Page 12 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

“Mr Darcy.”

“Miss Bennet.”

“I was wrong about your character. Not about Jane — about your character. The letter — I read it. I read it many times. I was wrong about Wickham, and I was wrong about your reasons, and I formed my opinion of you on the word of a man who did not deserve my trust, and the forming of it was vanity, not judgement, and I have been — I have been living with that since April.”

The words came out in a rush. She had not planned to say them. She had been carrying them since Kent. The carrying had become so familiar that she had mistaken its weight for a natural condition. She opened her mouth, and the weight shifted. The relief was dizzying and incomplete.

She did not wait for his response. She crossed the deck, descended the companionway, and entered her cabin. She closed the door, sat on the edge of her bunk, and shook.

She had told him. She withheld the rest—the nights she had spent reading his letter until the words blurred, the slow, nauseating revision of every conversation she had ever had with Wickham, the shame that arrived at four in the morning and sat on her chest until dawn. She had told him the facts. The facts were sufficient. The rest was hers.

Her mind turned to Jane, and then to the letter in his cabin. She recalled his face when she had said I was wrong about your character. She would describe his expression to herself as surprise and nothing else. Anything else was a conversation she was not ready to have.

The ship rocked. Elizabeth pulled the blanket over her shoulders and stared at the cabin wall and felt, for the first time in months, a fraction lighter and a great deal more confused.

Chapter Six

Darcy did not sleep.

He had not slept well since Hunsford. It had become a feature of his character rather than a symptom of his distress. Tonight's sleeplessness was different. He was not replaying the refusal; he was replaying that I was wrong about your character. The refusal had at least been unambiguous. This was not. She had told him he was wrong about Jane and right about himself in the space of ten minutes. The combination settled into no emotion he knew how to govern.

He lay in his bunk, stared at the low ceiling, and thought about Jane Bennet's face.

He had met Jane Bennet. They had danced in the same room, stood at the same table, observed each other across the same crowded assemblies. He had looked at her serene face and seen only poise. He had assumed she smiled at everyone and meant nothing by it, deciding this from a distance. He possessed the arrogance to believe he could read a woman's heart by the set of her features.

He was wrong. Elizabeth had told him so, her account specific in a way his own reckoning was not. He knew, in the abstract, that he might have misjudged Jane's feelings. The letter he wrote in April admitted the possibility—a careful, hedged admission that left room for an honest mistake rather than culpable arrogance.

Elizabeth's account left no such room. Jane's collarbones. The unfinished letter. Composure serves as camouflage rather than contentment. Such details did not belong to someone mildly disappointed by a suitor's departure. Her heart had broken quietly, with no audience, while Darcy stood in London congratulating himself.

He sat up. The cabin was dark. He lit the candle, moving to the small writing desk to take out paper, ink, and the letter he had written to Bingley three days earlier. He recognised it now as inadequate. It had been written by someone who understood his error in principle but had not yet seen its face.

He had seen its face now. Elizabeth had shown it to him.

He read the letter. It was courteous and completely insufficient. It said, “I was wrong to conceal Miss Bennet's presence in London.” It failed to confess that he had looked at a composed face and decided her heart was empty. It said, “You should return to Hertfordshire.” It failed to admit that he had used Bingley's trust as a weapon against an innocent woman. His motives were not malicious, but arrogance that destroys happiness is indistinguishable from cruelty.

Setting the old letter aside, he took a fresh sheet and wrote.

The writing took an hour. It lacked elegance. Elegance managed an audience, and Darcy was confessing. Confession required a plainness his education had not provided. He outlined his actions and his reasoning, acknowledging that his intentions did not excuse the damage.

He wrote: Jane Bennet loved you. I was wrong to say otherwise. Return to Hertfordshire. Tell her yourself that you are sorry, because an apology from me will do her no good — she does not know me, and she does not need to. She needs to hear from you that your leaving was not her failure but mine.

He signed and folded it, setting it on the desk. He felt the unpleasant sensation of doing the right thing too late, finding no comfort in the act.

Morning brought a deep, brilliant sky untouched by London smoke. Darcy went on deck, standing at his usual position. He waited for Elizabeth with the patience of someone whose dignity had been thoroughly abandoned; waiting for a woman who might not speak to him felt entirely reasonable.

She came. She stood at the starboard railing. She did not look at him.

He waited. The sun climbed. A gull circled the mast with easy presumption, behaving as if the ship existed for its convenience.

She crossed the deck.

She walked with the pace of a decision already made. Stopping at his railing, she stood beside him. They maintained a careful distance, facing the same direction, looking at the same sea.

“Good morning, Mr Darcy.”

“Good morning, Miss Bennet.”

The gull made another circuit.