When they stopped to ask their questions at the post station in a market town that stood along the Great North Road, still a half day’s journey from Gretna Green, they found Georgiana.
Rather, she found them, as Georgiana rushed out of the inn to Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam as he was slowly getting off of Athena.
“Fitzwilliam. Fitzwilliam!” She clung around his neck and sobbed, as she had when she was twelve, and Papa had just died. “I have been such a fool, a goose, a foolish, useless, despicable creature. I was deceived, wrong, reckless — you must hate the very sight of me.”
Darcy embraced her back. “No, never. Not at all — you will always be my dearest sister.”
“I’m annoyed with you, Georgie,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “so you need not worry that no one shall agree that you have behaved as an idiot.” But he spoke in a jocular tone, not an angry tone.
Georgiana threw her arms around Richard. “Oh, oh! I am so glad to see you as well!”
Colonel Fitzwilliam squeezed her, and Darcy took the time to actually pull himself up onto his crutches. “But what happened?”
What followed was a confused rushing explanation about a local Justice of the Peace, his daughter, someone who said he knew Darcy from university and who was travelling for Christmas, and who had recognized both her and Wickham, and their dog who kept barking at Wickham.
The main points Darcy derived from the story: First, Georgiana was not married. Second, Wickham was presently locked up in the local gaol, though they did not think they could hold him there for very long if no one offered to pursue a prosecution against him.
AtthisColonel Fitzwilliam grinned and rubbed his hands together. “I can certainly find, or invent something along those lines, enough to put him in prison for at least a year and a day — did Mrs. Younge then flee?”
“She was so horrid. And she’d been my friend. I trusted her.”
“We all did.”
When the three of them entered the inn, Darcy was greeted by the university friend who had helped Georgiana escape from Wickham, a Viscount Shelham.
“Hail to you, old fellow. You look remarkably spry on wooden feet — heard about that wee touch of misfortune.”
Darcy settled himself higher on his crutches and grinned. “You look well yourself. Been a while. I hear we owe you a debt of gratitude.”
“Nothing to it. Nothing at all — I know you’d do the same if it were someone under my protection. Any case, it was Mr. Knight who clapped that scoundrel into the gaol — never liked Wickham. The way he went on at university… never did at all.”
“He turned out very poorly.”
“Eh, I can promise you neither I, nor my family shall speak upon this matter to anyone — so far as we shall say, Georgiana was brought here with her companion upon your orders, and my wife and I merely stepped in as friends to keep an eye on her, when the companion became ill. But…”
“But it is impossible that rumors and tales will not spread in any case.” Darcy sighed. “A bit of scandal is far from the worst thing that might happen to a family. The important matter is that Georgiana is safe.”
“Ah yes. I heard you'd determined to enter the wedded state, with someone from the countryside with few connections. That shall make this easier, asshecannot have a family whose connections will be angry with you over the story, and eventually it will die down. Miss Darcy is a good girl.” He lowered his voice. “I could not question her in any detail upon the matter, of course, but I do not think from how she spoke, and how she and Wickham acted together that her virtue has been fatally compromised, though you shall need to question her closely on the matter.”
Darcy grimaced and groaned.
Shelham raised his hand in a mock salute. “I am glad my father lived till all my sisters were safely married — but I’ve two girls already. In another fifteen years I’ll go frazzled I expect — but you must wish to retire, and speak to Miss Darcy in private.”
“I truly cannot express how grateful I am to you for your help.”
“No, no, no. Nothing of that sort.” Shelham waved it away, and returned to his own room.
As they talked, Darcy’s man negotiated for them a suite of rooms in the inn, which cost a rather pretty penny, as the inn was quite busy on account of travel going back and forth on the road as people went to visit family and friends for the Christmas season.
When Darcy retreated with his cousin and Georgiana to the rooms, she had calmed sufficiently to be able to give him a clearer explanation of how she herself had determined that she did not wish to marry Wickham on nearly the first day of the trip, but that she had not known quite what to do to escape the situation she was in without making a great scene.
As it turned out a great scene was what was required, but it had not been started by her, but rather when the Miss Knight who had asked her, at the request of Viscount Shelham, if she was in fact Georgiana Darcy, and if she was in need of help.
In such a circumstance Georgiana had the wisdom to reply that she did need help, and thus this morning she found herself safe.
“Deep down, I knew it was wrong,” she said as she finished the story. “All along it felt wrong to marry if you were not there, and if you had not given approval. But…”
Darcy embraced his sister. “Georgie. Georgie — I am so happy to see you. And unmarried.” There was though a great deal of anxiety still in Darcy about what might follow, especially the small possibility that she might be with child… “Well, Georgie. There is well. Another matter. About consequences.”
