She stopped at a crossing, the press of the city humming around her, carriages jostling, voices rising, steam rising from the horses. And for a moment, she could hardly breathe.
Not for him, she told herself. Not for what might have been.
For herself.
For the ruin of what she had once believed—that affection, freely given, would be enough. That honesty would be rewarded. That knowing her heart, even too late, might count for something.
It did not.
The man she had wanted—ache, longing, regret—none of it had ever been enough to name.
But now, standing in the bitter air, she could not shake the shape the word took on her tongue.
Love.
Perhaps it had been that, all along.
And he was speaking vows to another.
All she had left were silk gloves and a name the world had already half-forgotten.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
22 January
Darcy stepped into hisstudy and closed the door behind him. The afternoon light pressed against the windowpanes, unmoved by the turmoil he felt. He had meant to work—there were letters from London gossip papers waiting, and his solicitors expected updates—but his eyes kept drifting to the open desk.
Tomorrow.Tomorrow was her wedding. Elizabeth’s name shimmered in his mind with a brightness that made his chest tighten. He should be up at the altar in two hours, if not for another—someone else.
He crossed the room, feeling the sting of betrayal. Not hers—his own. He had signed the documents, sealed the contract. He had made a choice. A deal. He had torn the paper, but the tear lay open between them still.
Could he? Should he? He had no right. He had vowed to do what a gentleman did. He had promised decorum. He had believed in duty.
Yet he could not stand it. Not tomorrow. And so he paced, pausing before the bookshelf where her favorites stood—Scott, Austen, even a volume of Gray’s poetry. All his attempts to keep it together collapsed when he brushed his fingers against the spine of Sense and Sensibility, the pages that came as close as any to understanding either of them.
He whispered her name, barely there. “Elizabeth Bennet.”
The burn in his throat caught him by surprise. He had tasted bitterness in his mind—anger, regret, resolve—but now it loomed as pure anguish.
He opened a drawer and withdrew a folded sheet: the announcement for the wedding, printed in bold script and dated tomorrow, with her name and Captain Marlowe’s name beside it. He touched the names as though they were cold items on a ledger.
He turned away and struck his fist against the desk—so loudly that the mountains of ledgers jumped, a bell in his skull ringing.
“I cannot let this stand.”
He would march down the aisle, if it meant she would look at him the way she once had—eyes bright with fury, with wit, with something more. But what would he say? That he loved her? That he had always loved her? That he had offered too late, and now came to ruin her peace with his regrets?
He snatched his coat, then hesitated, hand on the lapel. A memory: her arching a brow at him for his too-earnest expressions.“You would interrupt a wedding?”she would tease.
He had told himself he would not. That to challenge tomorrow would degrade what remained of their dignity. That to speak at the wrong moment would make her a spectacle.
But this was not about dignity. It was about honesty—his own, at long last.
Darcy pressed his palms against the desk, fingers splayed wide as though to anchor himself. The wedding was tomorrow. Her wedding. And here he was, pacing like a lunatic, mourning something he had never dared claim.
He reached for the folded wedding announcement once more, studied the printed names, the florid script. "Captain Frederick Marlowe and Miss Elizabeth Bennet." Neat. Respectable. Final.
His eyes burned.
