They walked in peace for perhaps a quarter-hour, both enjoying the solitude after an hour of parlour noise and bustle, and both reluctant for a conversation that neither had any idea how to begin.
Elizabeth finally said, "I briefly felt guilty about abandoning you to my sisters, but I decided it was good practice. If you cannot handle a parlour in Hertfordshire, you have no hope in London."
"That is nearly word for word what my brother said," Miss Darcy replied with a nervous laugh.
"I suppose we are either both very clever or both wrong in the same direction," Elizabeth said, not exactly certain how she felt about being on the same side with him on anything.
They reached the pond and had stood looking at some ducks for a few minutes when Miss Darcy spoke.
"I should apologize for repeating something said in confidence."
"I would not have you do so if it goes against the grain," Elizabeth said graciously. "You ought not have, but what is done is done, and …"
She thought for some time, and finally sighed. "… it is probably for the best. At least now we both know where we stand."
"I am not certain you do."
"Whether I do or not, it is not your place to interfere," she replied somewhat sternly. "Your brother is a grown man, master of a great estate, veteran of a decade of London's best ballrooms. My opinion of him was created by his own actions. If there is a problem between us, the remedy is his responsibility."
Georgiana stared at the ground and clenched her jaw. "Will you at least give him a chance to explain or make amends?"
"Your brother once said: My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever. All evidence suggests his good opinion of me was lost before we were even introduced. If his strategy is to send his not-yet-out sister to soften me up, the strategy is poorly chosen," she said rather waspishly, but then relented guiltily when it seemed clear her companion was about to start crying.
"I apologise," she said gently, squeezing Georgiana's shoulder in sympathy. "As my sister Jane would say, that was unkind. I doubt he sent you to do his bidding. In fact, would I be correct in assuming he would be less than happy about your interference?"
Georgiana just nodded unhappily.
"Would it also be safe to assume you would just as soon not have his implacable resentment aimed in your direction?"
"Yes, that is correct. It is just that —"
When she seemed afraid to continue, Elizabeth whispered, "Go on."
Georgiana sighed. "You and my brother began inauspiciously, because of me!"
She looked at Elizabeth, who observed based on her extensive knowledge of young girls that the tears were not to be long delayed if the conversation did not change quickly.
Feeling slightly desperate, she said, "Allow me to explain something."
The desperate, hungry look on her companion almost made Elizabeth want to wrap her in her arms and let the poor girl cry, but it seemed both wrong and somewhat dangerous. She was feeling she could well like Miss Darcy but did not want her feelings for the sister to have any effect on her relationship with the brother.
"Go on," she said gently, then led her companion to a small log by the side of the pond to sit down.
"Fitzwilliam told me about the night you met. The night you formed your first impressions. Yesterday, you heard much of the story between my brother and Mr Wickham, but he left out one salient point."
"As he should have."
"Yes, well, what you learned inadvertently in your uncle's office is now known to exactly six people, which will go down to five on the death of Mr Wickham."
"I am sorry I learned of your misadventure."
"I am not. I try to imagine the shame of relating it to any lady Fitzwilliam brought home to meet me. I cannot imagine how it could be done, and the situation would put him in a bind. Basic honesty would compel him to always be truthful to a lady he admires and wants to build a life with, while his duty to protect his sister and respect my privacy would compel him to keep my secret."
"A difficult conundrum."
"Yes. I believe that, in the end, it would have been my duty to inform this unknown lady, though Fitzwilliam would never ask it of me. I have no idea how I would manage it when I can barely speak to your sisters about fashion."
Elizabeth laughed lightly. "At the rate your brother goes about finding a wife, you could ask your daughter to do the duty when she enters society."
Georgiana laughed nervously, and Elizabeth joined her, tension somewhat reduced.
Elizabeth sighed. "Be careful you do not fall into the indolence trap. My father is a master practitioner, and it is not an attractive trait."
"What do you mean?"
"Do not rely too much on Mr Darcy's opinions, or what he tells you, which may be two different things. Let us just presume for the moment that your brother is attracted to me, which I still find hard to believe. If true, I suspect he mostly likes me because I dislike him. He does not like me, as such, but I compare favourably with Mr Bingley's sisters. He simply enjoys the novelty of dealing with someone who has no interest in his approbation."
"That is a rather cynical attitude, but I suppose it makes a certain kind of sense."
"Your brother, in his first interaction with me, rejected me out of hand simply because I am not as handsome as my elder sister, and I sat out a set to give other ladies a chance at the available partners—which was required because two of the three men from Netherfield were not doing the basic duty of a gentleman. Whatever his mood was, and whoever's fault it was—I doubt I would come out the worst in a cynicism contest."
"I will not dispute that," Georgiana sighed defeatedly.
Not liking the direction of the conversation, Elizabeth sighed.
"That said, before your brother made his grand boast about his implacable resentment, he said: I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding. There was more, but you get the idea. Imagine the position I am in. His first impression of me was negative. His second, third and fourth were as well, and he made no secret of it, in a house full of gossiping servants. He subsequently asserted our fortune and connexions must very materially lessen our chance of marrying men of any consideration in the world, then later, he told me flat out that nobody ever escapes his brown books. Now, you come along and tell me that I am the one lone exception to a lifetime of habits and discipline just because I have never liked him. I find your assertion… unlikely."
"It seems a hopeless business," Georgiana mumbled morosely, but then startled when Elizabeth laughed.
"What is so funny?"
"My distant cousin, Mr Collins, who is coincidentally Lady Catherine's rector and possibly the stupidest man I ever met, proposed to me after being in company eight days and not knowing me at all. He then ignored my first, second, third, and fourth rejections. My mother tried to force the issue, but my father replied with those exact words."
Georgiana tried to laugh. "I can see where hearing your father's words from my mouth must seem disconcerting."
"Or humorous, at least," Elizabeth agreed. "I love a good laugh."
"Since you have my brother's character so well sketched, can you tell me something about yours? Have you any grand pronouncements about your character. Can you mirror my brother and make pretentious pronouncements about your supposed lack of faults of understanding?"
"Quite a gauntlet you have thrown down!"
"Afraid?"
Elizabeth laughed. Whatever the Darcy siblings were, they were at least not dull.
She thought about it a while, and felt just the slightest twinge of sympathy for Mr Darcy. She had all day with a receptive audience to work out her pretentious nonsense, while he had to do it in half a minute, in a busy drawing room, beset by two hostile ladies whose interpretations of anything he said were polar opposites, without giving offense or raising expectations.
"Like your brother, I am too enamoured with my first impressions, and rarely change them. Since my first impression of Mr Wickham was quite good, you can see how well that worked out. I have entirely too much of my father's cynical streak in me. He always says: 'For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?'. While I like to laugh with people instead of at them, it is not an attractive trait. I also fear I match him in indolence. He thoroughly failed to educate my mother or younger sisters, and Jane and I are only accomplished because we stayed with our aunt in town a good part of our formative years. I have known about my family's total want of propriety for years, and yet I made no concerted effort to fix it. Your brother did more in an hour than Jane and I have done in five years."
She looked over to Miss Darcy to see her staring in consternation, and suspected she would look much the same given the same speech.
"I suspect my brother will have to give up the title of champion of pretentiousness," she replied to awkward laughter between both ladies.
They both felt better for the exchange, though whether they had solved all the world's problems, or none, remained to be seen.
Thinking they had spoken enough about the acquaintance between Elizabeth and Darcy, she decided to divert a bit.
"Tell me about your town crier."
Georgiana felt relieved to be finished with the earlier difficult discussion without need to actually comment on Elizabeth's statements, while that lady thought she might have to rethink her own response back in the Netherfield drawing room. Perhaps, Mr Darcy deserved some small amount of grace.
"Like any good hero, his name is Tom," Georgiana began gaily, which left them both pantomiming fluttering eyelashes and swooning while sighing, "Oh, Tom…" in breathless voices.
Once they finished giggling, she continued.
Georgiana continued, "Tom Peregrine, an equally heroic name, I should think."
"Yes, of course."
"He was born to the Pemberley stablemaster's wife the same day I was, a few hundred yards away in their cottage. The same midwife delivered me in the morning, and him just before midnight."
"Did you know him growing up?" Elizabeth asked, curious about the relationships in higher society. She had been friends with the same kinds of boys as a child, but the separation of sexes, station, and fortune gradually made all those friendships fade away well before she came out in society.
"We did. My father might have claimed he taught me to ride, but Tom is due the lion's share of the credit. I have never been allowed to ride unaccompanied, and he has been my most stalwart companion ever since he got old enough to be trusted with the task. I honestly believe that if he had been in Ramsgate, he would have prevented the disaster without me ever knowing about it."
"Perhaps," Elizabeth said. "In a more prudential light, maybe fate simply chose to do things differently than one would expect."
"What do you mean?"
"You are essentially unharmed, or perhaps even improved, and you removed a menace from the world. Maybe fate was tired of trying to work through your mutton-headed guardians directly."
Georgiana burst out in laughter, and Elizabeth joined her. She reflexively thought about sharing the conversation with her father, who would find it entirely diverting, but then a second later she decided he deserved no such consideration. The abrupt change in thought left her slightly dizzy.
"I suppose I never thought about it," Georgiana admitted. "Fitzwilliam was worried about my reputation. Finding a good and suitable match was pounded into his head with a mallet most of his life by our parents, his other relatives, society—everyone. He thought if my reputation was damaged, it would hurt me, so he simply tried to keep things quiet to protect me."
She sighed. "I thought when Richard, Colonel Fitzwilliam, came back from the continent he might deal with the miscreant, but he did nothing. When I found out he was here, and my brother was ignoring him, I started searching for a way to act. Tom suggested this plan, and we enacted it. He offered to do it alone, but I would not have it. I could not countenance having him shoulder all the risks for my own failures… and my father's."
"He still shouldered most of it. I suspect Mr Wickham could be violent if backed into a corner and let us face facts—your brother could discharge young Tom, but not his sister."
"Too true, but I would never allow that. I have far more pin money than I need, and I have been saving it for some time. I had enough to at least support him for a decade, so I was willing to chance it."
"Am I correct in assuming he would have done it for free even if it meant losing his position without reference?"
"Of course. It took all my powers of persuasion to include me."
"Has your brother retaliated?"
Georgiana laughed. "If you consider promoting Tom, giving him a cottage in Pemberley and enough money to wed his long-time sweetheart retaliation, then yes, he has."
Elizabeth laughed, strongly suspecting that she liked Miss Georgiana Darcy just a bit more than was really good for her. While the young lady had done good and bad, and her reflections the previous day had concentrated on her negatives, she began to see the young heiress in a more positive light. Growing up with naught but a brother and cousin for guardians could not have been easy. It was true she was somewhat shy, but so was Kitty and at least Miss Darcy had enough sense to not follow Lydia around like a deranged puppy. She reportedly had something of an obsession with music like Mary, but she could at least speak about it without bringing up the hated Reverend Fordyce. She could, on occasion, be as haughty as her brother, as bold as Lydia, as clever as Elizabeth herself, and probably as nice as Jane.
All in all, Elizabeth thought she could like Georgiana Darcy quite well indeed.