CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Letters in a Locked Drawer
Georgiana Darcy’s letters began formally.
Dear Miss Elizabeth Bennet,
My brother has written that you were the person who found him after his accident. I do not know how to thank you for what you did. I am told he has been a very difficult patient, though Colonel Fitzwilliam says this is not new...
Elizabeth laughed aloud when she read that sentence.
Darcy looked up from across the parlour. “What has she written?”
“Nothing you would approve.”
“Then Richard has influenced her.”
“Your sister possesses wit of her own, sir.”
“I know.”
His quiet pride warmed something in Elizabeth.
She answered.
The correspondence grew.
Georgiana wrote of music, Pemberley, London, and her frustration at being excluded from Hertfordshire.
Elizabeth wrote of Longbourn, the snow, Lydia’s campaign to persuade Cook that mince pies were suitable for breakfast, and Darcy’s slow progress from bed to chair. She did not mention Wickham.
Neither did Georgiana.
But the shadow of him remained between the lines.
One evening Darcy found Elizabeth reading a letter by the drawing-room window after everyone else had gone to dress for dinner.
“She likes you,” he said.
Elizabeth folded the page. “I like her.”
“You have not met.”
“I liked you before I knew you.”
Darcy looked startled.
Elizabeth smiled wickedly. “For perhaps seven minutes at the assembly. Then you spoke.”
He gave her a long look. “Cruel.”
“You survive.”
“I have survived a compound fracture. I am prepared for you.”
“Such confidence.”
He looked toward the letter. “She asks again to come.”
“Yes.”
“I still think it unsafe.”
Elizabeth’s teasing faded. “Wickham is confined.”
“For now.”
“Then invite her when Colonel Fitzwilliam is here, your uncle’s household is nearby, and every person in Meryton knows Wickham’s debts. He has less freedom than he did.”
Darcy said nothing.
Elizabeth watched him. “You cannot protect her by making her world smaller forever.”
His expression tightened. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” He looked down at his hands. “I nearly lost her because I treated her as a child. After our father died I became brother, guardian, parent, judge. I thought if I arranged everything correctly nothing could touch her.”
“And then Wickham did.”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth’s voice softened. “That was his fault.”
Darcy looked at her.
“You may regret trusting Mrs. Younge. You may regret not telling Georgiana more of Wickham’s character. But the shame belongs to the man who deceived a fifteen-year-old girl, not the brother who failed to anticipate every wicked thing another man might do.”
Darcy’s eyes closed briefly. When he opened them, there was gratitude in them so naked that Elizabeth had to look away.
He said, “You make it difficult to remain proud.”
“I shall put that among my accomplishments.”
Upstairs, Lydia Bennet locked another letter from Wickham into the bottom drawer of her dressing table.
There were four now. The first had been charming.
The second wounded. The third angry beneath the charm.
The fourth frightened her.
You cannot understand what has been done to me, sweetest Lydia. Darcy has always hated me and has now contrived to ruin me again. If I could only leave this place and begin elsewhere, all would be well. There may be a way, but I require the help of one person brave enough to trust me...
Lydia read the line twice.
Her first response had been excitement.
A secret. A plan.
Wickham trusting her above every other girl in Meryton.
Then she had gone downstairs and found Darcy teaching Kitty how to play chess.
He was not patient exactly. Darcy did not possess Bingley’s cheerful tolerance for mistakes. But when Kitty moved her bishop incorrectly, he did not mock her.
“No,” he said.
“Remember, diagonally.”
“Oh.”
Kitty moved it back.
Lydia watched from the doorway.
Darcy noticed. “Do you play?”
“No. It looks dull.”
“It is.”
Kitty gasped. “Mr. Darcy!”
He looked at her gravely. “Until you begin winning.”
Kitty laughed.
Lydia had stared. Wickham said Darcy was cruel. Darcy could be proud. He could be stiff. He spoke as though every sentence had been considered in advance and occasionally looked at Lydia as if she were a cannon pointed at the furniture.
But he had thanked her when she carried books to his room. He had listened when she described Mrs. Forster’s new pelisse, though he plainly had no interest in pelisses. He had once sent a servant after her with a cloak because she had run outside in the frost without one.
Cruel did not fit.
Lydia looked again at Wickham’s letter.
For the first time, secrecy felt less like romance and more like a locked room.