Page 46 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"It was an ugly chair."

"Georgiana was terrified."

"I know. I have apologised to her. She forgave me, and then cried, and then made me promise to break another one if they ever write about her." His breath stirred her hair. "I did not tell her that I would sooner break the man who wrote it."

"Or woman."

He was quiet for a moment. "Or woman."

She turned over, so that she was facing him in the dark. She could just make out his face on the pillow, a pale shape, the gleam of his eyes. She put her hand flat on his chest, over his heart, the way she had on their first night.

"Fitzwilliam," she said. "I have not been honest with you."

She felt him go still under her palm.

"Not about anything very dreadful," she said quickly. "Only two small things. But I promised you at Christmas that I would not leave out the parts that hurt, and I have done it twice, and I am ashamed."

And she told him. Lady Theodosia on the morning after the Pemburys' ball, holding her hand so kindly, advising her to go out less, and let him go to his club alone, and take herself off to Pemberley till the autumn, so that people would forget. And the note last Tuesday, in the pretty sloping hand, that had said Caroline had been busy with her pen.

"I did not tell you," she said, "because I did not want you to hear that somebody thought you would be better without me. And then, about the note, because I did not want to think what I was beginning to think. She has been so kind. She is the only friend I have in London. And Georgiana loves her."

He did not say anything for so long that she began to be afraid.

Then he lifted her hand from his chest and kissed the palm of it.

"Thank you for telling me," he said.

"You are not angry?"

"I am angry that anyone should have told you I would be better without you. I am not angry with you." A pause. "A little hurt, perhaps, that you thought you had to protect me from it. That is my office, madam. You are encroaching."

She laughed, a small damp laugh against his shoulder. "I thought we were to stand side by side."

"We are. So stand beside me, and tell me what you think."

So they lay in the dark, with the fire ticking down in the grate, and made a list.

Who had been in the green room? Georgiana, every day. Jane, on Tuesday. Richard, for an hour, before he went back to his regiment. Mrs Dawes and Hannah and the fire girl who could not read. And Lady Theodosia Rowe, twice: once on the Saturday after the ball, sitting on that very sofa, and once, Elizabeth now remembered, a fortnight ago, when she had come upstairs to see the famous green paper, and had stood by the desk, and admired the view of the garden, and turned over the books.

"But she could not have known it was good-morrow we say," Elizabeth objected, frowning into the dark. "Not only from the slip. The paper says you greet me with it every morning. Only you and I know that."

"And Georgiana," said Darcy slowly.

She went still.

"I say it at breakfast," he said. "Every morning. I do not think about who is at the table. Georgiana has heard it fifty times. She thinks it is charming. She told me so."

"And Georgiana tells Lady Theodosia everything," whispered Elizabeth.

They looked at each other in the dark.

"Then it might be Georgiana," she said. "Chattering. Quite innocently. To her dearest friend. Who might repeat it just as innocently to somebody else. Or—"

"Or not innocently."

"We do not know that."

"No." He was quiet. "We know nothing. We have a list of seven people, one of whom is my sister and three of whom cannot write. And one of whom is my aunt's goddaughter, whom my aunt loves like a daughter, and whom Georgiana adores, and who has been your only friend. If I go to my aunt and accuse her without proof, and I am wrong—"