Family (a Pride and Prejudice fanfiction)

Rejected

Georgiana was just sitting down to breakfast when one of the maids rushed in. "Oh, Miss Darcy! Your brother—"

She didn't finish because Fitzwilliam was behind her. He put a hand on the maid's arm, nudging her out of the way.

"Fitzwilliam!" Georgiana got no farther; shock at his appearance stopped her tongue. He was haggard and hollow-eyed, his hair tumbled around his face, his cheeks unshaven, his clothing travel-stained and wrinkled. A picture more unlike her well-turned-out brother she couldn't have imagined. "What has happened? Is—" She stopped herself. Clearly, everything was not well. Not well at all. She got up from the table, hurrying to his side.

Her brother took her by the arms, and for a moment Georgiana thought he might shake her, so dark did his face look. And then he drew her close against him, leaning down to rest his forehead against her shoulder. She could feel fine tremors shaking him.

"Fitzwilliam, are you ill?" Over his shoulder, she waved at the maid, indicating that they should be left alone. The girl got the message, ducking out of the room and quietly closing the doors behind her.

It seemed that the closing of the doors of the dining room opened something in Fitzwilliam. "Georgiana," he whispered hoarsely, "I have kept my promise."

Oh. Georgiana shivered at the pain in his voice, pain that she had caused, even if indirectly, by tasking him to explore his feelings for this shadowy Miss Elizabeth who clearly was too blind to see a good man when he stood before her.

"She refused me. In words that—" He groaned, pulling away from Georgiana and rubbing his hands over his eyes. "Words that she thought I deserved. None of what she said to me was unfair; much of what I said to her was—not unfair, precisely, but unkind. A man could not have offered for a woman's hand less graciously than I did."

"But why? Why did you approach her so, if you wanted her to accept?"

"Did I?" Fitzwilliam said, taking a seat at the table and leaning his head on his hands. "Perhaps I didn't. It is, after all, often easier to be refused and have done with it than to cling to an unsuitable attachment."

"So you offered for her by insulting her, to be assured that she wouldn't accept?" Georgiana frowned. "That sounds ungenerous of you, Fitzwilliam. I have never known you to behave so before."

"No. Nor have I. I would never have considered such a thing. But Li—Miss Elizabeth ... I can't get her out of my mind. And then I saw her again, and she—I could not bear not to have spoken."

"When was this?"

"When?" He looked up at her, his eyes bloodshot. "Yesterday, I think. After church, I found her outside, and made bold to speak to her then."

"And she refused you?"

"Vehemently." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"When was the last time you slept, Fitzwilliam?"

"Night before last, I think. I saw her, two nights ago, at Lady Catherine's home, and we spoke, and it was—I felt—What does it matter now?" He got up, his blazing eyes looking into Georgiana's. "It's over now, or it should be, if I could just forget—"

"We should get you to bed." Georgiana took his hand in hers, leading him from the room. "Your horse?"

"In the stables."