“In believing that I had made myself understood.”
She turned her face a fraction more toward him. “You were understood,” she said. “I simply did not accept what you meant to convey.”
“That is precisely my point.”
She gave no answer.
Darcy leaned forward slightly, resting his hands loosely upon his knees, his gaze dropping for a moment before returning to her.
“You believe that I pity you.” It was not a question.
Elizabeth’s expression shifted, though only slightly. “I believe,” she said, “that you admire what you think I have endured.”
“And you equate that with pity.”
“I have seen no reason to distinguish between them.”
Darcy studied her for a long moment. “I must ask your patience,” he said at last, “for what I am about to say may not, at first, appear to answer your concern. But I believe it necessary.”
She inclined her head. “Very well.”
He did not speak immediately. The matter he meant to relate was not one he had shared lightly in the past, nor without cause.Yet something in her manner, in the insistence of her need to understand, compelled him forward.
“There was a gentleman,” he began, “who was raised in my father’s household. George Wickham.”
He saw the faint narrowing of her attention at the unfamiliar name.
“His father had long been in my father’s employ,” Darcy continued, “and from an early age, Wickham was treated with a degree of kindness that extended well beyond obligation. He was educated alongside me. We were companions in every sense that circumstance allowed.”
Elizabeth listened without interruption, her gaze fixed steadily in his direction.
“I considered him my friend,” Darcy said. “More than that. There was a time when I believed him as dear to me as a brother might have been.”
He paused, the memory not painful exactly, but not without weight.
“My father held him in high regard. He intended to provide for him, to secure his future in a manner that reflected that regard. There was, in his plans, a living—one that would have afforded Wickham a respectable and comfortable position.”
Elizabeth’s fingers eased their hold upon the handkerchief.
“What became of it?” she asked.
Darcy’s expression did not change. “Wickham chose to sell it.”
She drew a breath. “Why?”
“Because it did not satisfy him.” Darcy turned his gaze briefly toward the horizon before continuing. “During our schooling, his character altered. What I had once considered charm revealed itself, over time, to be something less reliable. He became… inclined toward excess. Disinclined toward discipline. I did not, at the time, believe it significant. Youth allows for a certain latitude.”
“And later?”
“Later,” Darcy said, “it became clear that I had been mistaken in that as well.” He returned his gaze to her. “After my father’s death, Wickham expressed his dissatisfaction with what had been left to him. He believed he had been promised more. That he had been treated unjustly in not being regarded as a second son.”
Elizabeth’s expression tightened slightly. “That seems… presumptuous.”
“It was,” Darcy replied. “And yet I did not immediately see it so. I believed his resentment to be temporary. That time and reason would correct it.” He shook his head faintly. “It did not.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“He chose to take the money offered in place of the living and departed for the Americas,” Darcy said. “I have neither seen nor heard from him since.”
