Elizabeth crossed the living room, her brain scrambling to shape the words she’d use.
"I thought I left a message saying I had a work emergency. You should—"
She opened the door.
And froze.
It wasn’t Jane.
It was Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Still in the same black suit he’d worn at Bingley’s dinner. Tie loosened now. Hair slightly mussed. And eyes that looked—
Haunted.
Her mouth parted, but nothing came out. Her voice had abandoned her.
"Mr… Mr. Darcy," she managed, heart thudding. "What… why… what is the—"
He raised a hand, slow and calm.
"If you won’t be in a haste to ask me to leave—and I will, if you do—I came to tell you the truth. Just that."
She stared at him.
"The truth?"
He nodded. "My side. What really happened. And then I’ll go. You can do whatever you want with it."
Elizabeth hesitated. Then stepped back.
"Will it be too much if we could sit?" he asked. "I don’t think you’d prefer to have this conversation standing by the door."
She swallowed, then gave a small, reluctant.
They moved to the living room. Darcy didn’t sit until she did. He looked out of place there, among her throw pillows and worn books.
"How did you find my house?" she asked, suddenly.
He hesitated. "Jane."
Elizabeth blinked, startled by the vulnerability in his tone Her eyes narrowed. "She gave you my address?"
"You’d forgive her if you knew how hard she resisted," Darcy said quickly. "But she agreed that I owed you this. She was right."
Elizabeth crossed her arms. "So? Talk."
He exhaled slowly.
"For the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to convince myself to move on from what happened between us. I told myself it was better this way. Cleaner. But seeing you tonight—seeing you walk out the moment I came back into the room after my call—I realised I couldn’t leave things like that."
His voice was steady, but it trembled faintly at the edges.
"To address the elephant in the room: George Wickham. You asked about him at the café. Yes, I do know him. We grew up together. When you said your 'source' told you about him, Ihad to find out who that was. Because what happened between George and my family has been treated with the strictest confidence. Only a handful of people know the truth."
He hesitated, then added, "I asked my investigators to trace the leak. Tonight, I got a call confirming it was Wickham himself. He’s been using a fake account to comment on social media—that account’s email linked back to a Substack account that recently liked your posts."
Elizabeth lifted her chin. "It is within my professional ethics to protect my sources."
