There was more news, equally bad, about Wickham taking liberties with some of the local girls, as well as extensive gaming debts and displays of bad temper and drunkenness. If only half of the rumors were true, Wickham was as vile as Mr. Darcy had described him.

Both sisters were truly distressed by Mrs. Hill’s news, but Lizzy was heartsick. She could hardly bear to think about how she had taken sides in Wickham’s favor and at the expense of Mr. Darcy. Now, she completely understood the look of disgust on his face before he left the parsonage and the necessity of his writing that awful letter.

“Lizzy, I can see what you are thinking. But it was not only in the matter of Mr. Wickham on which your dislike of Mr. Darcy was based. You had other provocations.”

“Yes, I did. However, in the light of all that I now know, it can be argued that I am a terrible judge of character.”

Jane was beside her sister in a moment. “You are too harsh. The Wickhams of the world succeed because they excel at deception. He succeeded in fooling everyone, Lizzy.”

“Except Mr. Darcy. Apparently, he never succeeded in fooling Mr. Darcy.”

Chapter 11

Darcy and Georgiana celebrated Christmas with Lord and Lady Smythe at their country estate in Sussex. Their daughter, Agnes, and Georgiana attended seminary together and had become the closest of friends. The Smythes were having a ball to celebrate their daughter’s eighteenth birthday, but the dance had another purpose: to serve as a practice ball, as both Agnes and Georgiana would come into society when the London season began in earnest in May. Darcy watched the event with mixed emotions. His sister had emerged as a beautiful butterfly from the cocoon he had kept her in these past five years. After admiring how gracefully she danced with the young swells and how easily she mingled with all the guests, he realized that he would soon have to set this butterfly free.

After the holidays, brother and sister returned to London in preparation for Georgiana resuming her studies for her final term. From that point on, everything she needed to know would be learned as young people had always learned them, by trial and error, and she would know heartache and joy, success and failure, and the peaks and valleys of being in love.

Georgiana was excited about their return to town as her brother had hired a Madame Delaine who would assist her in acquiring all the clothes and accoutrements necessary for her debut. That decision had been made after his last visit with his sister to the milliner. Seeing his growing impatience, the owner had suggested he employ Madame, who would relieve him of all such duties. Shortly thereafter, the pair began making the rounds of London’s finest shops.

For the past year, a departure had been made in Georgiana’s education. After demonstrating a mastery of those subjects expected of a daughter of one of England’s great families, her brother had agreed to find another outlet that might possibly satisfy his sister’s seemingly insatiable curiosity about nearly everything, and she had been enrolled in Mrs. Margaret Bryan’s Academy, where she was instructed in mathematics, philosophy, and the natural sciences. Because the academy was located at Hyde Park Corner, Georgiana received her instruction in the morning and divided her afternoons between her German tutor and dancing and music masters.

Each evening, Georgiana came into her brother’s study to tell him about her lessons, more or less to get that subject out of the way so that she might discuss the much more important things in her life, such as fabrics, bonnets, the latest styles, etc. Darcy looked forward to their evenings together and their evolving relationship. He was feeling more like a brother and less like a guardian.

“Will, have you ever been in love?”

Darcy was no longer surprised by Georgiana’s questions, as they were becoming a regular feature of their after-dinner conversations. When he first heard the question, he immediately thought of Elizabeth Bennet, but quickly put her out of his mind and replaced the dark-haired, dark-eyed Elizabeth with the first woman who had ever touched his heart, the beautiful Christina Caxton.

Seven years earlier, after having finished their studies at Cambridge, Darcy and Richard Fitzwilliam had traveled to the Continent during the Peace of Amiens, a two-year interval in the wars between England and France, to begin their tour of the great cities of Europe. With letters of introduction in hand, they had traveled from one exciting destination to another, and one of their stops was at the Chateau de Crecy in Champagne where Christina had been living following the sudden death a year earlier of her husband, a British wine broker, who had foolishly walked behind a horse.

The chemistry between Christina and Darcy was immediate and sparks flew. Five years Darcy’s senior, Christina was the perfect lover for a young man of twenty-one, who was more than willing to be educated. A pattern quickly emerged where Christina would visit a friend and suggest that an invitation be extended to Darcy and Fitzwilliam, and the affair would resume. Richard found that creating diversions so that Christina and his cousin could be together provided him with his own opportunities for romance. But it had all came to an abrupt end on the road to Pau, a spa in the south of France, when Darcy had received news of his father’s death.

“Will, you are smiling. You have been in love,” Georgiana said, before practically jumping out of her chair and joining her brother on the sofa. “Please, Will. Tell me all about her. Please.”

“Ah, if you insist, I shall tell you. She was like a goddess. Eyes like emeralds, teeth like pearls, skin of the purest ivory, all surrounded by a halo of gold, a walking, talking jewel case.”

Georgiana looked at her brother and frowned. “You are teasing me.”

Actually, that description was very close to accurate. He remembered with great fondness the last time he had seen her—every inch of her. She was standing in front of him like Botticelli’s Venus telling him it was time for him to leave while it was still dark. He had convinced her to return to bed, and they had made love again and fell into a deep sleep with his body conforming to hers. When he left that morning, he had no idea that was the last time he would ever see her.

“Why do you say that I am teasing you? Cannot my first love be as beautiful as Helen of Troy or at least as handsome as some of the women in the novels you read?”

When Will found himself at the age of twenty-two to be the guardian of a thirteen-year-old girl, he had immediately sought the advice of Georgiana’s namesake, the Duchess of Devonshire, a friend of his late mother’s. One of Her Grace’s recommendations was to allow Georgiana free rein in the Pemberley library. As a result, she had read everything from Aristotle to the godless Voltaire and the revolutionary Thomas Paine, but she had also read The Mysteries of Udolpho and other gothic novels. He had to bite his tongue when he had found her reading The Insider, a gossip magazine he despised, especially since he had been included in its pages. The writer had hinted that Darcy would shortly make an offer of marriage to Letitia Montford. Although Letitia was intelligent and accomplished, with a pleasant disposition, she lacked the one thing he greatly prized in a lady: a sparkling wit. The only person who had met his ideal was Elizabeth Bennet.

“Was there really someone as beautiful as Helen of Troy in your life? I mean were you really in love with such a creature?”

“Yes, I was in love with such a creature, but so was every other young man who crossed her path. She was kind enough not to tell us we were all making fools of ourselves. When the armistice between France and England fell apart, the widowed Mrs. Caxton was detained as an enemy alien. I later learned that she had decided to remain in France and married a Frenchman. That, my dear, is the end of the story.”

“How disappointing! It would have been much more interesting if you and she had been desperately in love, and it was only because of Napoleon’s armies that you were unable to be together. You would have searched for her everywhere, but of course, you could not find her because of the war. And when you learned of her marriage, it broke your heart, and you never recovered from the loss of your one true love.”

“Good grief, Georgiana!” and he changed his tone of voice, letting her know that this conversation had come to an end.

Georgiana knew she could press her brother only so far, or he would retreat into silence. She went over and kissed him on the cheek and said “good night,” but before letting her go, her brother counseled her, “Georgiana, love is as complex an emotion as exists. There are many reasons why love does not prosper. I was once told by an intelligent lady that ‘one bad sonnet’ was sufficient to drive love away. So the waters are perilous, and you would do well to know that, because unlike your novels, not every story has a happy ending.”

* * *

The next evening, when Georgiana joined her brother at the dining table, he was preoccupied with a letter he had received in the afternoon post. Because his brow was furrowed, Georgiana assumed it was a business letter and that he was not happy with its contents, but that was not the case. The letter was from Anne.

“Anne wants to come to London and possibly continue on to Pemberley.”

“Will, that is such good news. Why do you look displeased?”

“It is not that I am displeased. It is that Anne never comes to London before late May. The air is too dirty, and with her weak lungs, it puts her health in jeopardy. And as for Pemberley, she has not been there in two years because the journey is so arduous.”