Caroline gaped.Closed her mouth.Opened it again.Her hands went first to her throat—no words there—then to her carefully arranged curls, as though proper speech might be hiding amongst the pins.All her prepared venom had evaporated; she looked exactly like what she was: a woman caught mid-cruelty by the very man she hoped to impress.
Darcy's expression remained unchanged, as though he'd commented on nothing more significant than the weather.The very blandness of his features made the cut deeper.
"If you'll excuse me, I have correspondence to attend to."
He turned without waiting for acknowledgment, his footsteps fading down the corridor with measured precision.
Caroline's gaze snapped to Elizabeth, and for one unguarded instant, pure hatred blazed in her eyes.Then she swept from the room, her skirts catching on the doorframe in her haste.The sound of ripping fabric followed her retreat.
Elizabeth sat frozen, her embroidery forgotten in her lap.The silence pressed against her ears.Darcy had defended her—publicly, decisively—against Caroline's cruelty.Yet he'd done it with such clinical detachment, as though correcting an error in arithmetic rather than protecting someone who'd spent the night in his bed.
He'd rubbed his seed into her flesh.Defended her.Then walked away as though she meant nothing at all.
The embroidery hoop slipped from her nerveless fingers, clattering against the floor.She didn't bend to retrieve it.
Elizabeth abandoned her embroidery where it had fallen, desperate for air that didn't taste of Caroline's perfume and accusations.The corridors blurred past as she fled toward the entrance hall, yanking her pelisse from its hook without waiting for assistance.
The December air struck like a slap.Ice glazed every surface, treacherous beneath her half-boots.Patches of snow clung to shadowed corners while mud churned where sun had touched the ground.She picked her way across the lawn, her breath clouding in rapid puffs.
Outside, the world had been scrubbed clean and merciless.Elizabeth stood in the middle of Netherfield's lawn, arms spread wide, face turned up to catch snowflakes on her tongue like she had as a child at Longbourn.If anyone watched from the windows, let them think her mad.Madness seemed infinitely preferable to the alternative—sitting in that stifling manor, pretending her body didn't still hum with muscle memory of Darcy's hands.
The December air scraped her lungs raw, each breath a small violence that cleared her head.She needed that clarity, needed something sharp enough to cut through the fog of the last few days.Everything had changed.Nothing had changed.She was an omega now—that fundamental truth rewrote her entire future—yet Darcy still looked through her as though she were furniture.
Her boots found a patch of virgin snow, and she crushed through it with vicious satisfaction.The ice beneath caught her heel, sent her stumbling, but she recovered without falling.Always recovering, never quite falling.The story of her life since arriving at Netherfield.
Wind whipped her skirts around her legs, tugged pins from her hair.She must look a fright—cheeks reddened, hair disheveled, pelisse buttoned wrong in her haste to escape.Caroline would be appalled.Darcy would find her lacking in propriety.
Good.Let them all find her lacking.She was tired of being found at all.
The cold bit through her pelisse, sharp enough to make her eyes water.Or perhaps that was something else entirely.She tilted her face toward the pewter sky, letting snowflakes catch on her lashes, melt against her overheated cheeks.Out here, she could blame the cold for the ache in her chest, the trembling in her hands.Out here, she could pretend she was still the same Elizabeth who'd rejected him at Hunsford—proud, independent, utterly in control of her own fate.
What a spectacular lie that had become.
Elizabeth gulped the winter air like a drowning woman breaking the surface.Better the bite of December than the slow suffocation of Netherfield's drawing rooms, where every breath tasted of her own humiliation.
Movement through bare branches—Bingley emerged from the copse, his greatcoat flapping.
"Lizzy!Thank heaven I found you.Jane sent me—she's quite concerned.This weather is far too bitter for walking."
Elizabeth's teeth chattered as she forced a smile."I needed air."
"Air you'll find aplenty indoors, I assure you."Bingley's good-natured face creased with worry."Jane will have my head if you catch your death.Please, allow me to escort you back."
She had no choice but to accept his offered arm."Any word on the bridge repairs?"
"Nearly complete, I'm told.Another day, perhaps two at most."He guided her around a particularly vicious patch of ice."Though I confess, having family here has been rather pleasant."
"Pleasant," Elizabeth repeated numbly."Yes."
The dining room that evening pressed against Elizabeth like a physical weight.Candle flames wavered in the overheated air, making shadows dance across the walls.Every scent assaulted her—Mrs.Hurst's lavender water, Mr.Hurst's port-soaked breath, the greasy mutton that turned her stomach.
And Darcy.
God, Darcy.
He sat directly across from her, close enough that each shift of his body sent fresh waves of dark chocolate and autumn leaves washing over her.When he reached for his wine glass, the movement stirred the air between them.Elizabeth's fork clattered against her plate.
"Lizzy?"Jane touched her wrist."You're flushed.Are you quite well?"
