Still angry with him, she swallowed an indecent reply about what she wished they had spent those three months doing. Darcy’s outdated sense of honour hadn’t let him so much as kiss the cheek of a woman he couldn’t marry.
“Well, you spent nearly a month recovering from a severe case of diphtheria.” It took weeks for him to get his strength back to climb the stairs easily.
“And learning how to live in a wondrous place.”
That couldn’t be genuine enthusiasm. She thought he meant astonishing and inexplicable rather than marvellous. “It wasn’t all good. You learned horrific things about the modern world after nearly dying.”
He sighed, like her attitude disappointed him. “The antibiotics worked. Sandra’s bout with chicken pox was worse.”
It wasn’t, and she was about to remind him he could have died even with the antibiotics, but he grabbed their bag andbrought it upstairs. Darcy always brushed off how close he had come to dying. Was it because he wanted to look brave in her eyes or because he was from a time where one was more likely to die from some illness no one nowadays thought twice about?
As she heard him moving around upstairs, she wondered if they would sleep in separate bedrooms like they had when they were last here. She crossed her arms over her chest. When she last stayed in this house, she fell more in love with Darcy every day—and every day brought her closer to parting with him forever.
She had been eager then for any hint that he loved her back, while he couldn’t bear the heartbreak of showing her any affection when he had to leave her forever.
Elizabeth fell onto one of the couches in the lounge, suddenly exhausted by the distance between them. She knew what it was like to live thinking she would never see Darcy again, and she knew the despair of thinking he would die. Her husband brought her here to make things right between them. Being angry and silent wouldn’t help, and life was too short for grudges.
He came down the stairs and stood in front of her, looking like he had gathered some courage upstairs and was finally ready to speak.
“Elizabeth, I said an unkind thing yesterday, and I am exceedingly sorry. I never wanted you to forgo a single thing for my sake, or make you believe that I wished that you had. I wholeheartedly chose this life and will never again mention what I left behind.”
She stared at him, waiting for him to say more, but he didn’t. He might as well have bowed at the end of it and then wished her good health. She often found his slips into his former manner charming, even sexy, but not this time.
“That was a succinct Regency apology.” She wondered how hard it was in general for a man born in 1784 to admit an error to a woman. “Very austere.”
His shoulders fell, and he paced. “Elizabeth, what do you need from me? I certainly never wanted you to go back to 1811 or expected any sacrifice from you. I said a senseless thing that I regretted the moment I said it.”
“Then why did you say it?” she whispered. It had just driven further into her soul her fear that she wasn’t worth what he gave up.
“Because Georgiana’s return has brought to mind every single thing and every single person I left behind,” he said with pain in his voice. “I was thinking aboutmysacrifices, not wishing that you had made more.”
“It felt like you wish I did.” She had considered going back in time to him, but she had been too afraid of a world where she would have been chattel if not for a husband like Darcy. A daughter’s life would have been far more treacherous. “We both know I gained more than you did.”
Darcy tilted his head. “What?”
Elizabeth rose and sidled away from the confused expression on his face. “How important was the house?” she threw over her shoulder at him. “Would you have come back for me if you hadn’t set up a plan to reclaim Pemberley?”
“My hope of living again at Pemberley and having a twenty-first-century identity were second to being with you.” She heard the annoyance in his voice and kept her back to him. Sometimes, it was just too hard to believe she alone was worth it.
“If there was no identifying record awaiting me,” he went on, “we would have managed without it. But I wanted to legally marry you. I wanted better for you than an existence full of fear if I had not one document to prove my identity. You remember how nervous you were for anyone to learn I didn’t have a way toprove I belonged here. I could not even enter a nightclub. Did you want a lifetime of that anxiety?”
She whirled around and the words burst from her chest. “No, but you can’t deny that you gave upeverything.”
He threw open his hands. “And?”
“And I feel guilty!”
Now he looked utterly perplexed. “Why?”
“Because I never mattered to anyone before I met you. I still can’t believe you came back just for me. I got to stay hereandhave you, Fitzwilliam,” she said, her voice breaking, “and it doesn’t seem fair to me, so how can it feel fair to you?”
She wished they were at home so she had a forty-by-twenty-foot ballroom to pace in rather than this tiny lounge where there was no escaping his devastated look.
“Leaving was my choice,” he stammered. “Our life here…it is not a zero-sum game. Do you think of our marriage as having two sides, one the loser and one the winner? And that I must have lost because I came here?”
“Of course you lost,” she cried as tears fell. “You lost everything!”
“You insist it was a loss, but it does not mean I gained nothing here.” She shook her head and then heard him swear. She turned to look at him and saw a darkness settle in his eyes. “Why would you think I wanted the damn house more than you?”
