IT TOOK HIMmany more days to get back than it had to get there in the first place. He did not push the horse as hard, neither did he change out horses as often.
He did not feel better.
He felt…
It wasn’t guilt exactly. No, perhaps it was.
It wasn’t about Wickham, though. He didn’t think Wickham deserved anything better, and he didn’t think removing Wickham from the world was any great evil.
But it was sort of the principle of the thing, he supposed.
There was a commandment, and it was all very clear, and he had just done it. Thou shalt not kill. He had killed a man, and he did not know how he felt about it now.
He thought through it all, and he didn’t know how else he could have behaved.
What was he supposed to have done? Given Wickham a stern talking to?
That had been tried, numerous times, and Wickham kept getting worse.
He had threatened Wickham, taken things from Wickham, exiled him, refused him any help, and nothing had made any difference. There was no reaching him.
He could not expose what Wickham had done, not without ruining women he cared about.
So, he’d had little choice.
But he felt… different.
It settled against him uncomfortably, what he’d done. He felt now that the fact he’d simply shot Wickham down unawares seemed cowardly and dishonorable. Perhaps every man deserved his last words, deserved the dignity of knowing he was going to die, of understanding why. He had treated Wickham like a dog.
It was beneath him.
He should have done better.
He had been blindly angry, that was the thing.
And it had seemed so clearbeforehe did it. But afterwards…
So much blood.
He was cold when he slept on the hard ground on the way back, cold in a way he had not been when his anger was burning bright enough to keep him warm. He wanted to take comfort in an inn, but he was not certain he should give himself comfort on this errand he had undertaken. He was not certain of that at all.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE SAME DAYthat Mr. Darcy departed, Elizabeth went to dinner at Pemberley.
Elizabeth was stunned when she was introduced to Miss Darcy, and Miss Darcy said, “Oh, yes, my brother has told me you are carrying my little niece or nephew.”
“He has?” said Elizabeth, who was sitting at the table with both of the Bingley sisters.
“He told you that?” said Caroline.
“He was in quite a rush, and he said I might be shocked and that I might have many questions, but that he had no time for them,” said Miss Darcy, with a little shrug. “I told him that I was rather aware of how all that worked.” She gave Elizabeth a smile. “You will come to see me tomorrow, in the afternoon, just the two of us. We will have lemon cakes, if that pleases you.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Elizabeth.
Miss Darcy nodded and changed the subject to something innocuous.
After dinner, back at the dower house, the Bingley sisters were quite in a flutter over the fact that Mr. Darcy had claimed the child to his sister.
