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The room is so quiet that Darcy can hear his every thought with alarming clarity. There's a small, minuscule part of him that regrets what he'd just done, taking his sister's love away from her just as the world had taken their parents away from them so many years ago. He'd heard her speech and had stood there still as stone as she begged for his understanding. Georgiana Darcy never begged. Life, for the most part, was handed to her. But he'd heard the plaintive lilt of his sister's voice, the whine in the back of her throat, the stricken look on her face as Wickham's last words rang in the air. And that last part is why the larger part of him was certain he'd done the right thing.
He mildly tucks his pen back into the spine of his checkbook cover, calmly sets the checkbook aside, and quietly waits for the storm brewing in his little sister to blow in.
He feels it first across his face, a slap so firm and loud that his ears are actually ringing. He doesn't move, though. He doesn't even lift a hand to rub at the handprint blooming on his cheek. His expression doesn't change. He's still angry that she'd hidden this from him, but mostly he feels guilty because he should have warned her in the first place.
"I HATE YOU," she shouts at him, pushing against his chest with the palm of her hands. And he stumbles back a step and says nothing. "He loved me. We could've--" She halts, running out of air between crying and shouting, and she takes a deep breath that comes out in a sob. "We could've been a family again!"
She's still pushing at him, but palms become fists and she's raining blow after blow down on his shoulders and chest. It starts to hurt, but he endures it. He understands. He doesn't blame her. Not really. He wants to be a family again, too. Unfortunately, the very possibility of it died along with their parents.
"He told me you'd be jealous of us," she says, still shouting, still shrill. He's dimly aware of how awkward this must be for the neighbors, but for once in his life, William Darcy doesn't care about appearances. Not when his sister is coming unravelled. He hates George Wickham for tugging at her loose ends like this. "He said, 'Darcy will never have what we have. I'm not sure he even has a heart.' And he's right! You don't! You don't--you don't even love me. He said you resented me because our parents…" She trails off and drags her hands through her hair, down her tear-streaked face. There's a wild look about her and he hates Wickham even more for reducing her to this.
What stings the most is hearing Wickham's words on his sister's lips. Darcy's been well-acquainted with Wickham's manipulations since they were boys and he'd gotten good at recognizing them. George is slippery, but William learned to be even more so because of him. But this is his sister, his flesh and blood, the only really tangible bit of his parents left to him.
In the quiet eye of Gigi's storm, she breathes at him and he breathes at her and neither of them move.
"I hate you," she repeats after a moment, voice quieter now. She's still sobbing, tears streaming down her face, and she weakly throws her fist at his chest. He catches her by the wrist and pulls her to him, clutching her tightly to his chest. "I wish you'd died instead of them."
When he finally speaks, it's into the crown of her hair, his chin propped up by her head. "So do I."