Page 71 of The Lost Prophecy

Silence returned, heavier now because Elizabeth could fill it with answers. Every peculiar incident at Netherfield shifted into place, yet the completed design was more frightening than the scattered pieces had been. She rose so abruptly that the tea in her abandoned cup trembled. She walked several steps to the windows, stopping before the band of sunlight crossing the carpet. Mr Darcy rose at once but did not follow.

“You are monsters.”

Mr Bingley flinched. Miss Bingley’s face hardened, while Mrs Hurst lowered her eyes to her folded hands.

Mr Hurst did not stir from his seat. “Yes. We probably are.”

“Hurst,” Mr Bingley protested.

“She prefers honesty,” Mr Hurst said, shrugging. “Let us not withdraw it when it becomes disagreeable.”

Mr Darcy faced Elizabeth across the sunlit carpet. “What we are does not determine every action we take, but I shall not demand that you use a gentler word.”

Elizabeth was disturbed by the ready acceptance. She surveyed them again under her new understanding. Monsters should not appear ashamed, worry about Jane’s recovery, arrange balls, quarrel over doors, or refuse to feed without consent. The books had prepared her for bloated corpses and village panic. They had not prepared her for moral distinctions.

“What is Mr Wickham?” Her voice emerged lower than she intended. “Is he one of you?”

“He is one of us by creation, not by conduct.” Mr Darcy moved around his chair but kept the sunlight between them. “I converted him fifty-one years ago.”

Elizabeth’s mind returned to the officer, charming Lydia and Kitty while remaining carefully under the milliner’s awning. “You made him a vampire.”

“Yes. He was mortal, he knew the consequences, and he persisted until I consented. I believed affection and gratitude would govern him after the conversion. I was wrong.”

“What did he do?”

Mr Darcy glanced at the closed door, then back to Elizabeth. “A year later, he attempted to bind himself to my sister.”

“Bind?”

“The equivalent of marriage under our law. It creates obligations recognised by every vampire authority and would have given him permanent standing through Georgiana.”

Elizabeth remembered Mr Wickham speaking of Pemberley, his manner warm when he mentioned the estate and carefully wounded when discussing its master. “He loved her?”

“No.” Mr Darcy’s control thinned, revealing an injury carried for half a century. “He wanted her fortune and her rank. Georgiana had lived under my family’s protection for nearly three hundred years, but she appears as she was when our mother converted her at fifteen. Wickham persuaded her that he alone regarded her as a woman capable of choosing her own life. He told her he loved her and encouraged her to resent my protection.”

Charlotte’s face tightened. “Did she agree to the binding?”

“She did. I returned before the ritual and confronted him. He admitted that her wealth mattered more to him than she did. Georgiana heard enough to understand the deception.”

“And you allowed him to leave?” Elizabeth moved away from the window, anger overcoming fear.

“Our law did not permit me to extinguish him for seduction, greed, or injury to my family. No binding had taken place, and Georgiana had consented.”

“She consented because he lied.”

“Yes.” Mr Darcy’s voice became quiet. “Our law has never been as interested in the quality of a woman’s consent as it claims.”

The admission silenced even Mr Hurst.

“What happened to your sister?” Elizabeth had intended to challenge Mr Darcy, yet the image of a girl carrying three centuries of life in the body of fifteen altered the direction of her anger.

“She withdrew from society. She resides in a convent in Flanders, under the protection of women who know what she is.”

Elizabeth wanted to offer sympathy, but Mr Darcy had closed himself around the subject before she could frame it without pity. She returned to the sofa but remained standing beside Charlotte.

“What has Mr Wickham done since?”

“He feeds without consent, uses compulsion for access, and converts people carelessly when he fails to control his hunger. Some victims have died. Others awakened into a condition they never chose.” Mr Darcy placed both hands against the back of his chair. “I am his creator, which makes me responsible for presenting evidence against him. I have spent fifty years gathering it, but witnesses disappear, memories are altered, and victims are often unable to testify before our elders.”