“I am here whether she wants me or not,” Caroline declared. “I couldn’t stop loving her if I tried, and whether she decides to be with me or not”—she broke off, gulping down a swell of panic—“is both of no consequence and the greatest consequence of all. I love your sister, and I will never stop loving her. You cannot induce me to do otherwise with money or status or power or anything else you can think to bribe me with.” She rose, drawing herself to her full height. “I am no George Wickham, sir. I cannot be bought. I will not flee. And I will never be hunted.”
His voice dropped; softer, more cunning. “Would you acquiesce to be helped, then?”
Tick. Tick.Caroline’s heartbeat pounded rabbit-fast, but she refused to look away from him. She would meet her fate head-on, whatever it was, and he could not trick her when she had nothing to hide. “Not by you. I have already turned the viscount’s offer down. I have already been disowned by my mother. If those facts do not convince you of my undying love for your sister, nothing will.”
He sat back in his chair, brow knitted. Something had changed in his expression, though she knew not what it was or what it heralded. “There are two doors in this room.” Fitzwilliam gestured behind him. “This one leads to my sister and certain ruin.” He pointed over Caroline’s shoulder, at the door she’d entered. “This one leads to stability and security, though you will never see Georgiana again. Choose now. Which will it be?”
“Without Georgiana, I am already ruined.” She stared him down unblinking. “No amount of money or power could ever make up for her absence in my life, and you cannot take anything from me which I wouldn’t gladly give for her. I had already chosen my fate before I ever entered this room.”
“Really, Miss Bingley?” he said, the hint of a sneer curling his upper lip. “You, who once cared so much about fortune and rank? To say nothing of your precious reputation? Now you say you do not care at all? You understand how that is an exceedingly difficult thing for me to believe.”
“I...” She hesitated, biting her lip. It was a fair point, she had to admit. He had been there when she had presented her argument to Charles against his pursuing Jane Bennet, when she had talked of status, of wanting only the best for him andtheir family. “I understand how that might look to you,” said she. “And perhaps I shall never be able to convince you. But let me put the same question to you. For you joined me in advising Charles to drop his pursuit of Miss Jane Bennet, and I believe, given what he said to me later that week, that you and he had also had some private conversation away from us ladies, where you argued even more strenuously for his giving up the match entirely. You were not an innocent party in that matter.”
An angry flush painted Darcy’s cheeks. “I did so. I do not deny it.”
“So then,” she challenged. “What say you to that?”
“I say nothing. I was in the wrong.”
“And so was I,” she cried. “How can you hold us to different standards when you yourself made the same decision I did, based upon what you thought was right for my brother? And when you realised your mistake later, when once you fell in love yourself and understood all the happiness which you had kept from him, how did you feel?”
“I know very well how it made me feel,” said he, his eyes glittering. “How did it make you feel?”
“Nothing at first,” she admitted. “It was only once I developed feelings for your sister and understood the great happiness and joy that love can bring, that I truly realised the depth of my betrayal of Charles. I chose my own status and comfort over his happiness.”
“As did I.”
“So we understand each other,” she said, watching him carefully. “As we did then, so do we now, though for very different reasons.”
“Then to keep you apart from her would be to simply commit the same error of judgement again as I did with Charles,would it not? By doing so, should I not prove that I had learned nothing? Is that your argument?”
“I would not hold it against you, if you did,” said she, despite feeling as if her stomach had fallen into her shoes and was even now seeping between the floorboards. “The situation is... rather different.”
“Indeed.” He leaned forward. The chair creaked under his weight, and the sound reminded Caroline of a tree being felled. “Then let me alter my question, since you will not agree to my terms. I am asking, as a brother and as a friend, for you to let Georgiana go. This affair can only lead to her ruin, as well as yours. If news of such a relationship should ever get out, neither of you would be allowed back in society again. Surely you would never put the woman you purport to love at risk?”
“I would let Georgiana go if I thought that it was the best thing for her.”
“Do not you want her to be happy? Secure? Safe?”
“Of course I do,” Caroline snapped. “But I believe myself best placed to provide that happiness.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “No one could ever love her as much as I do. I can assure you of that.”
“And if that should ever not be the case?” he pressed, looking at her keenly. “Would you let her go then? Would you free her if she wished to marry someone else?”
It was a question she had asked herself many times over the last few weeks. “That is an impossible question. I know that the answer—the right answer, the one you want to hear—would be yes, that I would let her go. That I would rather she be happy with someone else than with me.” Caroline took a deep breath. She couldn’t believe she was about to admit the one thing that would give him grounds to forbid the union entirely,but she simply couldn’t lie about a subject this grave. “I have changed over the last few weeks, and I believe I have become a much better person, but a leopard cannot change his spots, sir. At heart, I am still that stubborn, selfish woman who demanded the truth from you when she was not ready to hear it. I give you honesty, as I have always done, even if it secures my doom. The truth is that while I love her so much that I would do anything for her, the one thing I could never do willingly is give her up. Therefore, no, I cannot imagine myself without her, and I cannot do what you ask.”
Darcy’s glower was so extreme, and his fingers twitched towards her and for a moment Caroline really did think he was about to reach for the nearest gun, but a split second later, he’d grabbed her by the hand, pulled her in close, and was—
Shaking it.
What?
