by Beau North
Elizabeth tilted her head, regarding him with a keen look. “No, I would not agree with you there. I only thought you were an ogre until I got to know you.” She frowned for a moment, lost in thought. “I suppose I never thought of how difficult it must be for you to form friendships…How do you know whom you can trust?”
“I thought you of all people would have figured that one out already. Usually I don’t bother.” He shrugged and tried to sound casual. The direction in their conversation was making him feel disturbingly exposed.
Her face softened. “That sounds very lonely.”
And there it was, the shard of ice that had lodged in his heart for longer than he could remember. Will Darcy was lonely.
He had Bingley and his family, of course. Georgiana, his cousins—but Georgiana was ten years younger, Richard had not been the same since the war, they lost James Fitzwilliam in the battle of the Coral Sea, and Anne lived under her mother’s thumb. He wondered how long he had longed for the kind of companionship that family could not provide. There was little wonder he had developed such a terrifying reputation. He had been bottling up this emptiness for so long that it had become a part of him.
“But,” Elizabeth said, unaware that he was experiencing such a moment of monumental self-awareness, “you never answered my question. I answered yours, fair and square.”
He looked down into her expectant face, and he was seized with such love for her that it was almost impossible to form the words. Here was the one thing that would answer all his longing. He could see a future of affection without artifice, of mutual trust and respect and the very deepest love.
“No countess, no heiress,” he answered at last, silently willing her to understand what he was not saying, the unspoken truth behind his answer.
Just you.
***
“Why do you always pick these awful fleabag motels?” Caroline leaned against the headboard, nude but for the sheet pulled up to her waist. “I could pay for something much nicer than this.”
Wickham lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. “A dirty room for dirty deeds,” he said absently. He rose and walked to the little table where they had divested their belongings. He poured two glasses of gin and brought them back to bed, handing one to her.
“Why do I even bother with you?” she griped, downing her glass.
“You bother with me because you know I can get you what you want. Not that I’ll ever understand what you see in Fitzwilliam Darcy. All the money in the world couldn’t make that man less of a dullard.”
Caroline privately admitted that Wickham had a point, and if she was being truthful, it was less about Darcy and more about winning. He’d spurned her for years, not knowing Caroline always had a talent for getting what she wanted eventually. And what she wanted right now more than anything was to knock that prissy Eliza Bennet down a peg or three.
Wickham put his glass aside and pulled the sheet down slowly, exposing her to the tips of her toes. His hands caressed the smooth muscles of her calves, eagerly nudging her legs apart at the knees. His teeth nipped the skin of her thigh.
“You and I are so much alike,” he murmured against her smooth skin. “We smell blood in the water and can’t help but bite.”
“I have yet to show my teeth, George.” Her words came out in small gasps, her hands tugging at his sweat-dampened hair. He made no vocal reply.
Chapter Eight
May 1949
Longbourn
Meryton, South Carolina
Elizabeth lay in bed staring up at her ceiling, but the ceiling had no answers. Her thoughts were two miles away at Netherfield. Darcy would be leaving the next day and wouldn’t return until the week of Bingley’s birthday party. That was over two weeks away. Elizabeth was having trouble deciding how she felt about his absence. Since the eventful day of the accident, she found herself frequently in Will Darcy’s company. To her great surprise, she found herself enjoying the time they spent together. Over the past three weeks, she’d come to look forward to their conversations and appreciate his opinions. More than anything, she loved coaxing a laugh or a smile out of him, though that was proving itself to be less of a challenge than expected. The man she’d sworn to hate forever had turned out, to her great surprise, to be someone she considered a valued friend.
It’s more than that, and you know it.
Burying her head under her pillows did nothing to shut out these thoughts. The truth of it was that, for the first time in years, she’d allowed a man to touch her heart, and it terrified her. Nightly, she wrestled with her fear, deciding to close herself off to him, but when she saw him again, her resolve melted into nothing. She thought she had fortified herself against such weakness, but admiring Will Darcy didn’t make her feel weak. He asked her opinions and placed value on her thoughts. She thought he’d even come to appreciate her penchant for teasing. When she was near him, she didn’t think about how different they were or how different their stations in life. But here in the dark of her room, it was all she knew, that little voice telling her not to hope.
A man like Will Darcy was bound to fall in love with someone with a pedigree far more dazzling than hers. Elizabeth had never particularly wanted to be anyone other than herself, but now she ached with envy of the mysterious, glamorous woman who would one day be lucky enough to have his love.
Tap.
The sound made her sit up, looking over at her bedroom window. She saw nothing more extraordinary than the magnolia tree that grew beside the house.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
With a sigh, she threw back the sheets and marched over to the window, ready to shoo off whatever animal was hiding in the branches. She gasped on seeing Will Darcy beneath her window with a handful of acorns. He smiled up at her, making her heart flutter like a hummingbird’s wings. With shaking hands, she raised the window.
“What are you doing here? Do you have a death wish?”
With question in his eyes, he motioned for her to come down. Elizabeth grinned and nodded, taking a moment to slip on her shoes before sliding out of the window and shimmying down the rose trellis. She let herself drop the last two feet, landing next to him.
“If I get caught outside in the middle of the night in the company of a man and in my nightgown, it won’t be pretty for either of us,” she whispered. “My father has a shotgun, and he knows how to use it!”
Darcy grinned and took her hand in his own, leading her through the high, springy grass on the far side of the lawn. The moon was nearly full, it’s silvery light bright enough to guide them. When they were safely out of sight of the house, he released her, shrugging off his jacket and laying it on the ground so she could sit. She did so, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin on her knees, her shoes the only thing not covered by her long nightgown.
She burned to know what he was thinking as he lowered himself onto the grass so that they faced each other. Looking at the strong lines of his profile, she had to bite back the words that had been hovering on the tip of her tongue. She knew all too well how some things, once spoken, could never be unspoken. They sat there for some time without talking, the song of crickets filling the air. Elizabeth peered up at the stars, wondering how to even begin navigating the stormy waters of her heart.
***
Darcy marveled at the vision next to him, afraid to break the weighted silence between them. He was thinking about the finely dressed women he had seen in his life, women in silks and furs and dripping with jewels. To his eyes, each and every one of them paled in comparison to Elizabeth in her cotton nightgown with her dark, bed-rumpled hair cascading down her back in waves.
Nerves turned his mouth dry; he was afraid that he would never get another chance like this again. There was a feeling of finality that hung in the air that night. Time to sink or swim.
“I have to say, this is the last thing I expected of you,” she said.
“I’m not implying…that is, I’m not trying to…” he stammered, unsur
e of himself.
“Gracious. It’s all right. I’m not suggesting anything.” She gave him an impish smile. “But you have to admit this is out of character for you.”
His tension broke, and he managed to smile back at her. Swim, his heart commanded.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I was having trouble myself.”
“Too much rattling around up here.” He tapped his temple. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for some time now, but it never quite seemed to be the right time to bring it up. Maybe after I’ve said my peace, I’ll be able to sleep again.”
Elizabeth swallowed. Darcy took a deep breath and said, “You should stay away from George Wickham.”
Irritation flashed across her face with the rise of her brow.
“I’m not meddling, and I’m not trying to tell you your business,” he said soothingly. “But just as before, you don’t have all the facts. I’ve learned he’s been a regular guest at your house and a well-behaved one at that, but I can’t leave knowing I’m leaving you and your family uninformed.”
“Very well,” she said coolly. “I’m listening.”
“I know he’s told you something of our past.”
“Something like that.”
He took a deep breath, unsure of how to begin.
“I suppose you know that we grew up together.” She nodded. Darcy told his own version of the events she had already heard: growing up with him and Wickham becoming part of their household after his father passed away.
“My father loved me. I know he did. My sister was the apple of his eye, of course, but I think I always knew deep down he wished I was more like Wickham.” He stopped, looked surprised, and laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
Darcy ran a hand through his hair. “Not a damn thing, actually. I’ve just never said that out loud.”
He remembered his father as a good man who spent most of their lives wearing the long shadow of his grief. It made John Darcy distant though they had grown very close in his later years.
“My parents have favorites too. I know they love us all, but I’m not sure they love us all equally.”
Darcy felt a wave of gratitude towards her for saying so. It made him feel a little less alone in the world. “Your father clearly favors you.” He chuckled, making her laugh. She tilted her head, a question forming in her eyes.
“Were you terribly jealous of Wickham?”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “I like to think I was able to see through him even then, but maybe jealousy is the reason we were never close as kids, even when we were older at Yale together.”
Elizabeth startled. “So he did go to college?”
“He’s still spouting that old story about being cut out of my father’s will, I see.”
“That’s what I was told,” she said carefully. Darcy shook his head, his long fingers absently plucking blades of grass.
“I was never that envious of him. I’d certainly never go against my father’s wishes that way. The Wickhams have been attorneys for the Darcys since anyone can remember. I always assumed George planned to follow in his own father’s footsteps—or hoped, rather. He had his vices even then. I think I might have spent my first year there bailing him out of county lockup. After the will went through probate, Wickham took the money and split. He didn’t even make it to final exams.”
“What happened?”
“No idea. He disappeared without a word to anyone. No one heard from him until the day he showed up at Pemberley without a penny to his name. It only took him three years to blow through the ten thousand dollars my father left him.”
“Ten thou—how?” Elizabeth was aghast.
“He has his vices,” Darcy repeated. “He showed back up to ask for help getting back into college of all things. He was suddenly ready to fly straight and go to law school.”
“Convenient timing.”
“You hit the nail on the head,” Darcy agreed. “I didn’t do it, of course. He fooled me more than once already. Instead, I gave him a job running the thoroughbred ranch. He’d always been good with the horses, and I thought, if he got to run something, I could see if he was serious about changing his stripes.”
He hesitated for a second before taking her hand firmly in his own.
“I’ve already trusted you this far. I need to know that anything else I say stays between us.”
“Cross my heart, hope to die.”
“Last year, when Wickham was working for us, he started paying special attention to my baby sister, Georgie. She spent a lot of time with the horses, training with the jumpers. She was very involved in competitions then. I suppose she’d grown quite a bit since the last time he’d seen her.”
Darcy’s right hand flexed into a fist. He forced it loose, fingers splayed across his leg. After a second, he resumed picking at the grass.
“She told me later that he’d completely convinced her, made her believe what he’d felt for her was the real thing, true love. ‘I’ve never loved anyone else,’ he’d told her.” Darcy heard her little gasp and smiled bitterly. “Not an original line, I take it?” Elizabeth didn’t answer; Darcy hadn’t expected her to.
“They ran away. They were going to get married. He forged my signature on a marriage certificate since she was only fifteen at the time and needed parental consent. I had no idea where she was. I was completely frantic. My cousin has a P.I. friend he knows from the army, and he found her days later. Wickham had left her alone in some seedy room in New Orleans without a penny.”
“Jesus wept!” Elizabeth cried. “Why would he do that?”
“There was one key piece of information, it seems, that made George abandon a defenseless fifteen-year-old girl. My sister is very well set up at Pemberley, and she has a generous allowance. She’ll inherit millions from both Mother and Father’s estates, but not until she’s twenty-five years old. Until then it’s locked away in trust—untouchable. When she turns eighteen, she will receive a monthly stipend from the trust until she inherits the whole. Until then, she only has what I give her.”
“So he did it for money,” she said, disgusted. “To do that to a child over such a stupid thing as money… What happened to him then?”
Darcy nodded. “The judge gave him a choice: prison or the army.”
“Is your sister…is she all right now? Did he—”
“No.” Darcy did not need to ask what she meant. “She got a clean bill of health on that score. The other damage…well, it took time. She doesn’t have a lot of confidence, understandably. Of course, she blames herself, which makes me feel guilty, and I blame myself, which makes her feel guilty. We’re a sorry pair, the two of us.”
“I can see how that might shake a girl’s esteem,” Elizabeth said, still horrified.
“I hope you get to meet her one day. She could learn a lot from you in that area.”
“From me?” She seemed to think carefully before answering. “I would love to meet her, but I’d hardly use myself as an example of how a young lady ought to behave.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“No, sir…I don’t think I am,” she said absently. “After all,” she said, blushing prettily, “I snuck out of my room to talk to a man in private and in nothing but my nightgown.”
Darcy cleared his throat.
“And I should probably be going,” she said. He stood, offering his hand, and helped her to her feet. To his astonishment, she reached out and put her hand on his chest, his heart beat jolting under her palm. He covered her small hand with his own.
“Will, thank you for trusting me enough with the truth. But you should know that I’d already made up my mind not to trust George Wickham. I’ve had my reservations about him since your letter, and there were some things he said the day of the Carolina Cup that might have reinforced your earlier warning.”
Darcy’s forehead creased, his grip on her hand tightening. “You saw him there?”
“Yes, he
was there. I owe John Lucas an apology, it seems. He told me that Mr. Wickham had the devil in his eyes, and I laughed at him.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Darcy said absently. “It’s not in your nature to be suspicious. I wouldn’t have you change that for all the Wickhams in the world.”
His eyes hungrily roamed the curves of her body. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the fabric of her nightgown had burst into flames under the heat of his gaze. His thumb rubbed a slow circle across the back of her hand. His eyes flicked to hers. He knew she’d seen the direction of his stare, but he couldn’t be sorry for it.
“We’ve become good friends, haven’t we?” he asked, his voice low.
Elizabeth laughed nervously. “Yes. I suppose we have.”
“You seem surprised.”
“You’re not exactly the same as you were when I first met you. At first, I thought you were stuck up, but looking back, I can see you were…is it unkind to say ‘reserved’?”
“No,” he said, smiling gently at her. “It’s not unkind coming from you. And I don’t seem reserved now?”
“Not at all.” She laughed. “I can’t imagine what brought on this change.”
“That so? I’m sure if you think about it long enough, it’ll come to you.” He held her gaze, willing her to understand. By the slight widening of her eyes, he thought she did.
“I—I really should get back inside.”
Darcy released her hand and stepped back a fraction. “Good night, Elizabeth.”
She walked a few feet before stopping, peering back over her shoulder at him.
“Good night, William.”
With those parting words, she left him. He was relieved to see her sneaking in through the back door rather than climbing back up the rose trellis.
Had she turned around and seen the look on his face, all her doubts would have vanished. There was no mistaking a man in love.