Chapter 15 #2
Darcy frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
Richard stopped beside him, slapping his gloves against his thigh. “You cannot be surprised. Every woman under that roof is talking about you—and Miss Bennet.”
The name struck like a blow. “What of her?”
“Oh, the usual nonsense at first.” Richard’s tone was light, but his eyes were wary. “Who will partner whom at the next game, which lady has caught your eye, and so on. But it’s turned uglier since breakfast.”
Darcy’s pulse quickened. “Ugly in what way?”
Richard hesitated, glancing toward the stable doors as if considering retreat. “I shouldn’t repeat it.”
“Say it.”
Richard sighed, his breath fogging in the cold. “It’s happened, then. They’ve begun on her sister. Openly—no one is being polite about it now.”
Darcy went still.
“I heard it myself,” Richard continued. “All those careful tongues that pretended not to know—loosened at last. And apparently, they had ample ammunition. It seems someone from the family had posted something in the papers trying to find the girl last August.”
Darcy swallowed. “Mrs. Bennet, in all likelihood. I saw the advertisement. One cannot fault the sentiment, I suppose…”
“But the means are another thing entirely, for the whole world seems to titter over it. They’re circling like crows, and Montford’s wife hasn’t the authority to silence them.”
For a moment, Darcy said nothing. The cold wind sliced across the yard, carrying the sharp scent of straw and horses. His hands closed slowly into fists.
“They dared,” he said at last. The words came low, as though forced through his teeth.
Richard gave a grim half-smile. “Dared, yes—and loudly enough that your Miss Bennet might have heard. I scarcely know how it escaped you, but I thought you should know before you walked in blind again.”
A muscle in Darcy’s jaw tightened. He turned from his cousin, staring out toward the frozen paddock, where the snow glittered too brightly to bear. “She is no part of that disgrace,” he said. “To repeat such talk in her hearing—”
“Darcy,” Richard interrupted gently, “if you storm in there and make a scene, you’ll only confirm every whisper. They’ll take it as proof that you’re besotted.”
Darcy’s breath came fast, burning in his chest. “Let them.”
Richard’s brow rose. “You’d rather hand them the truth on a silver platter?”
He faced him fully then, eyes fierce and unguarded. “If the truth is that I hold her in the highest esteem, then yes. Let them have it.”
For once, Richard had no ready jest. He only nodded at Darcy and strode past him, the wind tearing at his coat, his boots cutting a hard rhythm across the packed snow.
Darcy did not move. The cold cut through his coat, through his gloves, through every defence he had ever learned to keep between the world and himself.
He had said it—let them think what they pleased—and at the time it had felt like courage. But now it rang hollow. Reckless. Foolish.
To speak for her would be to stake more than his name.
It would be Georgiana’s, too. Every glance that followed him would turn toward her, and the false pity that clung to Elizabeth would fasten upon his sister.
Could he ask her to bear that? Could he ask her to trust him again, only to see him destroy the very safety he had sworn to protect?
Yet how could he stay silent when the woman he loved more than life was also suffering the mistakes of others?
He had not been there when they said it, that much was true.
But Richard’s account had been enough. A few words, spoken lightly, repeated in laughter—and now he could not stop hearing them.
He saw them in his mind as clearly as if he had stood beside her: the turn of heads, the flick of fans, her name dropped like a stone into still water. Bennet.
He could see her in that moment as he had seen her a hundred times before—struggling to master herself, to meet insult with composure. And he had not been there. Again, not there.
The same cowardice that had failed her once had failed her still.
If he were wise, he would hold his tongue. He would let the gossip die in its own squalor, untouched by his defence.If he were wise, he would remember what it meant to be a Darcy—what was owed to the family, the estate, the name.
But wisdom had done him no good.
He could not watch her bear their malice in silence. He would rather see every fortune stripped from him than endure one more moment of her being wounded in his sight.
The thought broke something open inside him, bright and terrible. He straightened, breath harsh in the cold. The decision was not noble. It was not even deliberate. It simply was.
The house was quieter now, though the wind still prowled along the eaves.
Elizabeth paused by the stair window, her candlelight trembling over the frost. The night was deep and soundless, but her pulse still beat with the echo of that morning—the sharp halt in conversation, the stunned stillness after he had spoken.
He had said so little. Barely a sentence, hardly even a tone of reproof. Yet the room had obeyed him at once, the whispers falling away like sparks doused in water. It had been done without flourish, without glance or gesture—and that, perhaps, was what unsettled her most.
It was not gallantry. It was instinct.
She could not doubt that he had meant to silence cruelty, but in doing so, he had betrayed himself. Every person in that room had seen what she had long tried to deny.
She had wanted to feel gratitude, but it sat ill in her chest. Gratitude meant acknowledgment, and acknowledgment meant that she understood him—and that, she could not bear.
If only he had let them speak. If only he had done nothing. Then she might have gone on pretending that his silence meant indifference.
Elizabeth set her candle on the sill and pressed her fingertips to the cold glass.
Below, the courtyard lay steeped in snow, the lanterns dim.
Somewhere in the house, she heard a door close, a low voice, a step that might have been his.
She could not be sure. The thought that it might be was pain enough.
Whatever kindness he had meant, she could not dare mistake it for love. Her name was too tarnished to let such a feeling endure. She blew out the light.
Darkness gathered as the flame vanished, leaving only the faint glow of snow through the window.
Elizabeth stood still, her breath soft against the glass, the cold seeping into her skin.
The house seemed to hold its breath with her—no voices, no footsteps, only the slow groan of the wind beneath the eaves.
She should have gone to bed. Her aunt would wake if she lingered. But the quiet wrapped round her too tightly to escape. She pressed her forehead to the pane, her thoughts circling back to him no matter how fiercely she tried to turn them aside.
Mr. Darcy.
The name itself was enough to summon confusion. She had thought herself immune by now, her judgment long since steadied by reason. Yet when he looked at her—when he spoke—something in her still answered, helplessly, as if the months between them had been nothing.
The defence he made that morning rose again in her mind, word for word. She could almost hear the depth in his voice, that calm insistence that had silenced a room full of sharper tongues. It was not the words that haunted her but the sound of them—the conviction that refused to be disowned.
If only it had been anyone else, she could have accepted it with grace. But from him—the man whose silence had once condemned her sister’s ruin, whose pride she had thrown back at him—such gallantry felt unbearable.Pity dressed in courtesy. Gratitude forced upon her when she had asked for none.
She drew away from the window and sank to the edge of the bed, her hands clenched in her lap.
The storm moaned against the roof, and she listened to it, half hoping its sound might drown her thoughts.
But they came anyway, cruel and insistent:the look in his eyes when he spoke,the small, steady tremor in her own heart that answered it,the memory of how it had once felt to be certain he admired her.
Perhaps he did admire her still. That was the thought she could not bear. Admiration, now—when her name was a byword for shame—would be no kindness but ruin.
She slipped between the sheets and turned her face to the wall, willing herself not to think of him, not to imagine his voice, not to wonder whether he lay awake, as she did, listening to the same storm.
Sleep came fitfully, chased by the wind’s low keening through the chimneys.
In the dark, one thought returned again and again—an ache without reason, without hope:
If only he had done nothing at all.