Page 38 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

"He did not ask."

"You did not let him ask."

He was silent. She cleaned the burn and oiled it and bound it up. Her hands were steady, and she was proud of that. She kept them steady by not looking at his face.

When she had finished, she let his arm rest on her knee a moment longer. It was heavy and warm. She wanted to keep it.

"Now," he said. "Your ankle."

"There is nothing you can do for it."

"There is a great deal I cannot do for it." He slid off the footstool onto the hearthrug. "But Mr. Jones's bandage has slipped from the hopping. I can see it from here."

It had. She had felt it give on the fourth hop.

He knelt in front of her chair. He lifted her heel with his wrists and set it on his thigh. He began to unwind the slipped bandage with his fingertips. They were all of him the linen left free. They were clumsy and slow, and she forgot to breathe.

He wound it back on badly. It went round too loose, then too tight, then in a lump over the bone. He frowned at it and started again. His fingertips brushed the arch of her foot, and she jumped.

"Did I hurt you?"

"No."

He looked up at her. She felt her face go hot.

The second attempt was worse than the first. He tied it off in a knot the size of a walnut. He sat back on his heels and studied it. "That," he said gravely, "is a very bad bandage."

"It is a terrible bandage." She was laughing, and her eyes were wet again. "I shall keep it."

He turned on the hearthrug and sat with his back against the side of her chair. His shoulder rested by her knee. He looked at the fire.

She looked at the back of his head. His hair was wild from the lane. She had washed it five days ago, with her fingers in it to the scalp.

She put her hand on it. He went still. Then he leaned his head back against her knee.

"Why did you never defend yourself?" she asked. "Last night. You let me say all of it. You let me believe it."

He was quiet so long she thought he would not answer. "Did you believe it?"

She thought. She owed him the truth. "I did not want to," she said. "I sat in my aunt's parlor and listened to every word. It was very well told. And I kept thinking of your hands." She stopped. "I had nothing to set against it. Only a fortnight of you. I did not know whether that was enough."

He looked into the fire. "To defend myself, I must speak of my sister," he said. "I could not do that. Not even to you."

"And now?"

"Now I have carried you a mile down a lane." He paused. "I find I would trust you with anything. Even her."

She waited. Her fingers lay still in his hair.

He told it to the fire. He told it plainly, in the voice he used when she read him his steward's letters. She thought perhaps it was the only voice he could tell it in.

"Mr. Wickham was my father's godson," he said. "That much is true. My father loved him, and paid for his schooling, and meant him for the church. He left him a living in his will, if he took orders."

"And you gave it to someone else."

"He did not want it." Darcy's voice did not change. "He wrote to me within six months of my father's death. He said he had no intention of taking orders. He asked for money instead, in lieu of the living. I gave him three thousand pounds. He resigned all claim to it in writing. I have the paper at Pemberley."

Elizabeth said nothing.