Page 80 of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Exile

The room thinned. Charlotte whispered something to Elizabeth, pressed her hand briefly, and slipped out to the hall.

Mr. Bennet was the last to leave. He paused at the door and looked back at Darcy. He opened his mouth to speak. Darcy saw the gentleman’s regret clearly in his expression, but the words would not come. He shook his head and sighed. Darcy nodded at him. Their conversation would have to come on another day. Mr. Bennet sensed it, too. Looking away from Darcy, his gaze settled on his daughter. He sniffed, his eyes filling with tears before he stepped out and drew the door closed behind him.

The library was quiet. Elizabeth did not move from her chair. She sat with her hands folded in her lap precisely as she had sat through the reading, and she looked at Darcy across the room with an expression he could not read. The globe stood between them on its mahogany cradle, the faded oceans catching the light from the window.

Darcy rounded the desk and stopped a careful distance from her—close enough to speak, far enough to satisfy respectability. “Elizabeth.” And then, because he had no prepared speech and no strategy and nothing left to hide, “I owe you an apology.”

She looked up at him steadily. “Yes, you do. I am listening.”

CHAPTER 43

Elizabeth stood. Had she remained in her chair with her hands folded in her lap as though this were still the will reading, she would cry before she had asked a single question. And she had so many questions! She was already dangerously close to crying.

She tried anger instead. Anger was useful. It kept her upright. “Why did you not tell me?” Her voice sounded less steady than she liked.

He still stood where he had stopped, but the expression he wore was unexpected. She had braced herself for eloquence, for the diplomat’s practiced phrasing she had watched him deploy a dozen times at Longbourn. Instead, he looked the same as he had in the hallway after Jane’s cry had shattered everything: stripped bare, exposed. Honest.

“If I had told you—” He stopped. His jaw worked. “If I had introduced myself as Fitzwilliam Darcy, would you have allowed me to⁠—”

He did not finish the question. She did not need him to.

“No,” she said. “I would not.” She looked away, ashamed at the admission. But she expected complete honesty from him, and so she would give him nothing less.

How confident she had been all those years in the righteousness of her resentment. How certain that if she ever met the man her father had promised her to, she would see him clearly and judge him fairly. How easily she had lied to herself. She pressed her lips together and took a deep, shaky breath. “I would have avoided you. And when we were forced to speak, I would have seen only faults. I would have found them in everything you did, and I would have made up my mind about you before you had a chance to display your character.”

She had done exactly that with Robinson, only from the other direction. His impression was one of humility, hard work, and respect. She had looked at Darcy and saw the shadow of an arrangement she despised. Two names. One man. One she had loved and the other she had resented, and now she knew they were the same. The understanding, while accurate, was unhelpful and did nothing to ease the hurt in her heart. It made it more complicated, which was worse.

“I could not have expected otherwise,” he said quietly. “I do not feel myself worthy of your forgiveness, but I will apologize. From the depths of my being, I am sorry for keeping this secret from you. It was—” He exhaled. “I was afraid.”

“Afraid? Of me?” Her voice cracked. “Am I so terrifying?”

“No!”

“Have I not proved myself trustworthy?”

“The blame is mine. All of it. I am the one at fault.”

“Then explain to me why you did not tell me the truth!” She crossed her arms, trying to calm her breath, holding herself steady.

“I was afraid that if I presented myself to you as Darcy, you would have difficulty seeing beyond the obligation of our arranged marriage. I feared you would not see… me.”

Dressed and groomed as he was before her, like a gentleman of the upper crust and with a name amongst the first circles, she could not contradict him. She would have judged him. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and looked away, determined to let him explain.

“I had lived as Robinson for ten years. My life was real, and I built a reputation under that name, earned and without the benefit of being a Darcy. When I came to Longbourn—” He stopped again, seemingly choosing his words the way a man picks his footing on uncertain ground, testing each one before trusting it with his weight. “I needed you to see me. Not the inheritance, not the obligation, not the arrangement. Just me.” He stood, hands hanging down at his sides, head bowed, openly confessing, unreservedly apologizing, vulnerably admitting his fears to her. Elizabeth had to remind herself to breathe. “I cannot apologize sufficiently for my deception. I kept the truth from you, and I was wrong to do so. I will not ask you to excuse it, only hope that you might understand what I was afraid of losing.”

“What?” The word came out small, barely a whisper.

“You.” No preparation or performance, just one syllable that rocked Elizabeth to her core. “Your good opinion. Your laughter. The way you listened to me. The way you argued with me. I had never been seen that way before.” He looked at the floor; his hands balled into fists. “I was a coward. Selfish.”

Elizabeth uncrossed her arms. She had not decided to do so; her body made the decision before her mind caught up. “Was it your plan from the beginning?” she asked. “To come to Longbourn as Robinson?”

“No!” He looked up at that, with enough swiftness that she believed him. “When I landed and learned of my father’s death, I intended to turn around and board the next ship back to the continent. I believed my father had amended the will, had removed the arrangement entirely. It was the reason I had left in the first place.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I had been eighteen years old and furious, and I believed that if I left England and stayed away long enough, my father would have no choice but to change his will and give you your freedom. I thought I was being noble.” The word came out with a dry self-contempt that she recognized—that same precise edge he turned on himself when he thought he had not been good enough. “I gave myself everything you were denied. I had a choice. You did not. And I did not know, for ten years, that my leaving had not freed you at all.”

She was quiet for a moment. The fire settled in the grate. Through the window, the park lay still and pale under the November sky. “What made you stay?” she asked. “At Meryton. You said you intended to leave.”

Again, he rubbed his hand over his face, hesitating to reply. Finally, he shook his head like a man resigned to his fate. “You,” he said plainly. “I watched you redirect those boys at the market—turn their mischief into labor, their labor into praise—and I could not leave. Reynolds and Richard had suggested I observe from afar before I made any decision, and I had refused. Disguise of every sort is an abhorrence to me, and I had no intention of watching you when you did not have the same advantage.

“But then the King's Messenger arrived at the inn. He asked for directions to Longbourn. He named your father.” He held her gaze steadily. “And I understood immediately what it meant, and I could not go.”