He said it simply, without drama, the way he said things he had already made peace with at some point in the past and was now simply reporting. Bingley did not react with surprise because he was not surprised.
"I thought I had," Darcy continued. "Closed it. Filed it. It was eight years ago and it was a month and the way it ended was —" He stopped. "I thought I had put it down properly. And then James and Charlotte's will put us in the same house and it has been four weeks and I am walking into her bedroom at six in themorning to comment on her wardrobe so clearly I had not put it down as properly as I believed."
"No," Bingley said. Gently.
"It is possible," Darcy said, looking at the window, "that some of it is the grief. James. Charlotte. Being in their house every day. Feeling the weight of what they left behind. It makes everything feel —" He paused. "Closer than it should be."
"Maybe," Bingley said. "Maybe some of it is that. But Will." He waited until Darcy looked at him. "The heart wants what it wants. There is no shame in it."
Darcy looked at him for a moment. Then he looked back at the window.
"The heart," he said, "had better learn to recognise when something is not available to it." He picked up his pen. "Elizabeth does not want anything to do with me. Not in that way. She has made that consistently clear since the day we moved in. She even signed up to a dating service recently. She ends every conversation the moment it gets close to anything real." He set the pen down again. "I know that. I accept that. And when I have made peace with knowing it, I will have peace."
Bingley looked at him for a long moment.
"Is that what you tell yourself?" he said. Not unkindly.
Darcy did not answer.
Outside, Park Avenue continued fourteen floors below, indifferent and unhurried, and Bingley finished his coffee and did not say anything else about it, because he knew when Darcy had said everything he was going to say and when pushing further would only close the door.
He stayed another forty minutes and they talked about the company and Mia's history essay and whether Jane's suggestion about Thanksgiving was reasonable or not, and at no point did either of them mention Elizabeth again.
NINE
DARCY LET HIMSELF INTO THEapartment and shut the door behind him, the quiet of the place settling too quickly, too completely. He loosened his tie as he stepped further in, his mind still half-occupied with numbers, conversations, the residue of a day that had required precision.
Elizabeth was in the living room.
Not sitting. Not moving.
Standing in the middle of it, arms folded tightly across herself, as though holding something in place. Her face was flushed, not with embarrassment, not with anything fleeting, but with the kind of contained anger that had been given time to settle and sharpen.
Darcy slowed without meaning to.
There was a shift in the air, something already waiting for him.
“What did I do now?” he asked, attempting lightness and missing it entirely. “Is this about this morning?”
Elizabeth exhaled once, sharply, like she had been holding the words back and had finally decided not to anymore.
“You promised Mia you would take her to the museum today,” she said. “You didn’t show up.”
There was no accusation in her tone. That made it worse.
For a moment, his mind refused to supply context.
Then it did.
It was not gradual. It was immediate and absolute.
He had forgotten.
The realisation landed all at once, heavy and unforgiving, settling somewhere low in his chest.
Elizabeth saw it too because something in her expression shifted—not softer, not kinder, but more certain.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Exactly.”
