, that did not displease him, he found.
Georgiana was in her bedchamber, and she would not come out to meet him in a sitting room, so he was obliged to go and seek her there.
He opened the door and came inside. “I’m sure you’re feeling out of sorts about all of this, and I wish to explain myself as best I can. You might be scandalized to think that I could have left her on her own for so long while she was carrying my child, but the truth is that I did not know—”
“Stop it, Fitz,” said Georgiana coldly. She was sitting on her bed with her back to him, looking out the window at the November landscape below. They were two stories up. Her room faced west. The late afternoon sun was coming in, golden but cold.
“Well, as I say, I know you may not think this is like me, but I cannot shirk my responsibility, surely you will agree with that.”
“I know that’s not your babe, and I knew that the moment you told me it was. I assumed you were so mad for her, you were simply happy that she would need your assistance, and you were willing to sacrifice the family inheritance just for a chance with that woman.”
“No, perhaps I can explain what I plan to—”
“But then, she tells me that it’s Mr. Wickham’s child,” said Georgiana.
“So, you understand why I have to, then.”
She turned to look at him. “You treated me like I was some diseased thing when there was a chance that I could be carrying his issue.”
He swallowed. The diseased part was an exaggeration, he supposed, but there was truth in her accusation, in the end.
He had been so horrified by it all that he had handled it badly.
He moved across the room and went to her.
“I am ever so sorry, Georgiana,” was all he said.
He could have protested, he supposed, but getting into an argument about the degree of badness of his treatment of her was not going to help anything.
She lifted her chin. “And he… he must have actually done it.”
This was part of what had come to him when he was casting up his accounts all over the front of the dower house.
He and his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam and his sister, they had all spun it to themselves that Wickham was simply lying, that he’d said what he’d said because it was to his own advantage.
Because his story, that Georgiana had gotten so drunk that she had blanked everything out, and that she had been willing and eager, that had been an obvious fiction.
Now, the truth was clear. Wickham had drugged his young sister, had his way with her while she slept, and then awakened there and demanded they marry.
“So, she told you the manner in which this was visited upon her?” said Mr. Darcy to his sister.
“She did, and that is when I realized what he must have done to me,” she said.
“I came to the same conclusion,” he said. “But you must realize that this is why I cannot condemn her to suffer for this man’s villainy. In many ways, leaving him free to harm her is my own fault. I should have stopped him then.”
“So, you marry her, then?” There was a great deal of ire in his sister’s voice. “You marry her, you rescue her, but what of me?”
He sat down next to her on the bed. “Yes, what of you? We did not do you a service, all of us pretending nothing had really happened to you, did we?”
“Are you going to marry her?” said Georgiana, her voice rising.
“Yes,” he said. “But this isn’t about her, is it?”
“You said his child… when you thought there was any chance that I could have been tainted in that way? Did you not use that word? Tainted? Didn’t Richard use that word?
” Georgiana’s eyes flashed. “And you will now give all this to that taint?” She gestured around at the room.
“You will pass everything on to his child?”
“Is this really what you wish to speak of?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I plan to break the entail,” he said. “Honestly, it’s something I have thought of doing even before any of this came to pass, so I shall do it regardless.
If this child is a boy child, then he and I shall do it, and if I have another boy child later with Elizabeth, I shall do it with him.
I shall then be free to divide up everything equally upon my death, which is a better solution going forward for everyone.
I think the entire world will soon jettison this stupid practice of giving all the wealth to one child.
Think what could have been done for Richard if our uncle and the viscount had done such a thing. ”
She thought this over.
“I have no title,” he said. “So, it’s not as if there is anything material to give to the child. And the child is innocent. The child is as much a victim of his father’s wickedness as are you and Miss Bennet. I see no reason to make a child suffer.”
She got up from the bed, letting out a pained noise.
“Georgiana?” He let out a breath. “I repent of it, if I made you feel as if what befell you had… had altered you. It was wrong of me. It was him, it was always him. It was never you. You did nothing wrong. The blame is all his.”
She went to the window, and she pressed her fingertips into the pane of glass. “We were still in Ramsgate in the two weeks after, while we waited.”
He got up, meaning to go to her.
She stopped him. “Do not come near me, Fitzwilliam.”
So, he stopped where he was and stood there, hands at his sides, thinking in this moment of Wickham’s vacant eyes staring blankly up at the tree branches overhead, thinking of how easily, how quickly Darcy had snuffed out the other man’s life, thinking of how there had been negotiations in those two weeks, how he had given Wickham time to plead his case.
Wickham, in Ramsgate, wheedling. Your sister may yet prove to be with child. You would not saddle her with such shame, would you?
Should have shot him, then. Richard had spoken of it. They had considered it.
They had considered other things. Accuse him of some other crime. Horse thievery, even. You could hang a man for stealing a horse. No one asked questions. If he and Richard said he was a horse thief, it could have been done.
They could have done it themselves—likely, that would have been what they had done.
But they could have taken the chance of reporting him to a local magistrate, having him hauled into the gaol, a trial, all of it, and if they had claimed it, the outcome would have been the same. They talked of it, worried that he would spread rumors. They talked and they talked.
“Two weeks, yes,” he said. “Until you bled, and then he ran off, and we didn’t go after him.”
“I would wake each day, and I would not have bled, and I would look out at the sea,” she said. “I would think…”
“What would you think?” His voice changed.
She shook her head. She did not look at him. “I was worthless, Fitz. And even after I bled, you still have treated me as though I was.”
“I have not.” Now, his voice broke. Had he?
Is that what he’d done to his sister? Had he been as awful to her as everyone had been to Elizabeth?
Was he no better than the Bingley sisters with their schemes and their ignoring her?
It was true that he had not shoved his sister up in a far away room and refused to allow her to come down to dinner or given her a maid or forced her not to eat proper meals, but he had…
he had sort of hidden her away, had he not?
He grimaced. “Forgive me, then, Georgiana, forgive me. I am the worst of men. I am ever so sorry for that.”
She turned to look at him. “And you say this now, because of her.”
He bowed his head.
“Get out,” she said, turning back to the window.
“Please, Georgiana,” he said. “Please, I am begging you, I repent of my behavior. I see what you are saying. It will be different now. I shall mend the error of my ways.”
“Get out,” she said again.
He let out a breath. Perhaps she needed a bit of time.
“All right,” he said, and then he turned and started for her door.
At the door, he stopped, hand on the knob.
He turned back to her. “He is dead now. Just so you know. I should have done that straightaway, but I’ve done it now.
” And he did not wait for her response. He simply left the room and shut the door behind him.
He was halfway down the hallway when she called after him.
He turned to see her, peering out of her bedchamber.
“Is that where you have been?” she said.
He nodded.
She let out a noisy breath, and the look she gave him made him feel as if she was looking at a perfect stranger. “Good God, Fitzwilliam,” she said, and she shut herself back inside her room.
He felt ill again.
Had it been the right thing?
What good was he, really? What good was he if he could not protect the people who had been given to him to protect?
Damnation.
He walked away from her room.
He needed to see Elizabeth, but he did not go. He went away to be alone, and he spent too much time contemplating the vacant look in Mr. Wickham’s eyes after he had shot the man in cold blood.