When he did, his voice was low.
“I do not pity you.”
She shook her head. “You cannot help it.”
“I can,” he said.
She remained unconvinced by his account. That was the worst of it. She wanted to. But she could not.
“I think you had better return inside,” she said, her tone cooling. “Your absence may be remarked upon.”
“And yours?”
“I am accustomed to being remarked upon,” she replied.
He took a step toward her.
She stepped back.
The distance between them widened.
Elizabeth lifted her chin. “Please, Mr. Darcy. Do not make this more difficult than it already is.”
Something in her voice—something strained, something unguarded—seemed to halt him more effectively than any refusal.
He inclined his head.
“As you wish.”
She departed without further delay. She turned and made her way back toward the house, her steps measured, her composure drawn tightly about her once more.
Only when she reached the door did her breath falter.
Only then did she allow herself to feel the full weight of what had passed.
And the fear that she had been right all along.
Darcy remained where she had left him.
For several moments, he did not move at all. The air about him felt altered, though nothing in the landscape had changed. The same damp breeze stirred the branches overhead and the same muted light filtered through the clouds. Yet the stillness pressed upon him with a weight he could not immediately dispel.
He replayed her words with unwelcome clarity.
I do not want your pity.
The accusation struck more deeply than any open reproach might have done. Not because it was delivered with anger, though there had been some of that, but because it revealed something he had not fully accounted for.
She believed it.
Not merely in the moment, not merely as a defense against discomfort. She believed that his regard—his growing, unsteady, increasingly difficult-to-ignore regard—was born of pity.
Darcy drew a slow breath and let it out.
He could not dismiss her reaction as unreasonable. He had spoken, more than once, of what she had endured, of what she had overcome, and he had meant it as admiration. As respect. As acknowledgment of strength where others might have faltered.
Yet to her, it was something else.
He closed his eyes briefly.
