“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you aren’t a man. If you were, I would have married you already.” Dread and desperation prompted her to ask, “Don’t you love me back, Georgie?”
Miss Darcy still hadn’t moved. “We could not possibly have a life together, Caroline. We would endure immense scrutiny. Two unmarried young women, refusing all offers of marriage. Spending all their time together.” She swallowed. “Even if we were exceedingly careful, there would be talk eventually. Rumours which we could never quash.”
She hadn’t yet answered the question; Caroline clung to that fact like a drowning man. “We’d weather them.”
“Did I not tell you that we could only begin this if it went no further? And now you ask this of me!” Georgiana cried. “Don’t you care what people think?”
“Of course I care. We must all care what others think of us.We must all think of our reputations. But I”—she gestured between them, helplessly, to properly convey the depth of her feelings—“I love you. That is the simple fact of the matter. You were once prepared to give it all up for someone else, were you not? Reputation, fortune, your good name. And that relationship would have been out in the open. I am asking for far less in the shadows.” It was a low blow to bring up Wickham, she knew, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Should anyone find out about us, society at large would give us the cut,” Georgiana said, her voice trembling. “Not one person, Caroline, but everyone. Or as damn near to it as would matter.”
“Even so, I do not care. I cannot care, when my feelings for you take up my entire being.”
“The old you would have thought that an intolerable hell.”
“I am no longer the person I was. I was selfish and unkind before, whereas now I wish to consider the feelings of other people. I was vain, but my beauty was a shallow one, not backed up by a sweet or generous soul. Once, I spoke without consequence, and now I am able to consider the weight of my words. You are responsible for that alteration, Georgie, and I thank you for it.” She took a deep breath. “But you have also opened my eyes to something more. I shall ask you one last time. Don’t you love me?”
“Regardless of my own... of anything I personally...” Georgiana said, unable to meet Caroline’s eyes. “I will not disappoint my brother again. Forgive me. I cannot do what you ask of me. I cannot live like that.”
Agony pierced Caroline’s chest as cleanly and deftly as an arrow to the heart. “Very well,” said she. “Then the matter is finished, is it not?”
Before Georgiana could say anything more, Caroline swept from the library, holding her battered dignity together until she could collapse in the privacy of the guest room. Each sob felt as if it were a page torn from the book of her soul, and she wept until she could weep no longer. She had once told Georgiana that she would beg, but that had been different; she’d been flirting then, driven by the desires of her body, not her heart. Caroline pressed a hand over the place in her chest which ached as if it had been scooped out. She stood up, her resolve to accept the end of their relationship ebbing away.
You cannot give in, she told herself, even while her feet took her back to the door and her fingers turned the handle.You cannot go to her. Love cannot be begged, and doing so will only end in disaster.
She closed her eyes, summoning strength even as she slipped into the hallway. Whispers echoed up from below, halting Caroline in her tracks.
“—heaven’s sake, ma’am,” Mrs Reynolds was saying, “you’ll lose the lady entirely if you do not—”
“Then so be it,” Georgiana hissed, her voice rougher and more pained than Caroline had ever heard it before.
“Miss Darcy!” the housekeeper exclaimed, as Caroline edged forward. She still could not see either speaker, but she dared not miss a single word. “I am all astonishment! I cannot stand idly by while you make yourself so unhappy.”
“I refuse to ruin someone else’s life, Mrs Reynolds!” Georgiana exclaimed. “I did that once before and I ruined my own in the process of— No, never again. Do not speak of it. Consider the subject forever closed.”
The next sound Caroline heard was a slammed door. She shrank back into the shadows, though she was in no danger ofbeing seen. The truth ought to have soothed her, but instead, the sting ached and spread until it filled her entire body. This was the worst sort of victory, hollow and meaningless; Georgiana might be in love, but she wouldn’t commit herself, and the latter fact erased all the joy of the former in an instant.
