On the contrary, Mr. Darcy was every bit as disagreeable as Elizabeth had remembered him. Perhaps she had imagined all that nobility she had ruminated on since last winter, all the fine qualities she had argued that he possessed to friends and acquaintances back home. Perhaps a few months spent listening to Georgiana’s stories about how he was the best brother in the entire world had addled her mind and made her forget that most of her interactions with him had been the very height of rudeness and selfish disdain for the feelings of others.
But she would not be so impolitic to Georgiana. “I do not know him so well as you. You must be the judge in this matter.”
“He seemed so cold and distant. He has never been like that with me before. Not unless I have done something very wrong.” She shook her head. “I pushed him, perhaps. He should not have been made to come downstairs. Not after his long journey. He was too tired, too out of sorts—oh, Elizabeth! To think that I have wanted him here for so long, only to make him unhappy when he has come!”
“You did what you thought was best. He has surprised us all, and no one had the opportunity to prepare for his return. Perhaps tomorrow, when everyone has grown accustomed to the idea, you will find he is more like you remember.” There. That was honest enough.
“But did you not find him disconcerting?”
Yes, in fact she had. When he’d confronted her outside her room in his shirtsleeves, grabbed her about the arms and made comments about her eyes—she’d been most disconcerted.
“As you say,” said Elizabeth, folding her hands, “he is likely very tired. And, only think, he might imagine you quite changed as well.”
“Me!” Georgiana said. “How have I changed?”
“Do you not see it?” she asked, amused. “The girl I met in Kent was shy, frightened even. We met three times before you spoke two syllables together to me. And now, you run this house like a lady.”
Georgiana blushed prettily. “It is kind of you to say so.”
“It is the truth.”
“I am only shy around new people, new places. Pemberley is my home. I must always be at peace here.”
Her words struck Elizabeth, resonating with some deep memory. Had not Mr. Darcy said precisely the same thing to her once?
“Do you know,” she said now, “such a pronouncement might be a lesson to us. Mr. Darcy has spent such a long time away, far from the lands and the comforts he has known. Of course he finds his return to be very shocking. What if you were not to push him, Georgiana? Let him decide what stories he wishes to share, and what society he wishes to join. But first, let him feel again at home at Pemberley.”
Georgiana nodded. “Yes, perhaps you are right. I shall let the clean air of Pemberley be his medicine. I am sure it will be the best thing in the world for him.”
Elizabeth hoped very much that she was correct.
Chapter 24
The next day, Elizabeth decided to make herself scarce. After an early breakfast, she left word for Georgiana that she was taking a long walk. She considered Lambton, but though she felt equal to walking the five miles to the village, she was not certain she could return under her own power. Instead, she chose a favorite path through Pemberley Wood, one that wound into the very heart of the park, past a pond where she and Georgiana had once taken the pony cart for a picnic, and—most welcome of all—quite concealed during the whole of its length from any view of the house.
She had found it very difficult to sleep the previous evening, and spent long hours tossing and turning upon her bed and wondering if she had missed her chance of being completely honest with her friend. It was possible that Mr. Darcy, now being home, would reveal to Georgiana the real origin of the gossip that plagued her family. From his behavior toward her last night, Elizabeth did not think the time that had passed had softened his opinion of her any.
He may have helped her in the aftermath of Wickham’s death, but he clearly did not like her any better than he had in Hertfordshire.
Except, of course, for the shade of her eyes.
But Elizabeth would not think of that now. She clenched her hands into fists and plunged into the woods.
For months, she had amused herself—indulged herself, really—with a fantastical version of Mr. Darcy. One who somehow knew of the connection she had forged between herself and Georgiana. One who appreciated the way she defended him and helped his sister. One who felt she had paid him back, in the only way she possibly could, for the service he had rendered her, both the night of the Netherfield ball and the dreadful season which had followed. She had made out of him an ideal sort of man, as distant and unattainable as a fairy tale prince.
And ever since her arrival at Pemberley, she had searched for signs of that version of Darcy—in the beautiful house and land, in the servant’s lavish praise and Georgiana’s unalloyed adulation. She had imagined that their interactions in Hertfordshire had been somewhat more than they actually were, that Mr. Darcy had meant something to her, and she to him. That, had circumstances been different—had she been given the chance to really know him, unblinded by the prejudice engendered in their first meeting at the Meryton assembly when he’d insulted her, or the disdainful eye of Miss Bingley, or the vicious lies of Mr. Wickham—that she might have come to know this man that all of Pemberley nearly worshipped. That she might have come to care for him, and he for her.
But that man was a myth. Mr. Darcy was not some knight on a steed, ready to swoop down and rescue fair damsels. He was difficult and prickly. They had never even managed a conversation without snapping at one another. How quickly she had forgotten and instead remembered a single unguarded moment in the rain as more illustrative of his character than all of the disregard and insults that had come before.
Perhaps his prevention of Mr. Wickham’s impertinence at the ball was not a gesture of grand nobility, after all—it was the actions of any half-decent gentleman who might be passing by and seeing a lady importuned. His concern in ensuring that Mr. Wickham and Colonel Forster’s ridiculous tale of a duel did not spread did as much to protect Darcy himself as to save her from scandal. Duels were, after all, illegal. Had not Georgiana been appalled by the thought that her brother would duel his old friend?
He was not responsible for the story that arose afterward. He could not have prevented it. He—
He was standing on the path before her, again in shirtsleeves, again with that haunted expression upon his countenance.
She froze where she stood.
“Miss Bennet,” he said, and gave her a stiff bow.
“Mr. Darcy.” She curtsied. “You are walking very early today.”
“I rise with the dawn,” he replied. “You must take advantage of every moment of daylight in the mountains.”
“We are not in the mountains.”
“It is a hard habit to break.” To her surprise, he then turned to walk with her. She looked down at the path, blushing. There was no sign of a coat anywhere, nor even a cravat, yet he adhered to the custom of turning to walk with a lady, as if they were on a promenade in London, and not in the middle of the Derbyshire woods.
“Do you know,” he said, presently, “this has always been my favorite path. Even when I was a child.”
“Oh.” It was her favorite as well, but Elizabeth was afraid, somehow, to mention that.
“There is a yew, not far from here, that reminds me of the one near your home.”
She concentrated on breathing and walking, as both activities began to grow quite a bit more challenging than she was used to.
They walked for another minute or more without Elizabeth saying a word.
When Mr. Darcy spoke again, his voice was lower. “I had thought, from your story at dinner the other night, that you recalled the yew well.”
Oh, she most certainly did. But she managed to remain collected as she replied. “And I had thought, from your response to the story, that you wished to forget.”
“No Miss Bennet,” he replied. “There are many things I
sought to forget from my time in Hertfordshire. Your company was not one of them.”
She stopped dead on the path and looked at him. “You say the most shocking things.”
“Do I?” He cocked his head to one side. “Forgive me. I have been out of good society so long. Perhaps I am no longer aware of what is shocking and what is not. For instance, I was shocked to see you here, in my home.”
Elizabeth bit her lip.
“I thought, after that night, our paths would never cross again.”
“I thought so as well,” she said, her chin lifted. “And so it might have been. But I had the fortune of meeting your sister in Kent.”
“So she told me. So she might have written me for all I know.” He gestured vaguely toward what Elizabeth supposed were Georgiana’s letters, lost somewhere in the Alps. “And you became intimate friends.”
She did not like the way he stared at her, as if it were she and not he that stood there half-dressed. Her eyes stung, but she refused to look away. “She needed a friend. She was lonely and scared and dangerously close to concocting a wild story about your absence to fill the void left by secrets and gossip.”
“What?” he snapped, all the mockery gone from his tone in an instant. He stood taller, it seemed, and his hands clenched into fists. “What did she believe?”
“It does not matter. She knows the truth now, thanks to me.”
Mr. Darcy glared daggers at her. “You told her of Mr. Wickham?”
“Yes.”
“You know not what you have done!”
“I know precisely,” she replied, her temper flaring. How dare he cast judgment on her, after leaving the country while Georgiana remained in the dark? After bragging last night of how he’d ignored his sister’s pitiful entreaties to return home? “For she told me of her dealings with him as well. Her dealings, and yours. Ours is a friendship forged in mutual heartache.”
“Heartache!” Darcy scoffed. “I am truly sorry, madam, that you mourn still for a man you now know is every variety of cad.” He turned and stomped a few feet away.
“I do not mourn for Mr. Wickham!” Elizabeth said, in a tone of angry disbelief. “Any more than I would mourn the death of any man taken before his time.”
Darcy looked back at her, his unruly hair hanging over one eye.
“He treated me most unkindly in the moments before …before he was shot, as well you know. How can you imagine I think well of him after that? How can you even contemplate that I might find acceptable the actions he took last summer…the actions that Georgiana has related to me?”
Darcy was saying nothing, but his chest rose and fell with great effort. Elizabeth, too, felt as if she could hardly breathe.
“I have had months to reside with my thoughts, to reflect upon my behavior at the time and to take my share of blame in what befell us all. Mr. Wickham had once been a favorite with me—I shall not deny it. I did not deny it to your sister either, a fact which I believe made her feel secure in confessing her own misguided feelings.”
“Misguided…” he whispered.
“But as much as I take responsibility for my part in bringing Mr. Wickham to the ball, I cannot blame myself for his death.”
“No. For that, you blame me.”
“No!” The word ricocheted around the forest. For a second, the birds stopped singing.
Mr. Darcy was as still as a tree rooted to the Earth, as massive and silent as a rock.
“How could I blame you? You rescued me. Twice. Mr. Darcy, were it not for your quick thinking the morning after the ball, I would have been ruined. Do you think I am not aware of what you have sacrificed for me? The whispers that spread in Meryton after your departure—the ones I am told made their way even to the drawing-rooms of London—it might have been a story about me. That it was not is entirely due to you.”
Another breath passed, and Darcy’s expression turned darkly sardonic. “I see. I am not to blame for the death of my old friend because I made sure, afterward, that your name was entirely kept from any gossip that arose from the incident.”
“No, that is not what I meant.”
“I am blameless in the affair because I am a man of good fortune and significant influence, who might encourage the tongue of a country solicitor to wag in a direction other than that of his own niece.”
“But that is what you did do,” argued Elizabeth, through tears.
“And you nodded and smiled and said, ‘Of course Mr. Darcy is a gentleman.’ After all, did he not pay handsomely to be known as such?”
“I never thought you were to blame,” she whispered, but she did not know if he heard.
“And the moment you met my sister, you were all too happy to inform her that the last sight seen by her one true love was the face of her very own brother.”
He was leaning in now, close enough to touch her, and his countenance was one of barely checked rage.
“Why do you not flee?” he asked directly. “You have seen how violent I can be.”
“I have seen you help a woman who had no right to call you friend,” Elizabeth replied. “And I have seen you driven to regrettable anger by the unforgivable actions of someone with whom you were once very close. I do not believe you are violent. I do not believe that Mr. Wickham, had he properly secured his pistol that night, would have suffered anything worse than a bruised nose. In short, Mr. Darcy, I do not blame you for Mr. Wickham’s death, because I do not believe that you are at fault.”
Silence reigned for one sweet moment, and then, he dropped to his knees.
She gasped and stepped back, but he reached for her hand. “Elizabeth—”
Elizabeth! Stunned, she took another step away from him, away from this strange figure, half-dressed, half-wild, who stared at her with an intensity that stole her very breath.
“Elizabeth, wait.”
She did not wait. She ran.
Darcy stayed there, in the dirt, his head bowed, for many minutes. He thought of all the Elizabeth Bennets he had known. The intriguing, infuriating one he had met in Hertfordshire, who had allured and imperiled him, in turn. The fantasy he had concocted on the continent, who had listened to every syllable of his nonsense and loved him nonetheless. And this one, this captivating one here at Pemberley, who was every bit as enchanting as the others, but close enough to touch.
This Elizabeth who cared for his sister and challenged him in his own house, this Elizabeth who did not blame him for Wickham’s death.
Of the many revelations he had heard in that conversation, this was by far the most unexpected. He had spent these long months imagining the real Elizabeth resented him, cursed him for the hand he’d had in Wickham’s death. He imagined her as broken-hearted as Georgiana, mourning a separation all the more painful for being eternal.
And yet, all this time, the two ladies had forged together a new understanding—of their feelings about Wickham… and about Darcy himself.
He heard her cry out sharply from somewhere in the forest. In a flash, he was on his feet and running into the woods. His lungs, so used to the thin mountain air, allowed him to race easily after her. In a moment, he had found her, her white muslin dress a beacon against the moss and leaves.
Elizabeth had stepped through the undergrowth around the gnarled roots of an ancient tree, and her foot had gotten stuck. Even now she struggled to pull herself free, fluttering, like a little white bird in a trap.
“Allow me,” he found himself saying, and she whipped around to glower at him.
“I can manage.” She made another effort, and only dropped further into the earth.
“You are already tearing your hem. Please—I have months of experience avoiding crevasses. I know best how to turn one’s foot out of a hole in the ground.”
She sat back. “Very well.”
He picked his way over to her and knelt at her side. “I will have to touch you.”
“I concluded such.” Her tone was flat.
“Have you harmed your ankle? Scrape
d your leg?”
“No. No, it doesn’t hurt. It is only trapped.”
He reached for her calf, swathed in damp and clingy white muslin. Her muscles were evident beneath the material, slim but powerful. He was not altogether surprised, not about a woman who liked walking as much as Elizabeth did. He recalled the time she had walked across three miles of muddy fields to visit her sister at Netherfield. The Bingley sisters had been appalled by the dirt on her petticoat, but all he’d seen was the glow on her face and the spark in her warm brown eyes.
His fingers slid down to her ankles. She was holding her breath and staring in fixed fascination at his hand as it disappeared beneath the roots.
By touch, he found her foot, wedged beneath yet another unseen twist of root. “I will turn your foot a quarter to the right. You must help me, or you will hurt yourself further.”
She gave the tiniest of nods. They turned her foot, and he slid it from beneath the root.
As soon as she was free, Elizabeth scampered away, until she rested against another root, batting uselessly at the dirt which smeared the lower portions of her dress.
“Are you hurt?” Once again, he did not care about the state of her clothes. All he could see was Elizabeth.
“No, I just…” After a moment, she gave up, and dropped the hem. She folded her arms and looked about her, at the wide, overhanging branches and knotted wood.
“Oh,” she breathed. “This is—”
“Yes.” Funny that she should come here, of all places. “The Pemberley yew.”
Chapter 25
Elizabeth could not deny that there was a part of her which hoped sometime during her visit to Pemberley to discover the yew Mr. Darcy had mentioned on that day, long ago. She had not realized the tree would be so far off the path. It was, she must admit, even more breathtaking than the one in the field near Meryton. Perhaps because it had been allowed to flourish in this old wood. She could imagine everything here had been standing since time immemorial—the rocks and trees and the strange man whose shirtsleeves billowed as he walked along the maze of roots as lightly as a sprite.
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