Page 218 of What Change Entails

“No. But I had once been cruel in the same direction.”

She turned sharply. “No.”

His brows drew together.

“No,” she repeated. “You were proud. You were insulting. You were very much in need of correction.”

A reluctant sound escaped him.

“But you were not Miss Bingley.”

“Elizabeth—”

“No. If we are to be honest, then let us be honest.” She faced him fully. “You wounded me at Hunsford and I wounded you too. I believed Wickham without proof, and I repeated my dislike of you with satisfaction. I allowed myself to take pleasure in thinking badly of you because it made me feel clever.”

Darcy’s face fell. “That is not easy to hear,” he said.

“It is not easy to say.”

“I never wished you to blame yourself for Wickham.”

“I do not blame myself for his lies. I blame myself for liking them.”

The wind moved across the hill.

Somewhere below, Darcy’s horse snorted softly.

Elizabeth drew a breath. “I was angry with you. Some of that anger was deserved. Much of it was not. I thought myself perceptive. I mistook wit for judgment.”

Darcy looked down at the grass.

“I mistook reserve for superiority,” she continued. “I mistook charm for goodness. I mistook my own mortification for moral certainty.”

His hand shifted on his hat. “I gave you reason to dislike me.”

“Yes.”

That answer startled him.

Elizabeth’s mouth curved despite herself. “You did. We need not pretend otherwise merely because I love you.”

He went still.

There. She had said it.

Not hidden in a letter.

Not wrapped in condition or fear.

Plainly.

Darcy’s hat dropped from his hands.

It landed in the grass between them. Neither of them reached for it.

“I had intended,” he said, voice roughened, “to earn that word before hearing it.”

“You have. Repeatedly. Though you might retrieve your hat before it becomes a casualty of romance.”