Page 18 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"He was right that you were reckless. He was wrong to let it go on so long. He knows it. He told me so himself."

"He held me, Lizzy. Papa! He patted my back as if I were a horse he was afraid of." Lydia gave a wet, startled hiccough that was nearly a laugh. "And he said he was sorry. To me. Everybody is always sorry about what I have done. 'Lydia, how could you.' I have made a true mess of things, but he said he was sorry to me!"

Elizabeth shut her eyes. When had her father ever apologized? He made a jest and let it pass for one. She had watched him do it all her life, and she had laughed at most of them. Some of the best had been at Lydia's expense. "I am sorry too," she said. "I laughed when he called you silly. I should not have."

Lydia leaned into her, head on her shoulder, shaking. Elizabeth held her close and rubbed slow circles on her back.

"I want to go home."

"We are taking you to Aunt Gardiner's. Today."

"And then home?"

"Yes. And then home."

Lydia was quiet a moment. Then she pulled back, wrecked and raw, and said, "I am sorry, Lizzy. For everything. For leaving. For not telling anyone. For being so stupid a man could buy me with letters and compliments."

"You are not for sale. You never were. He told you a lie and you believed it, and that is his crime, not yours."

Lydia nodded, unconvinced. The wound was too fresh for convincing. But she had said I am sorry and meant it, and for now the hearing of it was enough.

Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy, deliberate. Elizabeth knew them from three floors off. She had spent months learning them in hallways and in the space between waking and sleep.

Fitzwilliam appeared in the doorway, eyes going first to her, checking, then to Lydia. He took in the swollen face, the ruined dress, the bonnet on the floor, and his expression hardened into recognition. He had seen this wreckage before. He had spent a year watching his sister climb out of it. "Mr. Gardiner has a hackney waiting," he said. "When you are ready."

Lydia stood. She had never known what to do with Mr. Darcy, who was too tall and too grave and too much of everything her lightness could not parse. She put on her pelisse. The bonnet she left lying where it was. "I do not want that," she said. "He bought it for me."

Elizabeth did not make her explain.

They went down. In the public room the card table stood empty.

"Mr. Gardiner has him outside," Fitzwilliam said, very even. "Your father is with him."

"Is Wickham hurt?"

"Not by me." A pause. "Yet."

The street air was cold and tasted of the river. Gardiner stood at the hackney with his hand clamped on Wickham's arm. Wickham was pale and not smiling. That was a version of George Wickham that Elizabeth had never seen by daylight. Mr. Bennet stood three feet off, keeping his hands at his sides by visible force of will.

Lydia saw Wickham and stopped. White, then red. Her fists closed at her sides. Elizabeth braced for the scream, the tears, the bolt.

None of it came. Lydia looked at George Wickham, who had told her she was chosen and meant nothing by it. Not one word did she give him. She turned her back on him and climbed into the hackney.

It was the bravest thing Elizabeth had ever seen her sister do!

Fitzwilliam handed Elizabeth up and leaned in at the door. "I follow with your father and Gardiner. Wickham must be dealt with."

"The constable?"

"Being sent for." His eyes held hers. "It is over. The search is over."

She could not answer. The relief was too big for words. Three days of dread had sat in her chest, and only now did it begin to ease.

The door shut. The reins snapped. The Bull and Bell fell away behind them. Elizabeth rode in the rattling hackney with her youngest sister's head on her shoulder. Lydia was crying again, quietly now. They were the worn-out tears of a girl with nothing left in her but the need to be somewhere safe.

CHAPTER 6

The hackney carrying Elizabeth and Lydia turned the corner and was swallowed by the gray press of Southwark traffic. Darcy watched it go. Then he turned to face George Wickham.