Darcy looked at her fully then, his gaze searching hers in the flickering candlelight.
“I forgive you,” he said quietly.
Elizabeth nodded. “And I forgive you.”
The silence between them was not empty—it was full. Of understanding. Of pain. Of love.
She laid her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close. For a moment, she thought he might—finally—kiss her, but he did not.
But still, together, they slept.
∞∞∞
The next morning, Georgiana was already up when Elizabeth entered the bedchamber with the breakfast tray. The girl’s posture was straight in the high-backed chair, but her hands were clenched tightly in her lap, and her face was pale beneath the gentle light streaming through the window.
Elizabeth set the tray down without comment and moved to the window, as she usually did, to draw the curtain just slightly wider. The silence stretched.
Then, in a voice so low it might have been a breath, Georgiana said, “You must despise me now.”
Elizabeth turned slowly. “Despise you?”
Georgiana did not lift her eyes. “Now that you know what kind of person I am.”
Elizabeth crossed the room and sank into the chair beside her. “And what kind of person is that, exactly?”
Georgiana gave a broken little laugh. “Foolish. Fallen. Weak. I knew eloping was wrong. I did it anyway. I threw away everything for someone who never cared for me.”
There were tears forming at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back furiously. “I am… I am ruined. You must think me utterly beyond redemption.”
Elizabeth reached out and gently laid a hand over Georgiana’s trembling fingers. “No. I think you were a lonely girl who was tricked. Who was starved of affection and grasped the first hand that reached toward her.”
She waited until the girl finally looked up, her eyes red-rimmed and vulnerable.
“You needed to be loved,” Elizabeth continued softly. “And when no one around you who was willing to fill that need—to fill your heart, your soul, your sense of worth—of course you believed someone who did.”
She exhaled slowly. “People are like buckets, Mrs. Wickham. We all need to be filled—with kindness, respect, love. If no one teaches us how to fill our own, or how to protect it… someone else will come along and pour in whatever they like. Even poison.”
Georgiana swallowed hard, her lip quivering.
“You are not ruined. You are wounded. But wounds can heal.”
Elizabeth gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “So no, I donotdespise you. I think you are very brave.”
A long silence followed. Elizabeth could see the thoughts behind the girl’s eyes—the shame, the fear, the desperate hope that perhaps, just perhaps, she might not be cast out entirely.
But then a knock came at the door, and Elizabeth glanced at the clock.
“I must go,” she said gently. “Mrs. Reynolds will be waiting.”
Georgiana gave the faintest nod, her eyes fixed on the folded napkin in her lap.
Elizabeth stood and crossed to the door—but just before she left, she paused and looked back. “You are not alone anymore, Mrs. Wickham.”
There was a brief silence. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, the girl said, “Could you… could you call me Georgiana?”
Elizabeth blinked. Her heart twisted at the tentative hope in the girl’s voice. Smiling sadly, Elizabeth replied, “I am afraid Mrs. Reynolds would not approve.”
Seeing the girl’s face fall, she added, “But I believe I might safely be able to call you Mrs. Georgiana.”
