“So you allowed me to believe…” Darcy’s voice trailed off, his expression hardening as the implications sank in. “You watched me struggle with my feelings for you, believing you compromised by another man, and said nothing?”
“I tried, in a hundred small ways,” Elizabeth replied, a crack in her heart widening. “But you were so certain of your own understanding, so convinced of my reduced circumstances, that you could not see the truth before your eyes.”
Darcy’s breathing had become shallow and rapid. He pressed a hand against his temple. “But… the attack… I cannot remember…” his voice broke entirely.
“You cannot remember,” Elizabeth finished for him. “Yes, I understand. What I cannot understand is how the same man who once held me through a storm-lashed night and promised to protect me could stand in this very room and offer me charity as if I were a fallen creature grateful for his condescension.”
Tears sparkled in her eyes, though her voice remained steady. “The man I married saw my worth when I was truly fallen—cast outby my family, with nothing but the clothes on my back and no prospects beyond the charity of strangers. He did not offer me his protection grudgingly or with the expectation of gratitude. He offered it freely, as one equal to another, because he believed I deserved better than the world was prepared to give me.”
“Elizabeth,” Darcy began, reaching for her hand, but she stepped back, maintaining the distance between them.
“That man,” she continued, her voice growing softer but no less devastating, “respected me enough to believe I would not throw myself at any gentleman who showed me attention. He knew my character well enough to trust that my affections, once given, were not bestowed lightly or withdrawn easily.”
“I never meant?—”
“What you meant, Mr. Darcy, matters considerably less than what you said. And what you have said, with perfect clarity, is that you consider me a fallen woman in need of redemption through your generous intervention.”
Elizabeth fastened the chain about her neck once more, the ring disappearing beneath the fabric of her dress. “I find I must decline your generous offer of marriage, Mr. Darcy. I am already married, you see. To a man who once respected me enough to believe in my virtue without requiring proof of it.”
Darcy’s composure cracked entirely, and tears shone in his eyes. “Elizabeth, I… forgive me, I did not understand… Surely we can begin again. I bear true affection for you.”
The plea in his voice nearly undid her resolve, but Elizabeth stood firm. “For William’s sake, I will acknowledge our marriage publicly. He deserves his birthright, and I will not allow your injuries to rob him of what is rightfully his. But do not mistake legal acknowledgment for reconciliation, Mr. Darcy. The Fitzwilliam Darcy I married respected me. You, sir, are not that man.”
“Elizabeth, please?—”
“For William’s sake, we will present a united front to the world,”she said quietly. “But the heart you once claimed now lies beyond your reach.”
With that, she turned and walked from the room, her steps measured and her back straight despite the trembling in her limbs. Only when she had reached the sanctuary of her chamber, door firmly closed behind her, did Elizabeth allow the tears to fall.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE MAN SHE MARRIED
Darcy stoodimmobile in the drawing room long after Elizabeth had departed, her words echoing in the hollowness of his chest.I am already your wife.Four simple words that had shattered the foundations of everything he believed about himself, about her, and about the child who called him “Da-see” with such natural affection.
The signet ring—his father’s ring, the one he had searched for frantically upon awakening from his long unconsciousness—had been with Elizabeth all along. Not stolen by highwaymen as he had been led to believe, but given freely as a token of matrimony.
I married her.The thought circled his mind like a wounded bird, unable to find purchase among the fragments of his broken memories.William is my son.
His legs gave way beneath him, and he sank back onto the settee, staring at his hands as if they might somehow provide confirmation of a past he could not recall. These hands had placed a ring on Elizabeth’s finger. These same hands had held her close through their marriage night. These hands had loved her and promised her protection.
“My God,” he whispered into the empty room. “What have I done?”
He had offered charity to his own wife.
His wife. The woman who wore his ring against her heart, who had borne his child in exile, who had endured months of social ostracism rather than abandon the sacred vows they had exchanged. The woman he had just insulted beyond any possibility of forgiveness.
The full weight of his humiliation descended upon him, crushing in its enormity. He had patronized his own wife, offered to make his legitimate son a ward, presented his proposal as an act of magnanimous charity rather than the renewal of existing vows.
The Fitzwilliam Darcy I married respected me. You, sir, are not that man.
A sound escaped him then, something between a laugh and a sob. The cruel irony of his situation would be comical if it were not so devastating. He had spent weeks battling his growing attachment to Elizabeth, believing her compromised by another man, only to discover that the mysterious father of her child was, in fact, himself.
How many times had William reached for him, called for him with that near-approximation of his name? How many times had he seen Elizabeth watching him with those fine eyes, hope and wariness battling in their depths? The signs had been there all along, but he had been too arrogant, too certain of his own understanding to recognize them.
A soft knock at the drawing room door interrupted his spiral of self-recrimination.
“Fitzwilliam?” Lady Eleanor’s voice carried the particular quality of concern he remembered from his childhood, when scraped knees and wounded pride had seemed the worst catastrophes imaginable.
