As he led her into the inn, Elizabeth found her voice. “Mr. Darcy, while I appreciate your intervention, I cannot accept?—”
“Miss Bennet,” he interrupted. “I understand your hesitation, but this is not the time for social niceties. The storm is worsening, and you have nowhere else to go. The company here…” He glanced toward the men in the taproom who were still leering at her.
Elizabeth swallowed hard. He was right, and they both knew it.
She was acutely aware of her bedraggled appearance. Her traveling dress was soaked through, and her bonnet hung limp and useless. Darcy, meanwhile, managed to appear distinguished even in his rain-soaked state, as if the storm had been merely an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe.
“If I may ask,” he said, “how do you come to be in such circumstances? Where is your family? Your traveling companions?”
Elizabeth lifted her chin, determined to maintain what little dignity remained. “They abandoned me here. By design, it seems. My refusal of Mr. Collins’s proposal has cost me my home.”
Something dangerous flashed in Mr. Darcy’s eyes, but his voice remained controlled. “Your family cast you out for refusing an unwanted marriage?”
“My mother did. My father permitted it. They hired a coach to take me to my uncle’s house in London, but apparently the driver was paid only enough to bring me this far.”
Mr. Darcy said nothing, and Elizabeth feared she had revealed too much—shown him just how little the Bennet family was worth in both finances and character.
“Then it is fortunate that I happened to stop here tonight,” he said. “I will not see you turned out into a December storm.”
The kindness in his voice was almost her undoing. For two days, she had maintained her composure in the face of her family’s rejection, had held her head high as she was bundled into a hired coach and sent away like an unwanted package. Abandoned and penniless, had Darcy not stepped in, those men who approached her would have made sport of her.
“I fear,” she said, her voice low, “that I am not quite the lady you once thought me.”
“On the contrary,” he replied, and something in his dark eyes made her breath catch. “I begin to think I never truly knew what manner of lady you were at all.”
She could not decipher his meaning. Was this a compliment orcriticism? The Mr. Darcy of Hertfordshire assemblies would surely have thought less of her for being in such a compromised position. Yet the man before her now looked at her with something that resembled admiration.
The innkeeper reappeared. “Your trunk’s been taken up, sir. And I’ve had hot water and food sent to your room as well.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Darcy said. “We will retire now.”
We.The word hung in the air between them, laden with implications neither of them could ignore. The moment they stepped into that room together, unchaperoned, her reputation would be compromised beyond salvation. Marriage would be the only honorable recourse—for both of them.
Mr. Darcy seemed to read her thoughts. “Miss Bennet,” he said as they followed the innkeeper up the stairs, “I am well aware of the impropriety of this situation. You should know that regardless of what happens tonight—even if we maintain perfect propriety—your reputation, and indeed mine, will be considered compromised by our society’s standards.”
“I am aware,” she replied, surprised by the steadiness of her own voice.
“Then you understand that the honorable course—the only course open to me as a gentleman—would be to offer marriage, should you find such an arrangement acceptable.”
The directness of his statement took her aback. Here was proud Mr. Darcy, who had once found her merely “tolerable,” now speaking of marriage as an inevitability. Not because he wished it, but because circumstance demanded it.
“Mr. Darcy,” she said carefully as they climbed the narrow stairs, “I would not have you sacrifice yourself on the altar of propriety for my sake. I am perfectly capable of?—”
“It is not a sacrifice, Miss Bennet,” he interrupted, his voice low to prevent the innkeeper ahead of them from overhearing. “It is my duty as a gentleman. More than that, it is what any man of honor would do.”
Duty. Honor.Not love or affection or even particular regard. She should have expected nothing more, yet something within her—some foolish, romantic part she thought she had long subdued—felt the sting of disappointment.
They reached a door at the end of a dim corridor. The innkeeper unlocked it, handed the key to Mr. Darcy with a knowing smirk, and departed with unseemly haste.
Mr. Darcy stood aside, allowing her to enter first. The room was modest but clean—a bed that dominated the small space, a washstand, a hearth with a small fire, and a single chair. A window rattled in its frame as wind hurled rain against the shutters.
“It is not much,” Mr. Darcy said, closing the door behind them, “but it is secure.”
Elizabeth stood awkwardly in the center of the room, alone with a man she barely knew, in his bedchamber, with the door closed. She was well and thoroughly compromised. Her reputation ruined.
But what did this mean for him? To marry someone he did not respect. A country miss whose station was beneath him. A fallen woman, left alone at a coaching inn.
“Mr. Darcy, I understand fully the position into which fate has thrown us, but I would not hold you to any obligation. You have not chosen this.”
