“Actually, I did not,” she said with a huff of a laugh. “I was not near Mr. Collins when he received that letter. I saw the effect—but not the cause. Once I saw the faces in the crowd, I knew we would have to leave at once, so I moved quickly to the carriage. Mr. Bennet, Mary, and Jane joined me—and none of them seemed inclined to speak so much as a single syllable. So… I truly have no notion what it was yesterday that turned you into a pariah in a town that once thought well of you.”
He looked back at her sharply.
“I did know there was a scandal,” she said, softer now. “That something terrible happened to your father when you were a young man. Mr. Bingley told me only that much. He did not feel at liberty to say more.”
Darcy’s mouth pressed until his lips were almost invisible. He returned his focus to the hinge, testing the door at last. It swung silently.
Then he stepped back and turned, wiping his hands on a cloth from the floor. His eyes scanned the room as though hoping for a distraction—any distraction—but found none.
At last, he exhaled.
“You may as well hear it, then. There is no escaping it now.”
He paced once, stopped, then paced again before dragging a hand through his hair. “I confess… I half-believed you already knew. That someone would have told you, in London, before you ever met me. I thought surely the gossip had reached even your circles. Your father had to have known, of a certainty, and you are clever enough… I kept waiting for you to say something, but you never did. I never dared to hope you were truly ignorant of everything.”
She shook her head slowly, watching him.
Darcy moved away from the door at last and crossed to the hearth, but he did not sit. His hands braced on the back of the nearest chair, head bowed. The stillness of him was disquieting.
“When I was fifteen,” he began, his voice trembling faintly—the first time she had ever heard that— “my father was still the Eighth Earl of Pemberley. A title centuries old. Revered, in some corners. Envied, in others. Pemberley itself—our estate in Derbyshire—was the jewel of our line. My father took pride in that. In our tenants, our land, our name.”
He paused, lips parting as if to continue—but the words stalled. When he spoke again, it was even more shaken.
“We had a steward, Mr. Wickham. A man of uncommon acumen. He kept our accounts in perfect order. Saw to the farms. Negotiated leases. Even kept a weather eye on the law when local disputes arose. I remember my father praising him often. Saying we were fortunate to have him.”
Darcy straightened but did not look at her.
“He was ambitious. Loyal, outwardly. But beneath that…” He exhaled. “Jealous. His own son—George—was clever, if spoiled. He had everything I did—ponies when we were boys. The best tutors. A gentleman’s education. But no matter how bright he was, how much he was given, he would never inherit Pemberley. He would never beme,isthe sum of it. And his father—his father could not abide it.”
He paced a few steps, not looking at her. “I was at Eton when it began. Home only during holidays. I did not see it unravel, not with my own eyes. But I remember the tone of my father’s letters changing. His weariness. There were whispers. Rumors about strange absences—unsubstantiated, but that did not matter. He wrote once that the local magistrate had begun inquiring after impropriety—without naming the charge. He told me at the time he did not know the source of the rumors.”
Darcy turned and looked at her now, the pupils of his eyes now grown dark.
“And then, one day, it was made plain. Accusations. Two sworn statements. A coachman. A scullery boy. Claims of… conduct unbecoming. Involving my father.”
Elizabeth’s mouth parted. “I… I do not…”
“They called him… a sodomite. Said he kept unnatural company, hosted deviant gatherings. Mr. Wickham went on record at last, saying he had once caught my father in the act.”
“Oh,“ she breathed. Her ears burned to scalding. Sothatwas why he had been so uncomfortable speaking of it.
“He denied everything. Of course he did, because there was not even a grain of truth in it. Innocent moments twisted to look nefarious. The kindness of a true gentleman in the intimacy of his own home, but neverthat. But by the time the King’s couriers arrived—by the time the accusation reached the Crown—the scandal had grown. Whether anyone truly believed it scarcely mattered. A nobleman accused of such things… it was easier to silence the embarrassment than question its origin.”
His hands flexed once, then closed into fists—slowly, deliberately, as if to keep something darker from escaping.
“The title was revoked. The estate was meant to be absorbed by the Crown. But in a turn so inexplicable that it could only have been the deliberate work of a criminal upon a mad king, His Majesty granted our land, our holdings… to the steward. To Wickham.”
Her eyes widened, not in horror, but in disbelief—like someone told the sky had fallen and expected to see it lying neatly in pieces on the floor. “To… the man who accused him? But…how?”
Darcy gave a bitter laugh. “He said it was to ‘preserve the local order.’ That the steward had managed the land for years, and would see it done properly. I was seventeen. I returned from school to find the gates of my childhood home locked against me.”
“And your friend the heir in your place,” she murmured.
“He was never my friend. George made my life a living hell whenever he could. Taunting me, living in dissolution and making me pick up the pieces to keep from shaming our fathers… If only I had known how little his own father cared about shame!” He swallowed. “My father died three years later. Alone. With nothing.”
Elizabeth stepped toward him, her fingers daring to stretch for his coat sleeve, but stopping short. “I do not know what to say.”
“There is nothing to say,” Darcy replied, voice ragged. “Only that I have been paying for it ever since.”
