Page 149 of Honor Requires

Elizabeth’s expression shifted from surprise to concern. “Then her influence is not merely personal.”

“No.”

She resumed walking, though her pace was slower now, her thoughts clearly engaged. “That explains much,” she said. “Her manner, her authority. I had thought it unusual that she should act so freely, as though answerable to no one.”

Darcy’s mouth tightened. “She answers to him.”

Elizabeth did not respond for a breath. “And what do you intend to do?” she asked.

Darcy considered the question.

“Beyond ensuring she is brought to account for her part in this,” he said, “I do not know.”

Elizabeth looked at him steadily.

“She has had too great an influence over Georgiana.”

“I am aware.”

The calmness of his response surprised her.

“But you hesitate.”

He met her gaze. “Not from lack of resolve. From uncertainty as to what will best serve my sister in the end.”

Elizabeth’s expression eased. “That is no small consideration.”

They walked on, the path curving gently toward a more secluded portion of the garden where the sounds of the house faded almost entirely. The air was warmer here, sheltered from the wind, and the faint scent of blossoms carried on the breeze.

Elizabeth spoke again, more quietly this time. “She loves him,” she said.

Darcy’s expression did not change, though he understood at once to whom she referred.

“I do not doubt it,” he replied.

“And he—” she hesitated. “He is not what I expected.”

Darcy glanced at her. “In what way?”

“There is an unsettled nature about him,” she said. “A sense that he is not at ease with himself. It is not merely dissipation. It is…regret. It is as you said.”

Darcy considered his answer. “That is possible,” he said at last. “Though it does not erase what has been done.”

“No,” Elizabeth agreed. “But it may alter what should be done in return.”

He did not answer. They walked on, the silence between them once more companionable, though touched now with the weight of shared consideration.

As the days passed, Darcy found that such conversations did not provoke in him the same resistance they once might have done. Where he had previously guarded his intentions with care, he now allowed them to be examined, to be questioned, even to be challenged. It was not that he had relinquished his purpose, but that it no longer stood alone as the defining force of his life.

Elizabeth had altered that. So had time. He found himself thinking, more often than before, of what might come after. The idea, once distant and uncertain, began to take shape with increasing clarity. A life not governed by past wrongs, but by present choice. A future in which his name might be reclaimed without bitterness, his estate restored without resentment, his affections given freely without fear of loss.

He did not know how such a future would be secured. But he believed, now, that it was possible.

One evening, as he stood at the window of Ashcombe House, looking out upon the square, he allowed himself to consider it more fully than he had dared before.

The past remained. It always would. It no longer held him with the same unyielding force. He turned from the window, his thoughts settling into a calm he had not known in years. Soon, he thought, the last of it will be resolved. And when it was, he would be free—not only in name, but in truth—to leave it behind.

Darcy had not intended to seek Wickham that evening.