“My mother saw the best in everyone. It was her gift and her weakness.”
“Much like my sister, Jane.” Elizabeth paused. “I think she would have loved Thomas. Despite the circumstances of his birth.”
“She would have loved him entirely because of those circumstances. My mother believed that children were innocent of their parents’ choices. She raised George with as much devotion as she raised me, knowing full well the manner of his conception.”
“And she was not… resentful? Of your father’s infidelity?”
“If she was, she hid it completely. She used to say that anger was a poison one drank hoping to harm another. She refused to let my father’s failures diminish her capacity for love.”
Elizabeth’s gaze drifted to the far shore, where the dower cottage stood among the birches. “She writes of Rose Cottage. How she looked forward to retiring there when you married. Close enough to visit her grandchildren, she said. Far enough to give you privacy.”
The sight of it never failed to stir a deep ache—of a future that would never come to pass, and the grandchildren his mother had dreamed of and never lived to see. Elizabeth’s hand covered his—the first time she’d touched him since the night he’d confessed his love.
He looked down at her hand, the white, smooth skin and the neatly trimmed fingernails. And he wished… yearned with a deep ache, that he had met her first.
“Your mother was a remarkable woman.” Elizabeth removed her hand to thumb through the journal, and Darcy felt the emptiness. “I have much to learn from her.”
“As do I.” His voice was raw in his throat. “I have spent my life trying to be worthy of her example, and I have failed more often than I have succeeded.”
“I do not think you have failed as often as you believe.”
The words were almost reluctant, as though Elizabeth had not meant to speak them aloud. Darcy did not press, did not even look at her, but her tone suggested that forgiveness was not beyond imagining.
“You have done more for Thomas in a month than I dared hope,” he said instead, still staring at the shimmering water and the pair of swans floating nearby. “Mrs. Reynolds tells me he asks for you constantly. That he calls you Lizba and brings you snails and insists that Harley sleep in the nursery because you permitted it once.”
“I have merely done what any mother would do.”
“You are not merely any mother. You are his…” Darcy heard his own voice crack. “I gave you no choice, deceived you about his parentage and manipulated you into caring for him. But whatever my sins, Elizabeth—you have been a gift to my son. I am grateful beyond my ability to express.”
He blinked and turned her direction, finding she was already looking at him, her eyes bright.
“He is easy to love. That is no credit to me.”
“I seem to recall a bite and a bloody thumb.” He held her gaze, remembering. “You showed him love, and he responded.”
The conversation had drifted into dangerous waters—too close to the wounds between them, too near the truths they had been avoiding. Darcy felt the pull of it, the temptation to say more, to confess everything, to beg for the forgiveness he had not earned.
Instead, he waited.
Elizabeth reached into her pocket and withdrew a small brass key, familiar and damming—the key to Amelia’s cabinet.
“I believe this one does not belong with the others.” She held it out to him, her palm flat. “It should remain with you.”
Darcy stared at it. He had given her this key in the library, had surrendered it without hesitation when she demanded it. He had expected her to use it—to read every word Amelia had written, to catalog his failures and find ammunition for whatever battles lay ahead.
“You did not read?”
“I do not wish to.” Her voice was steady. “Whatever is in that cabinet belongs to a woman I never knew and a past I was not part of. I have no desire to trespass there.”
He reached out and took the key. Their fingers brushed—the barest contact, a whisper of warmth—and Darcy felt the touch like fire through his entire body. He closed his hand around the key, around the ghost of her touch, and forced himself to breathe.
“Thank you.” The words were inadequate, but they were all he had.
“Do not thank me. I made the choice for myself, not for you.”
That was so perfectly Elizabeth—honest to the point of severity, refusing to allow him even the comfort of believing she had acted out of kindness. She had not read Amelia’s papers because she did not wish to. Her mercy, if it was mercy, was entirely her own.
He looked at her. The afternoon light caught her eyes, turning them to honey and amber, and he fancied he saw something there—perhaps longing, perhaps only the echo of his own hope. Her lips parted, as if she meant to speak, and his gaze fell to her mouth before he could prevent it.
