Page 39 of An Offer of Marriage (Engaged to Mr Darcy #7)
He followed his sister into the breakfast parlour.
It had been some hours now since Elizabeth’s departure; they were likely halfway to Meryton by now.
He imagined her smiling with happy anticipation of seeing her family; one thing was certain: she might have admitted to Georgiana that they at times embarrassed her, but she did love them dearly, nevertheless. He could never doubt that in the least.
He realised he had come to a halt, staring out a window at a bright sky and nothing else. Georgiana had paused beside a chair and was watching him with a curious expression on her face which smoothed into a complaisant smile when she had his attention. “Shall we sit?”
Darcy helped her into her chair and then they were served. While they ate, Georgiana remarked, “How good it is that Elizabeth is able to go to her sister. They are wonderfully intimate, it seems.”
“They are.” Darcy took a bite of his breakfast before adding, “It pleases me to see you and Elizabeth forming such a relationship as well.”
“Yes, I confess I had feared that a lady with so many sisters would not have a need for another, but it does not seem to be the case.”
“She does have many sisters, that is true, but I daresay people with a great many brothers or sisters will always have a more natural affinity for some than others.”
“That does seem to be the case for Elizabeth,” Georgiana agreed with a nod.
“She has…spoken to you about her family, it seems? About…”
“How they sometimes embarrass her?” Georgiana nodded. “ That must be hard. I am sure I should not like to be held to account for the behaviour of our relations. Lady Catherine in particular!”
There was something in the way she said it that made Darcy comprehend that she knew far more of matters between himself and his wife than he had previously understood.
He wondered if there were more slights on Elizabeth that he had forgotten, more injuries she held within that would be an impediment to the healing of their marriage.
He was loath to involve his sister in any of it, but as someone who lived in the house with them, Georgiana was already privy to most of it regardless.
“I wonder…”
Georgiana was taking a sip of her drinking chocolate and only raised her brows over the edge of her cup.
“It seems Elizabeth has taken you into her confidence with certain…matters?”
Georgiana pressed her lips together and then reluctantly nodded.
“Not from any wish to speak ill of you, Brother. It was the day we, my aunt and I, went shopping with her, before you were married. I am afraid I was not being kind to her, and somewhere in the course of things, she felt compelled to explain her side of the story to us. Do know she said repeatedly that she had no wish to defame you to us; she wished only to explain she was not wantonly cruel.”
“No, she is not cruel at all.” Darcy pondered his sister for a moment. “It is not my wish to put you in the middle of things, but I learnt something from Bingley lately that was…shocking. I had not remembered insulting her as I did?—”
“Tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt you?” Georgiana asked.
“She remembered it well, then,” he said softly .
Georgiana took another long drink of her chocolate, then set her cup carefully in its saucer. “The tale was told often among her neighbours, and she was greatly pitied. It was a great humiliation for her.”
He closed his eyes a moment.
“Of course,” Georgiana added hastily, “she readily admitted to forming a prejudice against you that made Mr Wickham’s tales that much more believable.”
“Were there others?”
“There were things said that she owned may have been misinterpreted, things that were viewed in the light of the first insult but ought not to have been.”
“Such as what?”
It took additional prodding, but at length Georgiana explained how events at Netherfield had seemed.
Elizabeth had believed him to be mocking her eyes and her education; she had overheard him saying she could never expect to marry anyone of distinction; she even, it seemed, saw his ham-fisted remark about admiring her figure by the fireplace as an offence.
“I was trying to flirt with her,” he explained to his sister weakly.
“Given that you had so recently told her you did not find her handsome, it seemed like mockery,” Georgiana said gently.
Darcy turned his head and looked out the window again.He had insulted Elizabeth, injured her, made himself ridiculous before her, and she had rightly disliked him for it. It was not her, never her.
Soon after, Georgiana excused herself. Darcy sat for a considerable length of time doing his best not to succumb to hopelessness as one memory after the next came to his mind.
What a fool he had been! Tossing about in indignation as she tried, valiantly, to set things right.
And all along it ought to have been he who made amends, he who proved his affection for her. Could she ever forgive him?
We are married. I must do something to remedy this, all of it; but what?