Elizabeth needed help. He did not know how to give it.
Her father did not know enough to see the shape of what was happening. Wickham knew enough to be dangerous. And he himself—he stood at the centre of something that grew worse the more carefully he tried to manage it.
Darcy turned back to Bingley. “I do not know how much to tell you.”
Bingley’s brows rose slightly. He did not interrupt.
“There are… histories,” Darcy continued. The word tasted inadequate. “Family traditions. Matters long obscured by time and carelessness. I believed them—until recently—to be little more than metaphor.”
Bingley’s expression did not change, but something in his attention sharpened.
“What I know now,” Darcy said, choosing each word with care, “is that Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s health is not… entirely her own concern. Nor, it seems, is mine.”
Bingley let out a small, incredulous breath. “Darcy—”
“I am aware how it sounds.”
“Yes,” Bingley said faintly. “You are.”
Darcy waited for the laugh. For the indulgent smile. For the gentle dismissal he had prepared himself to endure.
None came.
Instead, Bingley leaned back against the desk, arms folding loosely across his chest. “If this were any other man,” he said slowly, “I should think it a grand invention. The sort of tale people tell themselves to lend consequence to unfortunate choices.”
Darcy said nothing.
“But you,” Bingley went on, “are not inclined to invention. Nor to drama. Nor to indulgence in nonsense.” He shook his head slightly. “And I have seen things these past weeks that do not sit comfortably with ordinary explanation.”
Darcy stared at him.
Bingley met his gaze without flinching. “So—suppose I credit you this much. Suppose I accept that something is amiss, and that it involves you both. What, then, are we to do?”
Darcy turned away again, pacing the length of the study. The movement sent another sharp protest through his chest; he slowed but did not stop.
“I wish I knew,” he said at last.
He halted near the window, one hand braced against the sill. Outside, the grounds lay quiet beneath the night sky, undisturbed now, as though nothing had ever trembled there at all.
“All I know,” Darcy said, his voice lower than before, “is that I am bound to Elizabeth Bennet in a manner I do not fully understand. That my presence fortifies her. That hers undoes me.” He swallowed. “And that whatever is required of us… is not something I can survive unchanged.”
Bingley watched him in silence.
Darcy did not look back. “It is some sort of a union,” he said, because there was no plainer word that did not lie. “One my heart wants. My soul requires. And my mind knows will be my own ruin.”
He closed his eyes—not in despair, but in weary acknowledgement.
“That,” he said quietly, “is the extent of my certainty.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Jane broke the rollneatly in two and passed the smaller portion across the table.
Elizabeth took it without appetite. The morning room was bright—too bright, perhaps—with winter sun striking the pale panelling and making the silver pot gleam as though nothing had happened in the night. The windows in this room stood intact. The walls bore no cracks. It was precisely the sort of calm that felt earned rather than natural.
Miss Bingley had not appeared.
“She sent word that she had a headache,” Jane said mildly, pouring tea. “And that she preferred to take it upstairs.”
