Page 123 of A Question of Character

Darcy stepped back, propriety reclaiming the space between them. Below, his horse raised its head as if impatient with human complications.

“I should escort you home.”

“No.” She tied her bonnet more securely. “I would rather walk alone.”

His expression closed a little, but he bowed. “As you wish.”

“Mr. Darcy.”

He paused.

“I am glad you told me what you could.”

“It was less than you deserved.”

“Yes,” she said, because honesty seemed the only thing left to them. “It was.”

He accepted the rebuke with more humility than she expected.

Elizabeth directed her steps toward the path before her resolve failed. She walked away without looking back for several yards. Then, unable to help herself, she glanced over her shoulder.

Darcy remained where she had left him, hat in hand, framed against the open fields of Hertfordshire.

She faced forward again.

By the time she reached the lower path, she no longer knew which gentleman she believed.

Worse still, she was not certain belief would be enough.

sixteen

Past and Present

Darcy sat alone in Bingley’s library with a blank sheet before him and the disagreeable reality that honesty, once delayed, became more difficult by the hour.

The room had been arranged with more enthusiasm than judgment. Bingley had brought down half the books from town, purchased several more from a bookseller who had praised their bindings, and placed them wherever shelves would receive them. A volume of sermons leaned against a treatise on drainage. A novel had been abandoned beside a ledger. On the desk before Darcy lay his own paper, still unmarked, while the morning post waited in a small accusing pile near his elbow.

He dipped his pen.

My dear Georgiana,

Then he stopped.

No letter to his sister had ever required so much caution. He had written to her from Pemberley, from London, from inns where rain battered the windows and servants neglected fires. He had written of tenants, music, ribbons she had forgotten, books he thought she might like, and once, when she was twelve, a very solemn report upon a litter of puppies because she had demanded particulars. Those letters had been easy. Affection had not then needed to pass through guilt, fear, and the remains of his own temper.

He began again.

My dear Georgiana,

I had hoped, when I came into Hertfordshire, that you might join me here once Mrs. Annesley judged the change agreeable to you. I must now tell you, with regret, that this cannot be.

The pen hesitated over the page. Outside the window, Bingley’s stable lad led a horse across the yard, whistling with an indifference Darcy envied.

He forced himself to continue.

I am compelled to be honest with you. Mr. Wickham is in this neighborhood. He is employed in the office of Miss Bennet’s uncle, Mr. Philips, who practices as an attorney in Meryton.

There. The worst had been placed upon the page.