She didn’t sacrifice enough, according to him. And he was absolutely right.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced. Darcy nodded, not even looking up from his book.
Usually within five minutes of hearing her say that, Darcy finished what he was doing and joined her. They would spend time in bed talking, and then trying to satisfy one another as much as possible without waking Sandra. But since Georgiana arrived, it took him far longer to come to bed. Everything about his behaviour made her unwilling to reciprocate if—notwhenlately, but onlyif—Darcy reached for her in the dark.
She just felt so angry. He had always said she mattered to him more than anything, even more than Pemberley. She was too hurt and angry to lie next to Darcy and know that not only was he not going to touch her, but that he looked back on choosing her and this life with regret. Elizabeth got ready for bed and snatched up her pillow and stormed back through their main room.
“Where are you going?” he said in a startled voice.
“I’m sleeping somewhere else.”
“What?” he exclaimed. They had never slept apart in thirteen years.
“Do I need to repeat it, Mr Darcy?”
His mouth gaped. “But…Georgiana is in the guest room.”
That was all he could say? Not ask her why. Not say that he had better plans for her tonight than sleeping, not that he couldn’t fall asleep without her, not that he wanted to talk through whatever the hell was bothering him about his sister.
Not that he was happy to live exiled in the twenty-first century if it meant he could be with her.
“There are six other fancy bedrooms in this giant house. I’ll sleep in one of them.”
“Um, they may not be comfortable.”
“It’s asacrificeI’m willing to make.”
“But the house opens at?—”
“I guess the tourists will have to wait!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Doesn’t Mummy usually take me to the bus on Fridays?”
“Yes, but I wanted a turn today,” Darcy answered with a smile as Sandra skipped along the lane. “What if Friday is the best day at the bus stop, and I have been missing all the fun?”
Sandra giggled. “It’s the same every morning. Mummy would have told you if Fridays were the cool days.”
He kept his smile in place, but his wife would not speak to him more than necessary. He had not even seen Elizabeth this morning. She had returned to their rooms while he was with Sandra and then hidden herself in their bathroom. She had called through the door to tell Sandra to have a good day, and he felt her implication that he was to have the worst day humanly possible.
Her sleeping in an entirely different part of the house had implied that as well.
Elizabeth was furious with him, and he could not blame her after what he had said about sacrifice. He was not pleased with her either, though. She expected him to encourage his sister without considering what that emotional connection would cost him. But then, in a fit of temper, he had thrown it in her face thathe gave up the era he was born in and everyone he ever loved to be with her.
He winced at the memory of what he had said. He had never even wanted her to live in the past and be less than she could be here. Elizabeth could not be the woman he loved in the nineteenth century, with all its restrictions and intolerances.
He had been trying to keep her from knowing how much the sudden appearance of his sister and this bond to his past hurt him. Acknowledging it to her would bring his pain to the fore, and she would assume he regretted his choices—and then he had said such a cruel thing. It was not as though he would be happier if she had undergone a similar loss. He never thought they had to settle some score of sacrifices between them.
“I wish we could ride to Lambton,” said Sandra, scuffing her feet along the lane.
Darcy reached down and took her hand, feeling its warmth and enjoying the connection. He never looked back on leaving with remorse before his daughter was born, and certainly would never do so now. “What would you ride: your bike or your pony?”
This led to a lengthy musing on the merits and challenges of both, but it all fell apart when he reminded her that whatever she rode would be abandoned on a Lambton street corner after she boarded the school bus.
She ran ahead happily when she noticed her friends at the bus stop, and Darcy let his mind wander. Anger touched his every thought. His wife had such aggrieved feelings toward him that she had slept in another room. But she equally frustrated him, with her always pushing him to engage with Georgiana even when every word and movement of his body announced he did not want to.
Did Elizabeth know how agonising it was to be needed by someone he had to abandon in order to have the happy life he had now?
