The rest fell into a tangle of breath and regret, her apology swallowed by rising tears.
Darcy gave her a quiet, almost melancholic smile.
“I just thought you deserved the truth,” he said. “And I want to thank you. For listening and for taking down the article.”
Then he stood.
She watched, frozen, as he walked toward the door.
Her voice cracked as she looked up. “You’re leaving?”
“I didn’t come expecting anything,” he said, hand resting on the doorframe. “But I owed you this.”
He paused.
“If nothing else… thank you for letting me say it.”
Then he stepped into the hallway and was gone, leaving behind only silence, a racing heart, and the ache of truths that sometimes arrive too late.
Chapter FOURTEEN
“LIZZY, YOUshould come down for breakfast,” Mr. Bennet called up the stairs, his voice still carrying that same easy drawl he used on stage—like he was warming up before a set.
Elizabeth blinked awake. A lazy morning light filtered through her curtains, and for a moment, she forgot where she was. Then she remembered: Shelburne, Vermont, her parents' home, a month away from the chaos that had happened to her in New York.
She sighed, swung her legs off the bed, and paused in front of the mirror, her eyes meeting the tired version of herself staring back. It had been a month since Mr. Darcy’s truth-telling in her New York apartment, and there were mornings when she still felt half pulled back into that swirl of headlines, DMs, comments, accusations, and apologies. Other days, it all felt distant, like it had happened to someone else entirely.
The shame of her mistake, the weight of what she’d done, and the quiet heartbreak that lingered were what convinced her a trip home might clear her head. It hadn’t.
She found her slippers and padded down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mr. Bennet stood at the counter, spreading jam on toast with the focus of a man who approacheddomesticity as a competitive sport. The smell of casserole filled the space, obviously coming from the microwave. Kitty sat at the table, her hair still mussed from sleep, cradling a mug with both hands. She had arrived a few days earlier to check in on their parents and was set to leave in two. Mary, who still lived at home, sat ramrod straight with an earnest expression, reading the morning paper as if it were scripture.
Mrs. Bennet was already at the table, eyes bright with that particular brand of enthusiastic mother energy.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” she began before Lizzy even reached her seat. “Did you see the internet ruckus this morning? I told your father, I said, people still talking about that article of yours.”
Elizabeth forced a polite smile and slipped into her chair.
“It’s been over a month, Mama,” she said evenly, “and I took it down.”
Mrs. Bennet set down her tea with a tiny sigh. “Taken down or not, my dear, you went up against a billionaire. How could you ever think to be free of that stench? Now no one will want to marry you. You know what people say about women who go after rich men.”
Elizabeth blinked.
Mr. Bennet chuckled without looking up. “My dear, she didn’t go after him. She wrote a story.”
Mrs. Bennet batted her hand at him. “Tom, you don’t understand the social optics of it. If she goes against a billionaire, how is she ever supposed to find a man who will tolerate that? When she goes against someone powerful, who could love her?”
Mr. Bennet looked to Kitty, eyebrows raised. “Well, Kit — what do you think? Should we start boarding up the windows in case offended billionaires begin pelting us with lawsuits… ordo we wait for Parliament to pass an emergency bill banning Elizabeth Bennet from ever writing again?”
Kitty snorted into her tea. Elizabeth let out a reluctant laugh despite herself. Mrs. Bennet rolled her eyes while Mr. Bennet smiled with reckless abandon.
When the laughter died down, Kitty blinked. “Have you spoken to him since then?”
Elizabeth pinched her lips together. “What am I supposed to say? I nearly ruined the reputation of a good man. Even after I deleted the article, people still talked. His PR team must have worked overtime to clean up the mess I started. The only thing I could do was write that follow-up piece clearing his name, and my own article exposing that scoundrel Wickham.”
Mary looked up from her paper, glasses perched at the tip of her nose. “And what has become of Mr. Wickham now?”
