Chapter Fourteen
She is not dead. I looked up so sharply, I banged my head on his chin. He rubbed it absently.
“I found her. It took longer than it might have, had I been able to come to London sooner, because Wickham had already abandoned her by the time I discovered her…situation. She–she was not in good circumstances. I asked her what I could do to help, and she told me that she and another woman in the—” he broke off abruptly.
“The brothel,” I finished for him. “Wickham told me she was in a brothel. I know what that is. He probably sold her to them,” I said, my voice harsh, but with a trembling that began deep within. “What did she say?”
“She said that she and this other woman who was her friend dreamt of going to America and beginning their lives over again. I questioned her enough to believe her determined, and I arranged passage for them. She lives in Boston now and, with her husband, runs a mercantile.”
I could only blink up at him, staring, my mouth open in shock. “Can it be so?” I asked shakily. “She is truly well?”
“I have a business acquaintance there who provides news of her and her family every so often. She married a Mr Brackett, a prosperous merchant, in 1815. They have two children, a boy and a girl. By all accounts, she is flourishing.”
I dropped my head to his chest, unable to control my trembling. Of all the awful consequences of that terrible time, Lydia’s death had seemed the most tragic. I knew her choices had been poor ones; yet, she had not deserved to die for them, even though my parents had—at least indirectly. She had been a silly young girl with too much freedom and too little sense. We had tried so hard to discover her; my uncle had expended a good deal of coin in the search. My husband’s arms tightened around me, as if he could stop the shaking.
I tried to make my mouth form words. “I have thought, so often…if only, if only. If only Papa had refused her permission to go to Brighton. If only the Forsters had been better chaperons. If only I had remained at Longbourn, at least until she sought asylum there. If only she had come to Gracechurch Street instead.”
“It is my understanding that she was unaware of the deaths of your parents until Mr Collins informed her. It came as quite a shock. I did encourage her to write—I promised to see that any letter was delivered. But she said she was dead to her family, and it was just as well she stay that way.”
“That is what he told her,” I whispered.
“I apologise for not informing you sooner,” he said gravely. “I did not understand any news would be welcome. I ought to have realised you would never—”
I shot bolt upright. “Never apologise,” I ordered fiercely, taking his face within my hands. “Nothing could exceed what is owed you for your unexampled kindness to my poor sister. Let me thank you again and again, in the name of all my family, for that generous compassion which induced you to take so much trouble, undoubtedly bearing excessive mortification, for the sake of discovering her.”
He looked down upon me with affection and sadness in his gaze. His hands were in my hair, withdrawing pins, letting it down. “No,” he said.
“No?”
“I am happy if I was able to ease some little fragment of the great pain you have endured. I feel, and always will, that Wickham chose her as his victim at least in part because of me. I did what I could for her because it was the right thing to do, and because, had I made known his character to the citizens of Meryton, it all might have been avoided. I could have ruined him in the neighbourhood and in his regiment. Georgiana could have weathered the word of a known scoundrel. I can see it now, but at the time I was too conscious of status and reputation and…my pride.”
My hair was falling down over my shoulders like a curtain now. It was so heavy that wearing it up ached a little, a pain I was well-used to bearing. In fact, it was only its cessation that brought it to my consciousness. The news of Lydia’s survival was like that. I had become so accustomed to the sorrow, I had not realised its weight until it was lifted. I smiled, feeling almost buoyant. Mr Darcy’s hand went to my lips, tracing them, and I wondered if he could see something new in me.
“I received your letter,” he said. “I returned home as soon as I read it. I did not mean to hurt you with my absence, I promise. I have been alone for so long, I fear I am not in the habit of explaining myself or my reasons for doing as I do.”
There it was again—a reference to his essential loneliness. It spoke to my own.
“I suppose I am not, either. For instance, I ought to have begun with an explanation. I did not know, when I entered this parlour, that Mr Wickham would be waiting for me within. When I attempted hitting him with a candlestick, he restrained me. You did not intrude upon a lover’s embrace.”
He gave me his sad smile. “I admit I was shocked to see you thus, but it only took a moment for me to see that he was imposing himself. I do not believe a word he utters. He could not speak the truth if a pistol were pointed at his head.”
I nodded, and then said that which I most feared saying, for if he would not take my distress seriously, it would indeed be difficult—especially now that I knew what I owed him. And regardless of his rejection of my gratitude, he was owed a great deal.
“Mrs de Bourgh brought me to him, without warning, leaving me here alone with him. Obviously, he has informed her of my family’s history with him, and doubtless she will use it to hurt me if she can. She hates me, sir. I can understand it. I understand grief. It would be better, far better, for her to live elsewhere—for both of us.”
He opened his mouth to speak before dropping his head back to the settee. It was his turn to talk to the putti. “I made her a promise that would I watch over her mother.”
He did not have to tell me who the ‘her’ was. Anne Darcy had extracted a vow from him—perhaps on her deathbed?—and his personal code insisted upon its fulfilment. Controlling him from the grave, to my mind, but he would likely not see it as such. I could go elsewhere—he would never stop me—but I would not be driven from my home by a bitter woman obsessed with the past. I had lost too many homes as it was, and I loved Pemberley already. I said the only thing I could, my own vow, made from the best part of myself.
“I will not leave you because of her. If this is how it must be, I will make the best of it.”
And suddenly, I was in his arms, and he was kissing me wildly, passionately. A month ago, his intensity might have frightened me; now, I only returned it, my eagerness matching his. I lost awareness of where we were, even who we were. A thousand troubles seemed to be amassing against us, trying to keep us from an ever-elusive happiness. But in this, we were equals. There was joy here, each time we met like this—man and woman, two halves of a whole. The edges of our lives flared out from this point, separate, uncontrollable, at fate’s mercy—but I could let those edges go, when we were one.
Some time later, I came back to myself, sprawled across my husband, breathless, and slightly awed by what had just happened. My hair was at its most untamed, and I reached up to gather it back—but Mr Darcy stopped me with a gentle hand upon my wrist, pushing it back down upon his chest where his heart thundered still.
“You will suffocate beneath it,” I said, my voice muffled in his cravat.
“My preferred manner of dying,” he replied, sounding completely serious.