Page 215 of A Question of Character

“That I deceived you for months and met him in secret. That I meant to marry without your consent or Richard’s and would have succeeded had Mrs. Younge’s maid possessed less conscience than her mistress.” Her voice cracked at last. “It was easier to let you hate Mr. Wickham than to let you see how thoroughly I had deserved your disappointment.”

Darcy sat with that for a moment, turning it over as he might a stone too sharp to hold comfortably.

“You let an innocent man’s name be ruined in Meryton rather than tell me the truth.”

“Yes.”

“You let Miss Lydia Bennet’s family live under a cloud of accusation for weeks.”

“I did not think of them at all.” Her voice was very small now. “I am ashamed to say it, but I did not.”

“And when the bill arrived—the false debt—”

“I did not know of it until Richard mentioned it in a letter, weeks after. By then it seemed impossible to speak. Every day that passed made the silence larger.”

Darcy closed his eyes.

He had spent a fortnight demanding that Elizabeth trust his judgment against all evidence her own eyes presented her, while the entire foundation of that judgment had rested on his sister’s silence—a silence maintained not from fear alone, as he had told himself, but from calculation.

“I have wronged Wickham grievously,” he said, half to himself.

“I know.”

“And you allowed it.”

“I did.” Georgiana finally looked at him, and there were tears standing in her eyes again, though she did not let them fall. “I am not asking you to forgive me easily, Fitzwilliam. I do not think I have earned easy forgiveness. But I would rather you be angry at the truth than continue being kind to a lie.”

He studied her—this girl who was no longer quite a girl, who had lied to him with more deliberate calculation than he had believed her capable of, and who now sat delivering her own indictment without flinching from a single clause of it.

“You have caused a great deal of harm,” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“To Wickham. To the Bennets. To yourself most of all.”

“Yes.”

“And you did it, in part, because you believed I would not have listened regardless.”

Georgiana’s composure wavered. “Would you have?”

The question found him with nowhere to retreat.

He thought of Elizabeth beneath the oak tree. Honor without humility can become frightening.

“No,” he admitted. “I do not believe I would have. Not then.”

Georgiana’s shoulders eased fractionally. The guilt remained, but relief accompanied it when she realized he meant to carry some portion of the burden too.

“I am sorry,” she whispered.

“So am I.”

He reached for her hand, and this time she did not withdraw it.

They did not speak of Wycombe again that morning, nor of Mrs. Younge, nor of the long ride still ahead of them toward London and whatever reckoning awaited there with Richard and Lady Matlock. There would be time enough for all of it—for lawyers, for careful management of what could be kept from wider knowledge and what could not, for the slow work of rebuilding whatever trust had been so thoroughly dismantled on both sides.

But downstairs, when Darcy finally descended to settle the reckoning with the innkeeper, he found Wickham standing near the door with his hat already in hand, watching the yard where fresh horses were being led out into the grey morning.