Page 141 of Homeless

And then she let go. She stepped back, and smiled, and watched Fitzwilliam Darcy's sister walk out of her aunt's house carrying the end of everything, glad as a lark, suspecting nothing at all.

LVI

Forsworn

Georgiana came home a little after two, bright as a struck match, full of it before she was through the door — she had loved Elizabeth, she had known she would, they had got on famously, Elizabeth was everything he had said and more. They had laughed together, and Elizabeth had teased her and sent her love more times than she could count.

“Oh, Fitzwilliam,” she gushed, “when may I go again? She says she is busy tomorrow, but the next day, perhaps? And soon… when can she come home, Fitzwilliam?”

Darcy stood up from his desk to meet her gladness, and the room tilted very slightly as he did. It was not the first time today, nor the second that he had felt that odd, swimming lurch. He had put it down to having eaten too little, worked too much, slept not at all. Elizabeth in his arms would have made it right, would have made him rest and be sated on something besides work and worry. But for now, he would have to content himself with his sister’s pleasure.

“I was sure you would like her. Did you meet Mrs Gardiner?”

“No, Elizabeth said she had been indisposed. And something about grief in the household that day. She had been crying, Fitzwilliam. She tried to hide it when she first came in, but she did not manage for very long.”

He stopped just a few feet short of reaching her, and his head gave a little spin when he did so. “Was she unwell? Did she say —”

“She said very little about herself. I think she is very heartsore without you, brother. She made me promise to tell you again and again that she loves you.”

He smiled faintly. “I hope you gave her my assurances in kind.”

“I could not help it. She drank them like honey. Will you not go to her?’

His vision was fogging a little, so he blinked before it could turn into visible sentiment. “Soon. What else did she say?”

“Oh, a very great deal. And she sent you something.” Georgiana produced a sealed packet from her reticule. “She was most particular that you should have it directly I returned. I do not know what it is, but her hand shook when she gave it me.”

He took it and turned it over, and something in him went cold before he had broken the wax wafer. Elizabeth did not send packets that felt thick like this. She sent notes that sounded cheerful when they were not, a few lines with words that told more feeling than the simple shapes of the letters could convey. He bent the wafer, broke the seal, and started to unfold the paper.

The ring fell into his palm.

He stared, and his mind simply refused to make sense of it. It looked… why, it was… He plucked it out of his palm and held it up to the light.

The pinchbeck ring. Her wedding ring. The cheap Estella bit of brass that had sat on her hand through fever and mountains and the whole long road. What was…?

Georgiana gasped, at about the same time Darcy’s heart went out from under him.

“Fitzwilliam, is that…”

He turned numbly away, slipping the ring over the tip of his index finger to finish unfolding the note she had sent with it. No, no, this was not… she could not be talking of ending… The light from the window was suddenly shot through with odd colours, and he swayed.

“Fitzwilliam!” Georgiana was grabbing at his coat. “You should sit, brother. You look as if you have had a terrible shock.”

“She… she…” He let his sister pull him towards his desk chair, but only found it because she pushed it under him. “Elizabeth, no,” he was murmuring, “No, not again. Do not do this…”

His eyes fought him. He noticed distantly, even as the words went into him like blows, that the lines floated and doubled, that he had to hold the paper too close and blink hard to fix each phrase before it slid, that reading demanded an effort out of all proportion to the page.

“Fitzwilliam?” Georgiana kept asking, kept tugging at his arm, trying to peer into his face, but he had no concentration to spare her.

He was turning the paper over now, reading bits of it in horror, skimming the worst words all in one go and then trying to return to the top to make sense of them. How could she claim that honouring their vows meant violating her conscience?

And… and she was not… His breath came fast to read it. Not with child… for a certainty, not. The matter had drawn on, let her hope once more, but… well, what had she expected? No one could call that a failing, but it seemed as if she had. Not only a failing, but an excuse. A wretched, faithless, cowardly excuse to put him aside the moment she discovered she had not…

His eyes had got further down the note, and the blood was thrumming in his head. Something was wrong. Her grief fairly ripped the page apart — asking him to let her go was cutting the heart from her, this was not something she chose. Something was the matter with… He rubbed his eyes. With Gardiner? What the devil had gone…

“Fitzwilliam! Oh, I am calling for Mrs Hodges.” Georgiana was up now, across the room, but he was still reading the page, his vision tunnelled to perhaps two or three words at a time now.

And she still thought she could buy back Pemberley by sacrificing herself. How could she still think he would even want that? After every hardship they had shared, after owing each other their lives more times than he could count, after a thousand intimacies and promises and tender memories that had scorched his character and his heart down to bare earth and built him over again…