Chapter 2
Darcy had meant only to cross the upper passage and descend by the private stair, for he had returned sooner than expected and had no wish to interrupt the visitors whom Mrs. Reynolds was showing through the house.
But he had taken three steps past the turn that led towards the gallery when a voice reached him, low, startled, and impossible:“Mr. Wickham.”
Darcy stopped, and for one suspended moment he could neither move nor breathe.
Elizabeth Bennet was at Pemberley—in his house, within the gallery, speaking the name of the man whose deceit had stood between them like a blade.
Heat rose swiftly up his neck and into his face, and he stepped back into the shadow beside the turn, not from design, but from the same instinct that might make a wounded man recoil from a touch.
He ought to announce himself. He ought to withdraw. He did neither, for Mrs. Reynolds had asked if she knew the young man, and then Elizabeth answered, “I did. Or believed I did.”
The words went through him with a force that was nearly pain.
He stood still, every muscle held too tight, his gloved hand pressed against the carved edge of the wainscot. His heart beat with such violence that it seemed indecorous, a gross bodily confession where perfect silence was required.
She knew, then—she believed him now, or at least doubted Wickham, and though that knowledge should have relieved him, it brought with it a sharper shame.
What must she think of Darcy though? Did she suppose Mrs. Reynolds praised him from fear, or habit, or the blindness of a servant loyal to her master? Could any word spoken beneath his roof ever be accepted as truth by a woman to whom he had once offered insult in the form of devotion?
Mrs. Reynolds’s voice continued, composed and kindly, telling of his father’s generosity to Wickham, and Darcy’s face burned hotter.
To hear such family tenderness laid open while Elizabeth stood listening was almost unbearable, yet he could not retreat.
His throat ached with the restraint of it.
His father had loved Wickham; and Darcy himself had loved him, too, once, in the careless way of boyhood, before Wickham's charm had curdled into calculation and every recollection had become suspect.
Then Mrs. Reynolds spoke of him, and the praise struck him less as comfort than as accusation, for he remembered with merciless clarity the room at Hunsford, Elizabeth’s pale astonishment, her offended eyes, and his own words—so proud, so ungenerous, so certain of being accepted even while he declared the inferiority of all connected to her.
He had called his love a struggle and her family a degradation; he had made her stand before him, embarrassed and angry, while he wounded her and expected gratitude for the wound.
No letter, no matter how clearly written, could undo that, and no explanation of Wickham, however necessary, could erase the manner of his proposal.
Darcy had written because honour required it, because Elizabeth deserved the truth—but since that morning, he had lived with his own words like a stone lodged beneath the ribs.
He had eaten, ridden, spoken, attended to business, and all the while some part of him had remained in Kent, watching her refuse him with more justice than he had then been able to bear.
The voices in the gallery began to recede.
Footsteps moved over the floorboards, softer, then fainter, and Mrs. Reynolds directed the party onward with her usual measured civility.
Darcy remained where he was until the last echo diminished, though his body had already begun to move before his judgment consented.
His breath came shallowly; his palms felt damp within his gloves; his chest seemed too narrow for the pressure within it.
He did not know what he meant to do, he only knew he could not let Elizabeth Bennet pass through Pemberley like a vision, seen and lost, without one word spoken between them.
His feet carried him forward, he turned the corner into the gallery, where he saw the visitors disappearing around the far end, and he quickened his step with a suddenness that would have embarrassed him in any calmer hour.
At the next turn, he rounded the corner and collided with someone slight, warm, and startled—Elizabeth whirled with a gasp, and Darcy, reaching out by instinct, tried to catch her before she fell.