Page 69 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
Panicked, she got up out of the bed, climbing away from him, and went to hastily yank her clothes back on. She couldn’t quite tighten her stays. There were three of her buttons she couldn’t reach. Her hair was a wreck.
Had no one looked for her?
It was dawn.
But when she got back downstairs, almost all the guests were still there. Some of them were dancing drunkenly, laughing, and several were splayed out on couches, snoring.
“Lizzy!” cried a loud voice, and Elizabeth looked across the room to see her mother waving madly. “Found you, then. If we can just get Lydia in the carriage, we can get home. Can’t believe we all lost track of time.”
And that was that.
No one had noticed she was gone, she supposed. And the Netherfield Ball had been the event of the fall here in this part of the country. Why, everyone in Meryton would be talking about it for months. What a time they’d all had! Didn’t break up until dawn! A ball to be remembered!
She got into the carriage, looked out the window, and thought to herself,Maybe he was serious.He’d made her call him husbandtwice. Maybe he’d come for her. Maybe…
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AND THEN, WELL, everything was better.
Elizabeth was happy he was there. Mr. Darcy’s presence seemed to chase away a darkness within her, something she hadn’t even been aware was there in the first place. Seeing him and Willie together was gratifying. They began walking together with him every morning. Mr. Darcy would talk to her, but he would also carry the little boy around on his shoulders and talk to him.
Willie began to say more sentences. Many of them were ill-formed and somewhat adorable for it. “Up arms, Fitzwillie,” he would say, and they were loathe to correct him to say, “Pick me up,” but they did eventually.
Georgiana never wrapped a blanket around her again, and she began eating everything on her plate every night and stealing things off her brother’s plate as well.
Mr. Darcy decided not to push her, not to demand she talk about her ordeal, but to allow her to know it was all right, that he would hear anything she had to say.
It was to Elizabeth she spoke, though. Not all at once, but sometimes, in the afternoons, while Willie was down for his nap, in the sitting rooms, the afternoon light spilling out onto them.
Georgiana would perch on a chair and face away, staring out the window, and some story would come out of her, a torrent of words. When she spoke of it, she was always expressionless and her voice was always dull. It would be as if she were reciting facts, naming all the Kings of England and their most important acts during their reigns. She would tell it all, whatever it was that had happened, and then she would fall silent.
Elizabeth would wait. She was always horrified by the depths of depravity of Mr. Wickham, but she also was sensitive to the fact that her emotional reaction might affect Georgiana in a way that might make her feel as if she shouldn’t visit this upon Elizabeth. And Elizabeth wanted to be there for her. So, she would wait.
Eventually, Georgiana would turn to her with some question or other. “He said that I was being foolish and frightened about it. He said that I was the one who was being unreasonable. But it wasn’t at all, was it? It was him.”
“It was him. He was wrong to do that to you.”
“All the things he did to me were wrong,” she said.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
Charlotte was horrified when she learned about Mr. Wickham. She quickly began to change her interpretation of the events, saying that she had thought there was something off about Mr. Wickham and had been wary of him all along.
Perhaps she had felt something and she had talked herself out of it, much as Elizabeth had.
Elizabeth did not need to make Charlotte realize she’d been utterly charmed by the man. The man had been charming. It was part of the reason he had been able to do so many awful things.
Besides, Elizabeth knew that Mr. Wickham had been right about Charlotte. Charlotte was desperate for a husband. She would have likely married him and she would have excused his faults. Elizabeth began to wonder what she might do for Charlotte. She was cognizant of the fact that simply giving Charlotte money or property would not necessarily be a good thing for her friend, because it was her reputation that mattered.
A unmarried woman owning property was an oddity. It would make her stranger than she already was.
She could offer Charlotte some sort of employment. She could be a governess. But this also lowered her. She was the daughter of a knight, and though this was an avenue open to her, it was a blow.
What would be better is if she could find someone tomarryCharlotte.
But who?
And while she was contemplating this, of course, she happened to be looking across the room at Colonel Fitzwilliam.
