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Elizabeth grabbed the stem of the champagne flute in her fist. “You want to know a secret?” She bent her head toward Darcy’s.
“Okay.”
“I nearly killed my sister.”
Damn. Had she been driving the car—? No, the newspaper article said the driver was a man. And Elizabeth wouldn’t leave her injured sister behind, no matter how drunk she was.
“What do you mean?” he asked carefully.
“She could have died!” She slammed her fist on the bar, startling the paunchy guy into spilling his beer. “Because I thought Wickham was a good guy. When you told me the story about your family…you did warn me…” Tears collected in her eyes. “I told Lydia what you had said. I told her to stay away from him, but I should have done more…”
A piece of the puzzle fell into place. “Wickham was d
riving the car.” The bottom fell out of Darcy’s stomach. He was in free fall. Oh God, he needed a drink of his own—and it wouldn’t be champagne.
But that wouldn’t do Elizabeth any good.
Elizabeth nodded slowly. “We don’t know who else could have been driving. Whoever it was fled the scene before the police arrived—leaving Lydia behind in a wrecked car, with coke and opioids in her system. She coded twice in the ambulance.” The last word ended on a sob.
What a horrible story. Guilt threatened to make Darcy vomit, but he pushed it away to focus his attention on Elizabeth. She was what mattered. “That’s not your fault.”
“Why didn’t I guess that he was a con man and a fraud? All the evidence was there—right in front of me. You even warned me when we were out in the hall during his audition. You warned me, but I didn’t listen.” She pounded her fist on the bar again. “If I’d believed you then I might have been able to stop him from getting to Lydia.”
“It’s not your fault,” Darcy said in his gentlest voice. Desperate to comfort her, he tried to gather her against his chest.
“It is!” Elizabeth grabbed Darcy’s tuxedo shirt with both hands. “It is my fault. I should have believed what you told me, but I didn’t. I chose to believe him and not you.”
Karma really was a bitch. Everything he’d said about Elizabeth and the Bennet family was coming back to haunt him in ways he never would have anticipated. He swallowed, knowing what he had to say. “Of course you didn’t believe me. Because I was rude…and I said terrible things about you. It’s my fault. This whole thing is my fault. I…I apologize.”
She stared at him for a moment—was she struck dumb with surprise at his words?
Maybe she needed more explanation. “I should have done more to warn your family, warn everyone on the set about Wickham…”
She squinted at him as if it were hard to see through the waves of inebriation. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not your fault. You were protecting your sister—something I am apparently incapable of.” Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Wickham’s actions are not your fault.”
“But I could have prevented it if I’d been a little quicker or little less gullible. Hell, if I’d just done a thorough Google search on the guy!” She slammed the empty champagne flute on the bar so forcefully that Darcy feared it would shatter. “Or maybe if I’d tried harder to convince Lydia to stay away—or told my parents about the drug dealing…”
She folded her arms on the bar and laid her head on them. Her next words were rather muffled. “I took good care of Lydia when she was little. I watched her when my parents went out, when they were working. I helped administer her asthma treatments, and I liked taking care of her. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to be a doctor. And then—when she needed me the most—I failed her!”
“Lydia got into a car with a guy who was drunk or high. That’s on her. At that age you feel indestructible,” Darcy observed.
“But she’s not indestructible.” Elizabeth grabbed the lapels of Darcy’s jacket as though it would force him to understand. “He almost destructed…destroyed her.”
Darcy hated to see her like this, but at the same time, she was closer to him than she had been in months. He couldn’t help inhaling her scent or admiring the ever-changing blue-green of her eyes. Even drunk, she was magnificent. “But he didn’t, right? She’s going to be okay?”
“Okay.” Elizabeth said the word bitterly. “Yeah. There isn’t permanent brain damage, and she’ll be able to walk eventually. But there will be scars, and she’ll probably limp. Do you know anyone who’s hiring actresses with a limp?” She swallowed a sob.
Darcy hadn’t known it was possible for his heart to ache so much for another person. “You couldn’t know this would happen.”
“It wouldn’t have been that hard to guess. How can I be a doctor when I have such bad judgment?”
It hurt to hear her talk about herself that way, particularly when she had been so optimistic. “You wanted to see the good in George Wickham. There’s nothing wrong with that. Aren’t you the one who told me that everyone has worth? Isn’t that what it says in the In the Shadows screenplay?”
“The screenplay is wrong.”
She might as well have punched him in the stomach. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how heavily invested he had become in her worldview. Maybe he didn’t completely subscribe to it himself, but somehow it had become comforting to know that she believed in the goodness of people. And now that rug had been yanked out from under his feet.
