“Or lost,” Darcy snapped. “Or sold. Or read aloud in a tavern. He could have made copies. Do you think he would protect you?”
“No.” Her voice was thin. “But he might forget me. He might think better of… or perhaps he mislaid them.”
Darcy scowled. That possibility—Wickham simply losing the letters and lying about still having them—was ludicrously plausible. The man had misplaced half a month's worth of creditors and once abandoned a watch in a punch bowl. It was a fantasy, perhaps, but not an impossible one.
Still, it left a sour taste.
He turned from her again. “I cannot trust to Wickham’s laziness.”
Georgiana hesitated. “Then what will you do?”
“I do not know.”
Silence fell like a shroud. The clock ticked. A floorboard in the hall creaked.
“You are angry,” Georgiana said softly. “Not only with him.”
He stiffened. “I am displeased.”
She lingered by the hearth, her hands folded. “But it is not only him this time. Is it?”
He shifted the letters on his desk, though they were already in order.
“I should not have said that,” she added quickly. “Forgive me.”
He exhaled and turned a fraction, not quite meeting her gaze.
“You seemed... distant last week too. After the musicale.” She hesitated. “I thought perhaps something else had gone wrong.”
Darcy stilled.
“Do not speculate about things that are not your affairs.”
“I am not—”
“Youare,” he said sharply. “And I am advising you to leave off.”
That silenced her.
Darcy rubbed the bridge of his nose, then dropped his hand. “Let us revisit the subject another time. If you hear anything—anything—you will tell me at once. Meanwhile, perhaps I will have my man pay another call on Mrs. Younge, if she is still in London to be found.”
Georgiana gave a small nod, her expression now more closed than ever.
Darcy returned to the hearth, but he did not look at the fire.
He did not want to think about Elizabeth Bennet.
He did not want to think about her journal, and her words, and the possibility that she had penned them for no one but herself—and still let them fall into the wrong hands. Or perhaps sold them herself.
He hadtrustedher. Not blindly. Not without reservation. But he had trusted that she understood.
And now she claimed not to know a thing.
The letters were one betrayal.
The rest—he had not yet decided.
14 December
