He stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited.
***
Elizabeth came back down twenty minutes later.
She sat on the sofa. Not next to him. Across from him. She folded her hands in her lap and looked at him squarely.
"She said, and I quote," Elizabeth said, "you two do not prioritise me."
Darcy said nothing.
"She says she is tired of making allowances. Her parents always showed up and she knows she cannot have them back but she thought at least the two of us —" Elizabeth stopped. Started again. "She said she thought we would try at least." She exhaled. "However, I do show up. It is you who is always too busy to put people first."
"Elizabeth —"
She lifted a hand. Not unkindly. Just firmly.
"You want to know," she said. "You have always wanted to know. Why I left. Why I sent four lines and refused to talk to you about it since then."
Darcy went very still.
"You really want to know?" she said.
"Yes," he said. Simply. Just that.
Elizabeth looked at her hands. Then she looked at him.
"I met a man I thought was proud, selfish, full of himself. I kept seeing him around for a while. Then my wonderful friend convinced me he was not a terrible person. That I should givehim a chance. Well, I did." She paused. "One week into it, I was beginning to like him. Like genuinely like him. It felt good for that first week. And then it was excuses. Every day. Too busy to call. Too occupied to text. And I started thinking that perhaps I was not enough. That I was not matching up." She looked at him steadily. "You made me feel less than myself, Darcy. Like I was not keeping pace with you. Like I was somehow behind."
He held her gaze. He did not interrupt.
"Until I met a man," she said. "George Wickham."
Something moved across Darcy's face. Gone almost immediately. But she saw it.
"I see you recognise the name," she said. "He told me a lot. About how you stopped paying his tuition at Oxford after your father died because you had inherited everything and you were now the sole signatory to the account from which is university tuition was being drawn. He spoke about how you denied him the logistics firm your father had promised him. I mean, this is someone who had known you since childhood. How could you do that?”
She paused, as though waiting for him to say something. When he did not, she continued.
“He said a lot about how you looked at people who were not at your level—with a particular kind of contempt you were very good at hiding.”
Darcy remained silent, though the sound of him grinding his teeth became audible.
"I did not believe all of it," Elizabeth said. "But some of it landed. Because some of it felt like things I had already seen. The way you went quiet when I talked about my work. The way you criticised my articles sometimes without ever saying what was bad about them. There was one evening — I do not know if you remember — I was talking about a piece I was working on and you said something like: you spend a lot of time on this. And theway you said it —" She stopped. "It sounded like you thought I had too much time on my hands. Like freelance writing was what someone did when they had nothing more important to do."
"Elizabeth —"
"And then there was the disappearing," she said, not stopping. "Not ghosting exactly. But there were days, sometimes three straight days, where I would not hear from you. And when I asked about it you would say: I had things on. And I would say: you could have said. And you would say: I did not think you would mind." She looked at him steadily. "As if my time did not carry the same weight as yours." She exhaled. "And then Wickham's version of you arrived at exactly the same moment I was already feeling that way, and it all lined up, and I thought: I cannot marry a man like this. So, I sent the message. And I did not look back."
The room was very quiet.
"Eight years and I swore I made the right decision. However, In the past few weeks I was beginning to wonder if I had judged you too harshly," she said. "And then today happened. And I thought: I dodged a bullet. How do you forget a child's need within four hours? You are already a multimillionaire. Some more millions could not wait?"
Darcy stood. He crossed to the window. He looked at the street for a moment, giving her time. Then he turned.
"Lizzy." He said it quietly. "I am sorry. Deeply. I am sorry for Mia. And I will work on my commitment to her. That is not a discussion, it is a fact. I am also sorry for today, for disappointing you. I did not mean to. " He paused. "But I am not sorry about Wickham. Because there is another version of that story and you deserve to hear it."
Elizabeth lifted her eyes to him.
