And yet… andyet… his body longed for her again.
It was unfair.
He had held himself to an honorable and pure course of life until he married. And now, after finally marrying, finally knowing that pleasure, he might never be able to allow himself to have it again.
You will do what is right.
A voice suspiciously like his father’s sounded in his mind.
Yes.
He would do what was right.
And it was not right to force himself into the bed of even his wedded wife. This opinion made him eccentric and many of his friends would judge him a fool for saying that. His uncle certainly would.
No… his uncle would say that continuing the Darcy line was of greater importance than respecting maidenly primness. This was a matter of principle. He had always lived his life according to his own principles, and that was something which would not ever change. He had made vows before God and man, and what was more, before his own conscience and honor.
No matter how unpleasant, how empty, and how… vain. No matter how vain, both in the sense of vanity, and the sense of pointlessness. He would keep his vows.
Elizabeth despised him.
And… Jove. By Jove, he had been such a damned fool.
Darcy could not think of himself except with the greatest sense of condemnation.
He had not known what he was about, and he had thusstumbled into consequences that were irretrievable, and that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
This was a suitable fate for a man who could not control his physical passions with his will and intellect.
Darcy looked down at the letter he’d written.
He crossed out the last part of the letter fromIf you think I must defend my actions…
The entire passage was wholly uncharitable. He scratched at it until he believed it to be unreadable. Or at least not likely to be read without great effort, and if Elizabeth should take that effort, she would know full well thatthiswas a sentiment he refused to own.
He stared down at the page.
The last line still uncrossed said:the question of whether he is sincere in his attachment hardly needs to arise in the mind of the guardian before he decides to end the scheme and separate the young couple forthwith.
Elizabeth’sfatherhad insulted her in a vile way when she’d come home.
Poor Elizabeth! He saw it in his mind’s eye — Elizabeth and the father who she adored, and who she expected to protect her — and then he told her that she had been at fault, and he fully misunderstood what her behavior had been.
No.
He couldn’t think about Elizabeth with real kindness yet. It was too painful. She had refused him. She despised him.
He wrote beneath the scratched out section:
A guardian ought to be motivated by sincere concern for the well-being of his charge. I believe you understand as well as I do that a father, or another relative standing in that place, should act in a way that shows his love and affection and which pursues the best interest of their charge, without regard for any other concern. Leaving aside all considerations ofmy reputation, wealth, social standing and expectation, given what I know of Mr. Wickham’s character, I cannot believe that it would have been conducive to Georgiana’s future happiness to permit any ongoing connection or conversation between the two of them.
If I have been mistaken in this, it was well meant, and a man must live according to the best of his talents, and the Almighty will judge him in accordance to how hard he has tried to turn his talents to profit, and not in accordance to whether he found success in the effort.
This is the true end of my dealings with Mr. Wickham.
I will only add,
God Bless you.
