Page 17 of Under Such Circumstances (Desperately Seeking Elizabeth #1)

“Why, we’ve always known this house is yours, of course,” said Mrs. Exley.

“Truly?” said Elizabeth. “Did, erm, my aunt speak to you of me?”

“Your aunt ,” said Mrs. Exley, “spoke of you often.”

She knows, then.

Mrs. Exley’s smile was gentle. “You have nothing to fear from me, of course, ma’am. I would do nothing to harm your aunt or anyone she cared about. Now, what are you going to be doing with the place? Will you be renting it out or trying to find a buyer or will you be staying yourself?”

“Oh, definitely staying myself,” said Elizabeth.

“I knew it,” said Mrs. Exley, chuckling. “Mr. Exley and I discuss it from time to time, and he says that you wouldn’t stay here in this old place, but I says to him, I says, ‘Oh, Weythorn has a way of getting its thorns into you, you know. I think she’ll stay herself.’”

“Its thorns into you?” spoke up her father. “Whatever do you mean?”

Mrs. Exley laughed. “Only a figure of speech, of course, on account of it being called Wey thorn . It is a good old house, though, I think.”

Mrs. Exley turned out to be a godsend. She was too old to be doing any work on the place herself, she said, but it was down to her that it was in as good condition as it was, since she sometimes came through and gave it “a good onceover” as she put it.

However, she was able to recommend a husband and wife in need of work who lived quite close.

It was really only a ten minute drive to London.

They were just on the outskirts. They could come and work from the morning to evening, she said.

Elizabeth’s father didn’t like the idea of Elizabeth being alone in the house at night. “This is foolish, Lizzy, you cannot stay here. You cannot live on your own.”

“Well, perhaps I shall stay with Lizzy,” put in Jane. “Not forever, I suppose, but until she is well settled here? Would that be all right?”

Elizabeth would be quite grateful of her sister’s company, she thought.

Before Mrs. Exley left them that day, she leaned in and told Elizabeth, “Your father would be quite happy to see you settled here, you know.”

Elizabeth furrowed her brow. “But my father is not at all—” She stopped, going quite still. “You mean my real father.”

“Aye,” said Mrs. Exley.

“You know who he was—is?”

“Oh, I met him, that is for certain,” said Mrs. Exley.

“Who was he?” said Elizabeth. “Did he live here? How did you know him?”

But at that moment, Mr. Bennet came over and began speaking about how he thought that there was some leak in the roof over a bedroom upstairs.

“No, no,” said Mrs. Exley. “It looks wet, but I assure you, it’s a natural discoloration of the stone.”

“I think I shall have someone look into it,” said her father.

“Well, of course,” said Mrs. Exley. “Now, if you will both excuse me, I must be getting home. Mr. Exley will wonder if I have been taken off by the fey folk or some such.” She laughed. “We shall speak at length, Miss Elizabeth. I have much to tell you.”

And so, Elizabeth had to let her go without any answers.

OF ALL THE consequences Mr. Darcy had expected from the death of Mr. Wickham, he had not expected his sister to take it so badly.

He gave her the news in person when he went back to London and visited her.

She didn’t live in his townhouse, but in another house, along with a lady who was her companion—he was not calling the companion a governess, not anymore.

This situation had come about primarily because he had decided that his sister never had to get married if she didn’t wish to.

(And this was besides the fact he’d sometimes thought that maybe he’d let Bingley marry her.

Bingley was an affable sort of man, and they were good friends, but Bingley was also a social climber, and Darcy knew it.

He’d leap at the chance to be connected by marriage to the Darcy family.

Bingley would be careful with Georgiana, Darcy thought, however.

And there was the fact that Darcy had to own he had significant influence over Bingley.

Bingley listened to him. So, if Georgiana had to get married, there were worse ideas, that was all.) Georgiana’s living separately from him was the best way to settle her into a new role, that of a grown woman on her own.

If she never wished to alter this status, it could be handled.

He recounted everything that had happened, well, he recounted the lies that had now become commonplace and fell easily from his lips.

He told her that Wickham had died in a horrible accident, slipping and stabbing himself with his knife.

He recounted the wound might not have been grievous except Wickham had punctured his lung.

And Georgiana sprang to her feet, her eyes very bright, and said she was quite sorry but she must be immediately excused. She was barely out of the room before he could hear the sound of her sobbing.

It wasn’t proper to cry in formal situations, of course, and he knew his sister was only behaving as she had been taught.

His role—his proper role—would be to respect her privacy and allow her to work through her emotions in private, and then, when she was feeling composed, they could discuss it dispassionately.

This was the way things ought to be conducted.

But he went after her straightaway because propriety could go and hang itself when it came to his sister’s distress.

He caught up to her as she was dashing up the stairs.

He called her name. She stopped, turned round, tears streaming down her face, and flung herself into his chest. He held onto her as she sobbed wildly into his cravat, saying a number of barely intelligible words, which sounded something like, “to blame” and “never shall forgive” and he kept asking her to repeat herself, but her voice was muffled by tears and his cravat.

In the end, he wondered at the prudence of going after her in this manner. He certainly wasn’t getting any more information from her while she was this badly unsettled. He also suspected that if he had not come and embraced her, that she might not have cried for quite so long.

But it felt good to have his small sister in his arms. Truth was, he didn’t touch other people all that often.

Servants dressed him, but that wasn’t the same sort of contact.

Amongst social equals, friends and family, touches were scarce.

He found himself not entirely wishing to let go, and maybe she felt the same.

Maybe she cried for too long just to extend the experience.

For this reason, he tucked her in under his arm and had her lie her head against his chest, and he said to her in a very soft voice that this was just right, and she must lean against him until she felt quite herself again.

Her tears did quiet. They made their way up the stairs together, still touching, until they arrived at her bedchamber.

At this point, she extricated herself from him and hurled herself face down onto the bed.

He hovered at the foot of the bed, waiting.

She wasn’t crying anymore, so it was silent.

The silence stretched on.

Eventually, he said, “Georgiana? If you never shall forgive him, then why has it made you cry so much to hear of his death?”

“No.” She pushed herself up and turned to face him, seating herself on the bed. “It is myself I shall never forgive.”

“Whatever for?” he said, quite confused.

After what had occurred with Elizabeth and Mr. Wickham, he had begun to realize that his hope that his sister had not been ravished was likely wishful thinking.

He had accepted, more than ever, that his sister was not getting married, that she had been badly damaged.

“It is my fault that he is dead, of course,” said his sister.

“Why would you say that?” he said, all astonishment. “Georgiana, you weren’t even there.”

“He needed me and he needed my dowry, and if I would have simply allowed it all to happen, he wouldn’t be dead, because he would never have had to do any of this.”

Mr. Darcy folded his arms over his chest. “That’s the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“No, truly, you said he was on some picnic with that Bennet girl, who everyone has been talking about. Why, Miss Bingley once spent an entire visit here of nearly forty minutes going on about her and how inappropriate a match she was for her brother.”

Darcy blinked. “You’re thinking of the other Bennet girl, I think. The eldest, Miss Jane. This is the second eldest, Miss Elizabeth.”

“Oh,” said Georgiana with a shrug. “Whatever the case, he was trying to marry her, wasn’t he?”

“What does that matter?”

“I’m only saying, if he was married to me, he would not need to marry anyone else,” said Georgiana.

“So, if I had simply let him elope with me, none of this would have happened. He was ever so pitiful, and he said I was already ruined and that I was never going to get married anyway—and that seems to be true, for you won’t even let me have a Season—”

“I shall let you have a Season if you wish,” he said. “I didn’t think you wished it.”

“Well, why shouldn’t I?”

“I thought… you were… I thought perhaps your experience with Mr. Wickham may have soured you on the idea of marriage in general or… or on men.”

She furrowed her brow at him. “No. Why would it do that?”

“Well, perhaps… whatever happened, it was likely unpleasant—”

“It really wasn’t,” said Georgiana, looking down at the coverlet on the bed, embarrassed. “Unpleasant, that is.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, perhaps we don’t need to speak of that.”

“All right,” she said. She lifted her face. “I mean to say, of course, all of it ended up being unpleasant, in the end.”

“Of course it did,” he said, though he found this strange.

He had suspected his sister would be shaken and frightened, shy of men, and then she wasn’t, but Elizabeth was.

She’d said it rather plainly, that she would rather never touch a man again.

Why the difference? “I wish to go back to this bit about blaming yourself, however. It is not your fault that Mr. Wickham died, and…” He did not quite know how to put this next part, so he dithered for several breaths and then just plunged on.

“It is odd that you are so sad about his passing, I think.”

“Is it?” She tilted her head to one side. “You were his friend. Have you wept?”

“Obviously I haven’t wept,” he said. “He was not my friend. No friend of mine would ruin my sister.”

“Well—”

“No, attend to me, Georgiana, he took advantage of you. He did violence to you. He was many things, but I don’t know that he was a good man, in the end. I think he may have deserved it.”

She was stunned.

“You can’t have thought that I held him in high regard,” he said, finding her reaction puzzling.

“You blamed him for it,” she said.

“For what?”

“For what happened between him and me? Because I have felt, all along, that it was all my own error. He said it was my fault, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “He said that he saw me bathing in the sea in Ramsgate—”

“What?” Sea bathing was not done in mixed company.

There were all-male groups that went out to take bracing dips in the cold, salty water, and also all-female groups, who used bathing machines, which were carriages designed to take women into the water.

Sometimes, these bathing sessions were conducted entirely in the nude, though this was less likely for females, and he was certain Georgiana had been wearing something when she went out into the ocean, though it may have been sheer or clinging to her form when she emerged from the water.

The point was, there was no reason for George Wickham to have been there or to have been anywhere nearby to be watching. That was improper.

“Yes, he said that I must have done it on purpose, that I knew that we had chosen a spot where I would be observed and that I wanted to show myself off to him and that he had not realized how very grown up I was—”

“That blackguard.” He clenched his jaw. He would kill that man again if he could. He wished he’d actually killed him the first time, because he really hadn’t.

“It wasn’t true!” She was pleading with him.

“I didn’t choose the spot at all. Everyone else saw to me, and no one even consulted me.

I certainly didn’t think anyone was watching.

He acted as though I was taunting him, that I wanted him to see me, but I never wanted that.

And he said that once he had looked at me that I was half-ruined anyway. ”

“He was lying,” said Mr. Darcy to her. “No more tears wasted on this man. I won’t have it.”

“But I thought you agreed with him that I brought it on myself,” she said. “You were ever so disappointed in me.”

He sighed heavily.

“You have barely spoken to me since,” she said.

“We have seen each other so rarely, and you are distant, and when you look at me, it’s not the same.

You think of me differently, everyone does, except perhaps Cousin Richard, but he is gone so often with the army, and I am… if I had just married him, you see—”

“No,” said Mr. Darcy.

“Well, then I would be respectable,” she said.

“Married very far beneath me, of course, to the son of our family’s servant, and it would have been a…

Oh, Fitz, when I wrote to you to prevent it, it was because I could not bear the thought of the degradation of it.

And he made me feel as if I must, as if I had no choice, as if I had welcomed it, welcomed him, ruined myself, but I…

” She shook her head. “I did not actually want him.”

“He did violence to you, Georgiana,” said Mr. Darcy softly.

“This was never your fault. It is a sad fact of the world that men do things because of their lusts and their desires and their greed, and that other people pay the price for these things. I am sorry. I should never have made you feel as if you were to blame.”

She searched his expression, as if looking for truth. “But it must have been my fault. Women, we are supposed to guard ourselves—”

“No, it was all his fault,” he said firmly.

Her face crumpled. She burst into fresh tears.