The entire world had narrowed to this single room and the emotions that consumed him. Nothing else seemed to matter, not estate business or the social niceties that typically governed his behaviour.
Food held no appeal and his stomach had become a tight knot impervious to hunger.
A knock interrupted his brooding sometime mid-morning.
Richard’s voice carried through the door. “Darcy? Might we speak?”
“Go away.”
“I am concerned—”
“I said go away.”
Darcy stared at the letter spread before him, its words no more enlightening on what must have been the twentieth reading than they had been on the first.
Another knock arrived shortly after. It was Lady Matlock this time, her tone gentle with maternal concern.
“Fitzwilliam, dear, you have not eaten all day. Please allow me to bring you something, even if you will not come out and join us.”
“I am not hungry.”
“Even so, you must maintain your strength.”
“Please leave me alone.” The pleading tone that coloured his words bothered him but it could not be helped. In a way, he was indeed pleading for peace and quiet.
She departed with audible reluctance. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until colours bloomed behind closed lids. He was being unreasonable. He could recognise his own irrationality with the detached part of his mind that remained capable of objective observation.
But the alternative of facing his family’s pity, their well-meaning advice that could not possibly help because they did not understand, not in practice, seemed unbearable.
Lord Matlock tried next, his approach more direct.
“This sulking serves no purpose. Come out, discuss the matter rationally, and allow clearer heads to provide perspective.”
“I require no perspective beyond what the facts provide.”
“The evidence may be susceptible to interpretation.”
“Good day, Uncle.”
Then Arthur arrived. He deployed the sort of honesty that made him at once a desirable confidant and an uncomfortable one.
Even Lady Catherine knocked, her tone full of concern. “I take no pleasure in being proven correct, nephew, but you must now face the reality I attempted to illuminate. The sooner you accept this truth and take appropriate action, the better for you.”
“Leave me alone.”
She huffed indignantly but departed, her footsteps sharp with offended dignity that suggested she would make her displeasure known to anyone willing to listen.
Darcy returned to pacing, to staring at rain that had finally ceased, leaving everything grey and dripping. Evening shadows lengthened across the study. He lit candles, then stood watching flames flicker as his mind offered no resolution or escape from his anguish. He felt hollowed out, scraped raw, as if hurt, anger and love had taken turns carving pieces out of him until nothing remained but aching emptiness.
There was another knock, lighter this time and more tentative than the others had been.
“I told you to leave me alone.”
“I know. But I brought food. You have not eaten all day, and your family is concerned. As am I.”
She was here. Standing just beyond the door, close enough that he could hear her breathing if he strained to listen. She was close enough that opening the door would bring them face to face for the first time since he had asked, begged even, for her to leave him alone while he attempted to understand evidence that seemed to destroy everything he had believed about her.
He should tell her to go. But he remained silent, frozen between the desire to see her and the fear of what seeing her might make him feel. He stood between the need for answers and the dread that those answers might destroy what fragile hope remained that this was all some terrible misunderstanding.
