Page 29 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

He told her the rest—the years before and after Ramsgate. He spoke of Wickham's debts, which he had paid, and the three thousand pounds Wickham had accepted in lieu of the living at Kempston, only to squander it in two years. He spoke of the ruined women in Lambton and Matlock. Darcy's family had always borne the responsibility for Wickham's misdeeds, a heavy and thankless burden.

“I concealed it all,” he said. “His debts, his behaviour, and his intentions towards Georgiana. I concealed it because exposing him would have exposed her. Her reputation was worth more to me than his punishment.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Though after Ramsgate, I did take one precaution. I had my solicitor obtain a sworn statement from Mrs Younge — her full account of the scheme, signed and witnessed. She provided it under legal pressure. I have never used it. I suppose I hoped never to need it.”

Elizabeth looked at him with an expression he could not categorise. It shifted as he spoke, reflecting the private work of revising everything she had believed about him.

“You have been protecting her for years,” she said.

“I have been failing to protect her for years. Ramsgate happened under my watch. Mrs Younge was my appointment. The elopement was prevented by luck, not by competence. I arrived a day early because the roads were better than expected. A day later, and Georgiana would have been married to a man who wanted her fortune and despised her character.”

“You prevented it.”

“By accident.”

“You prevented it.” Her voice was firm. “The method is irrelevant. You were there.”

He looked at the sand. He was unaccustomed to being defended, especially by a woman who had so recently found his character indefensible. Her defence settled a lingering doubt, reminding him that the prevention mattered more than the method.

The sun moved overhead. The shadows of the unfinished letters stretched across the sand.

“We are a pair,” Elizabeth said.

He looked at her.

“We were both wrong, and both proud. We were so certain of our own judgement that we missed the obvious. You misjudged my sister's heart, and I misjudged your character. You separated two people who loved each other; I condemned a man I barely knew because a charming liar told me what I wanted to hear. We have been extraordinarily foolish, Mr Darcy. The only comfort I can extract is that we were foolish in complementary directions.”

His mouth moved. The laugh did not quite arrive, but it was close, hovering at the edge, and the closeness was itself a kind of arrival. “Complementary foolishness.”

“It has a certain symmetry,” she said. “We share a considerable history of arrogance and poor judgement. We both qualify handsomely.”

This time he laughed—a brief, rough sound, surprised out of him by her precision. This shared acknowledgment was the first thing they had held in common without argument since washing ashore.

Elizabeth was not smiling. Her face was serious and tired; the conversation had been as exhausting as hauling the stones.

“I cannot forgive you for Jane,” she said. “Not yet.”

“I know.”

“But I see you more clearly now, and I believe you see me more clearly. I would rather stand on honest ground with you than on the comfortable lies I believed before.”

The words struck him with unexpected force. She finally saw him — not the master of Pemberley, nor the villain Wickham had constructed, but the man on the beach with blistered hands, who had been wrong about her sister and was now trying to make amends.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Do not thank me. I have insulted you, accused you, and forced you to relive the worst experience of your sister's life on a beach while building a rescue sign. Gratitude seems misplaced.”

“Nevertheless.”

The word carried more weight than it could reasonably support: a mutual acknowledgment that they must continue, despite everything.

Elizabeth looked at the unfinished letters on the sand. “We should finish the P before the tide turns.”

“The curves.”

“The curves will require planning, as I said. You may carry stones. I will direct their placement.”

“You are assigning yourself the role of overseer.”