Richard made a gleeful little noise. “So, all the romantic notes. In character for you, I might add.”
“You are enjoying this too much.”
“I have not had brandy or a proper scandal in six months. You are dessert, cousin.”
Darcy pressed a hand to his temple. “I am not explaining all of it.”
“You do not have to,” Richard said breezily. “The despair radiates off you like heat.”
He wandered toward the window and peeked out. “Are we fleeing under cover of night or just under cover of shame?”
“I am not fleeing,” Darcy said through his teeth. Andyouare not coming with me.”
“Good luck with that. You will need someone to keep the locals from fainting. Or shooting you.”
“I am not sure it will come to that,” Darcy muttered.
“You say that now,” Richard replied, “but you are heading to the middle of nowhere in pursuit of a woman whose last contact with you probably did you no credit whatsoever. Sounds like a love story or a cautionary tale, depending on the reader.”
26 January
The road narrowed thefarther they went. Trees pressed close on either side now, winter-bare and solemn, their branches rattling softly against the wind. Elizabeth pulled her cloak tighter as the carriage swayed, the horses plodding steadily up the rise. Every mile that passed dulled the noise of London—but not the echo inside her.
She did not sleep the night before. She had stared at the pale ceiling of her room until it blurred, the pages of that awful pamphlet crumpled in her hand.
No wedding. No gathering. No ceremony. Her gloves had remained untouched on the dressing table, pale silk andsenseless. The announcements she had penned days earlier now sat in a heap by the hearth, their elegant script curling into soot.
It was not cowardice, she told herself now, watching a stone wall blur past the window. It was not weakness to leave when all strength had been wrung from her. London had turned its head; society had made its judgment. Staying would have been theatrical at best, self-flagellation at worst.
But it still felt like failure. And not even a spectacular one—just the small, creeping kind. The sort that stains your name and leaves you in exile, clutching your pride like a child left behind at the market. If there were prizes for dignified disgrace, she might yet take a ribbon.
And yet… she hated the view of herself, fleeing the scene before the curtain fell.
Marlowe had not even attempted a dramatic farewell. His letter—brief, precise, folded into quarters—had arrived just before she did. The posting was official. Abroad, indefinite. “I release you with goodwill,” he wrote, as if she were a charge to be discharged, a debt cleared by time and tide. He made it sound noble.
She made a sound then—half-laugh, half-exhale—and looked out again.
Mrs. Gardiner sat opposite, hands clasped loosely, eyes patient but observant. She had not spoken much since they passed the last tollgate. Perhaps she sensed that words would not hold just now.
It was past noon when the carriage creaked to a halt at the edge of a small, tree-lined lane. The cottage came into view slowly: modest, ivy-wrapped, its stone chimney tracing a fine line of smoke into the grey sky. Mrs. Gardiner’s sister stood in the doorway, her apron dusted in flour and her smile wary but warm.
Elizabeth descended slowly, her legs stiff from the journey. The cold struck immediately, a dry chill that swept across her collarbones and down her sleeves. She followed the crunch of her aunt’s boots along the stone path, boots she had once borrowed herself, years ago, in this very place. Derbyshire.
She had been here before.
The inside of the cottage was just as she remembered—low-beamed ceilings, tapestries faded from age, the scent of woodsmoke and lavender. Elizabeth accepted tea with a nod and moved toward the fire, blinking back a sudden sting in her eyes.
She had made it. Away. She should feel safe.
Instead, her hands drifted to her pocket. Letters from her parents, penned before they knew she was leaving London, and pressed into her hand two days ago when they had left Jane at Longbourn, because it “would spare them the expense of the post.”
She withdrew the note from her mother first.
It was short—brisk, dismissive, and written in the same over-firm strokes her mother used when ordering lace by post. There was no “dear,” no inquiry after health, no sense that her daughter had lately stood at the center of a scandal reported from Kent to Cumberland. Just a reference to“your unfortunate choices”, followed by an assurance that“no one is speaking of it anymore, so there is no reason to dwell,”and a closing line that read:“Perhaps this will finally teach you the value of holding your tongue.”
Elizabeth read it twice. She should not have.
There was no cruelty in the words. Her mother never wrote with cruelty. But neither did she write with the faintest awareness of what it meant to be wounded by someone who insisted she meant well. That was always the trick of it—Mrs. Bennet’s ability to injure without malice, to crush something delicate beneath her heel and then tut about the mud.
