15. A Difference of Opinion #3
His fingers closed around the brim of his hat. “There are details I cannot give.”
“Cannot, or will not?”
“Elizabeth.”
Her name, spoken in such a tone, ought to have softened her. It nearly did.
But Mr. Wickham’s face yesterday had not been the face of a guilty man meeting his victim’s brother by surprise. It had been bewilderment first, caution second.
“You are not being honest with me,” she said.
Darcy flinched as if she had struck him.
“I am being as honest as I can.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.” Frustration roughened his reply. “It is not. But there are obligations beyond my own feelings.”
“I do not ask you to betray Miss Darcy’s confidence.”
“Then what do you ask?”
“That you acknowledge the difference between proof and certainty.”
His expression transformed, anger rising now because she had found the exact place where his confidence was weakest. “Can you not trust me?”
The question hung between them, too intimate for such a quarrel and too wounded to be dismissed.
Elizabeth looked down at her gloves. Her hands were trembling. She clenched them around the ribbons of her bonnet.
“No,” she said at last. “Not when your accounts differ so spectacularly.”
He drew back.
She hated the hurt she had caused. Hated more that she could not unsay it.
“I need time,” she added. “I must think. I must speak with my father and uncle. Perhaps there is some explanation neither of us can see.”
“I know what Wickham is.”
“You know what he was.”
“And you believe him changed?”
“I believe I have seen evidence of effort. That is not the same as innocence.”
Darcy stared at her. “You defend him.”
“I defend my right to judge for myself.”
A gust of wind moved across the hill, tugging at her bonnet ribbons and lifting loose strands of hair from her temple. Darcy looked away, then reached out with sudden care and took her hand.
Elizabeth did not pull back.
His fingers closed around hers, firm through the leather of her glove. The anger had not vanished from his face, but something else had come forward with it, more vulnerable and far less certain.
“I still wish to court you,” he said.
The words were plain and inelegant. They struck her harder for it.
“I know.”
“I have been looking forward to Hertfordshire since the day your carriage left Darcy House. Even when everything else became... difficult, the thought of seeing you again remained one of the few prospects I could bear to contemplate.”
Elizabeth’s throat closed. “Mr. Darcy.”
“I am glad to be here with you.” He glanced toward the fields, then back to her. “Even now. Even in this wretched quarrel.”
That drew a laugh from her, small and unsteady. “You make a strange courtship of it.”
“I have little practice.”
“I begin to suspect that.”
His thumb moved once over the back of her gloved hand, and then stilled as if he had caught himself in an impropriety. “Do not let Wickham divide us before I have even had the chance to be accepted by your family.”
“You fled my mother’s drawing room yesterday.”
“I said accepted, not tested beyond endurance.”
She looked up then, and despite confusion, disappointment, anger, and concern, the sight of him nearly undid her.
He was proud, stubborn, wounded, and withholding too much.
He was also the man who had been kind to her aunt and uncle, tender with his sister, awkwardly sincere in Hyde Park, and unable to conceal that her opinion mattered.
“I do not wish to be divided from you,” she said.
The relief in his face was painful to behold.
“But I will not condemn Mr. Wickham because you command it.”
His hand tightened before he released her. “I have never wished to command you.”
“No?”
“No. Though I suspect I shall often wish you easier to persuade.”
“That is much safer. You may wish it as much as you like.”
A faint humor touched his eyes, brief but welcome. “You will think on what I have said?”
“I will.”
“And you will be cautious?”
“With Mr. Wickham?”
“With your sister. With your family. With yourself.”
Elizabeth nodded, because that much she could promise. “Yes.”
Darcy stepped back, propriety reclaiming the space between them. Below, his horse raised its head as if impatient with human complications.
“I should escort you home.”
“No.” She tied her bonnet more securely. “I would rather walk alone.”
His expression closed a little, but he bowed. “As you wish.”
“Mr. Darcy.”
He paused.
“I am glad you told me what you could.”
“It was less than you deserved.”
“Yes,” she said, because honesty seemed the only thing left to them. “It was.”
He accepted the rebuke with more humility than she expected.
Elizabeth directed her steps toward the path before her resolve failed. She walked away without looking back for several yards. Then, unable to help herself, she glanced over her shoulder.
Darcy remained where she had left him, hat in hand, framed against the open fields of Hertfordshire.
She faced forward again.
By the time she reached the lower path, she no longer knew which gentleman she believed.
Worse still, she was not certain belief would be enough.