Page 121 of A Question of Character

The hesitation was brief.

Too brief, perhaps, for most people to observe.

Elizabeth observed it.

“No,” he said. “Georgiana mentioned it.”

“Mentioned it.”

His fingers closed around the brim of his hat. “There are details I cannot give.”

“Cannot, or will not?”

“Elizabeth.”

Her name, spoken in such a tone, ought to have softened her. It nearly did.

But Mr. Wickham’s face yesterday had not been the face of a guilty man meeting his victim’s brother by surprise. It had been bewilderment first, caution second.

“You are not being honest with me,” she said.

Darcy flinched as if she had struck him.

“I am being as honest as I can.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No.” Frustration roughened his reply. “It is not. But there are obligations beyond my own feelings.”

“I do not ask you to betray Miss Darcy’s confidence.”

“Then what do you ask?”

“That you acknowledge the difference between proof and certainty.”

His expression transformed, anger rising now because she had found the exact place where his confidence was weakest. “Can you not trust me?”

The question hung between them, too intimate for such a quarrel and too wounded to be dismissed.

Elizabeth looked down at her gloves. Her hands were trembling. She clenched them around the ribbons of her bonnet.

“No,” she said at last. “Not when your accounts differ so spectacularly.”

He drew back.

She hated the hurt she had caused. Hated more that she could not unsay it.

“I need time,” she added. “I must think. I must speak with my father and uncle. Perhaps there is some explanation neither of us can see.”

“I know what Wickham is.”

“You know what he was.”

“And you believe him changed?”

“I believe I have seen evidence of effort. That is not the same as innocence.”

Darcy stared at her. “You defend him.”