This succeeded at drawing a snort from Georgiana, and a half smile.
“Georgiana,” Darcy said, “and what do you wish? Please, do tell us. If you might have anything in this matter, what would it be? Do not think in answering this question about what is good forus, but about whatyouwant. We shall then figure out how close we can come to achieving it, or if it is possible at all, once we know what it is.”
“If I hurt you, if I make it so that people do not respect Elizabeth, or will not visit the estate, or…so they mistreat us and the servants talk, and everyone laughs at the Darcy name, I could not like that.”
Elizabeth thought that she really was a sweet creature, but she had too much of Darcy’s seriousness about such matters. Squeezing next to Georgiana on the sofa, Elizabeth gave her a tight hug. “There, there dear. But while it is hard to say, what would you wish?”
“I would wish to live with you, and raise the child, if God in fact gives him to me. And to find something useful to do with my time. I know that is impossible. And he would be a bastard, so you could not want him to live withyourchildren, and—”
“First,” Elizabeth said, “the child might be a girl.”
Georgiana giggled as she cried.
“Odd as the family association would be, both George and Emily, but especially George, would be delighted with another sibling to grow up with, and I would not cast one away—Darcy, you do not disagree on this point.”
“No.” Her husband was smiling.
“I believe,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “this was much what Darcy and Elizabeth suggested they would prefer to have done in your letters to me.”
“What?” Georgiana looked between Elizabeth and Darcy. “But you cannot have properly thought about the matter. Surely you cannot want to face the judgement of everyone for keeping an immoral girl about you.”
“I would not,” Darcy said, “wish to be on good terms with a person who will happily remain friends with a man who killed another man in a duel, but who draws the line at a girl who made a mistake at a time she thought she would marry.”
“Oh,” Georgiana said. Elizabeth could tell she was more cheerful at that consideration. While Georgiana of course did not judge her brother harshly, and could not, she knew very well that Darcy was annoyed that he had received almost no social sanction or scorn due to having participated in a fatal duel.
“Where did you get that notion that it would be best for us if you went into an ‘exile’?” Elizabeth asked.
Georgiana flushed. “I overheard conversations. Especially at Longbourn. What people said about me. I know that they judge me, and they should. And everyone I overheard said that of course you would wish to send me away if I was with child. Or to send the child away to be raised by a tenant farmer. I won’t let you do that! I won’t. You can send me away, but I will not let my child be raised like a…a piece of dirty laundry. Society can despise me. It would be a lie to pretend I have not sinned. But God shall forgive me, for Ihaverepented. But I do not believe I could be forgiven for sending my child away from me forever.”
“Ah,” Elizabeth said. She smiled at Georgiana and hugged her again. “Then you shall stay with us.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Certainly,” Elizabeth said.
And Georgiana burst into tears and sobbed on Elizabeth’s shoulder.
Elizabeth was, in fact, aware that they were doing something which would be judged. But while not titled nobility, the Darcy family was great enough that most around them would ultimately shrug and say that the rich might do what they would about their immoral doings. And besides, a man who had shot another man to protect his sister was fully in his rights to keep that sister about him.
Even if some of them would be rather surprised that he did not also shoot the sister.
But Darcy was an unusual man, everyone must seethat.
Colonel Fitzwilliam clapped his hands twice. “Decided. No sudden marriages. No going to Scotland for six months to visit a relation whom noone has ever heard of. But Darcy, if you are to be bold about the matter, be bold.A l’attaque.Make it clear to your friends that you feel no shame about the matter, and that you will expect your sister to be treated kindly by all the neighborhood. Do not hide at all.”
“Is that not perhaps unkind to the neighborhood?” Elizabeth replied.
“Do I care? I offer advice on a matter of strategy, not on a matter of politeness.”
Darcy grimaced. “I cannot treat someone who stands upon a moral principle harshly, especially if their determination to stand upon such a principle is to my detriment. I must do as I consider right, and others will do as they consider right.”
“Well, Elizabeth,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “I think, for Georgiana’s case, we should confirm that you know that there are many persons, especially those with their unmarried daughters, who will not be likely to call on you, or seek your friendship in the way they ordinarily would on account of this.”
“Oh, Lizzy,” Georgiana said, “are you really sure?”
Elizabeth laughed. “I honestly...I simply cannot care much? I have lived in circumstances that were too conscribed and too limited, and—I do of course hope to be friends with the neighborhood, but I just...there are persons who are my friends, and who will not flinch away from such a connection. If I find no friendshere, besides those in this room, I shall spend more time writing letters, and I shall invite more people to visit. It just...I cannot see how I could behurtby their disdain. They cannot place me in a situation where I need to work, they cannot hurt the esteem my husband and my family hold me in, and...it simply does not matter.” Elizabeth smiled at Georgiana. “I assure you, that I am speaking from a sober consideration of the situation when I say that none of that matters to me in any way next to my concern foryou.”
Chapter Twenty Five
