Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
THE LADIES RETURNED home at half past three.
Darcy heard the front door before he saw them. He was on the sofa where he had been since he came downstairs, which was where he deserved to be, and he stood when he heard the door creak.
Mia came in first. She was still in her swimming kit under a hoodie, her hair damp, her bag over one shoulder. She looked at him.
The look lasted about three seconds, not giving him any time to say anything.
Then she walked past him without saying a word and went upstairs.
Her door did not slam. It closed. Quietly, deliberately, the way a door closed when the person closing it had decided that noise was beneath them right now. Which was somehow worse.
Elizabeth came in behind her. She set her bag down, took off her coat, and looked at him with the expression of someone who had spent the drive home deciding how much to say.
From upstairs, after a moment, came a sound that was not loud and was not a word. Just a sound. The kind that fifteen-year-olds made when they had been holding something together all day and had finally got somewhere private enough to put it down.
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly.
Darcy was already moving toward the stairs.
"I will go," Elizabeth said.
She went up. He heard her knock. Heard the door open. Heard, very faintly, Mia's voice and then Elizabeth's voice and then nothing for a long time.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited.
***
Elizabeth came back down twenty minutes later.
She sat on the sofa. Not next to him. Across from him. She folded her hands in her lap and looked at him squarely.
"She said, and I quote," Elizabeth said, "you two do not prioritise me."
Darcy said nothing.
"She says she is tired of making allowances.
Her parents always showed up and she knows she cannot have them back but she thought at least the two of us —" Elizabeth stopped.
Started again. "She said she thought we would try at least." She exhaled.
"However, I do show up. It is you who is always too busy to put people first."
"Elizabeth —"
She lifted a hand. Not unkindly. Just firmly.
"You want to know," she said. "You have always wanted to know. Why I left. Why I sent four lines and refused to talk to you about it since then."
Darcy went very still.
"You really want to know?" she said.
"Yes," he said. Simply. Just that.
Elizabeth looked at her hands. Then she looked at him.
"I met a man I thought was proud, selfish, full of himself.
I kept seeing him around for a while. Then my wonderful friend convinced me he was not a terrible person.
That I should give him a chance. Well, I did.
" She paused. "One week into it, I was beginning to like him.
Like genuinely like him. It felt good for that first week.
And then it was excuses. Every day. Too busy to call.
Too occupied to text. And I started thinking that perhaps I was not enough.
That I was not matching up." She looked at him steadily.
"You made me feel less than myself, Darcy.
Like I was not keeping pace with you. Like I was somehow behind. "
He held her gaze. He did not interrupt.
"Until I met a man," she said. "George Wickham."
Something moved across Darcy's face. Gone almost immediately. But she saw it.
"I see you recognise the name," she said.
"He told me a lot. About how you stopped paying his tuition at Oxford after your father died because you had inherited everything and you were now the sole signatory to the account from which is university tuition was being drawn. He spoke about how you denied him the logistics firm your father had promised him. I mean, this is someone who had known you since childhood. How could you do that?”
She paused, as though waiting for him to say something. When he did not, she continued.
“He said a lot about how you looked at people who were not at your level—with a particular kind of contempt you were very good at hiding.”
Darcy remained silent, though the sound of him grinding his teeth became audible.
"I did not believe all of it," Elizabeth said.
"But some of it landed. Because some of it felt like things I had already seen.
The way you went quiet when I talked about my work.
The way you criticised my articles sometimes without ever saying what was bad about them.
There was one evening — I do not know if you remember — I was talking about a piece I was working on and you said something like: you spend a lot of time on this.
And the way you said it —" She stopped. "It sounded like you thought I had too much time on my hands.
Like freelance writing was what someone did when they had nothing more important to do. "
"Elizabeth —"
"And then there was the disappearing," she said, not stopping.
"Not ghosting exactly. But there were days, sometimes three straight days, where I would not hear from you.
And when I asked about it you would say: I had things on.
And I would say: you could have said. And you would say: I did not think you would mind.
" She looked at him steadily. "As if my time did not carry the same weight as yours.
" She exhaled. "And then Wickham's version of you arrived at exactly the same moment I was already feeling that way, and it all lined up, and I thought: I cannot marry a man like this.
So, I sent the message. And I did not look back. "
The room was very quiet.
"Eight years and I swore I made the right decision.
However, In the past few weeks I was beginning to wonder if I had judged you too harshly," she said.
"And then today happened. And I thought: I dodged a bullet.
How do you forget a child's need within four hours?
You are already a multimillionaire. Some more millions could not wait? "
Darcy stood. He crossed to the window. He looked at the street for a moment, giving her time. Then he turned.
"Lizzy." He said it quietly. "I am sorry.
Deeply. I am sorry for Mia. And I will work on my commitment to her.
That is not a discussion, it is a fact. I am also sorry for today, for disappointing you.
I did not mean to. " He paused. "But I am not sorry about Wickham.
Because there is another version of that story and you deserve to hear it. "
Elizabeth lifted her eyes to him.
"George Wickham was my father's ward," he said.
"He grew up in our house. My father trusted him completely, paid for his education, and when my father died, he left him a significant sum in his will.
" His voice was even. Controlled. "Wickham took the money and spent two years going through it.
When it was gone, he came to me and said the provision had been insufficient.
I offered to help him run the logistics firm he inherited with my team, to remit the profits to him directly.
He was already running it into the ground, yet, he refused.
He wanted to sell it outright. It was either I bought it or a stranger did.
So I bought him out. Eight hundred thousand dollars.
It was gone in six months. Gambling and other things.
Then he came back asking me to hand the business over to him. That was when I refused."
Elizabeth's jaw tightened.
"I do not know when or how you met him," Darcy continued, "but Wickham has been telling versions of that story for years. He finds what a person already half-believes and makes it feel like proof."
"It is your word against his," Elizabeth said slowly. She heard, even as she said it, how thin it sounded.
"James knew," Darcy said. "Some of it, at least."
"You should not use your late cousin as an alibi."
"I am not." He looked at her directly. "Wickham's story was not something I discussed widely. I had spent years not talking about it because talking about it meant talking about what he nearly did to Georgiana, and that was not my story to tell without her permission."
Elizabeth was quiet. "What did he do to Georgiana?"
Something painful moved across Darcy's face. It was the restraint of someone who didn’t like recollecting a story, but was forcing himself through it anyway.
"He nearly got Georgiana to marry him when she turned eighteen.
Told her it was legal and romantic and that they had always been meant for each other.
She was eighteen. She believed him because he had known her all her life and she had no reason not to.
" He paused. "Luckily, I had hired a private investigator to keep track of his debts so they would not reach the family name.
It was through that I found out the plan.
He intended to get Georgiana to sign over her portion of the inheritance once they were married.
He had told her a story version of me that was designed to make her trust him over her own brother.
By the time I reached her she had almost convinced herself that I was the problem. "
"What," Elizabeth exclaimed.
"He is very good at finding the crack that already exists," Darcy said. "With Georgiana it was her need for independence from me. With you it was your uncertainty about whether you were enough. He did not create those things. He just walked through the door they opened."
Elizabeth was quiet for a long time.
She thought about the dinner where she had met Wickham.
It was a mutual friend’s gathering Lydia had forced her to go to.
Charlotte had been there, which had made it seem entirely coincidental.
Wickham had found out she was in Darcy’s circle within twenty minutes of meeting her.
She had found him easy to talk to, particularly when he made no attempt to ask for her number or ask her out.
She had thought then that he had no motive.
He was someone who seemed to want nothing from her.
She had not told him they were dating, just to hear what he had to say, because from her experience, people did not speak about millionaires that way to their girlfriends or their wives.
It had been a silly game—her playing I just know Darcy casually to hear what he had to say.
By the end of the night, and three conversations with him, he had told her everything.
"You half-believed I thought less of your work," Darcy said, breaking her chain of thought.
"So he gave you a story that confirmed it.
And the evenings I went quiet, the days I did not call — those were not contempt.
They were the way I have always been with the people I care about most. I go inside myself sometimes.
I have been told my whole life that it is something to fix and I have been working to fix it.
However, whatever I said or did not say was never because I thought less of you. Not once."
"You said I could be more," Elizabeth said.
"Yes," he said. "I said that."
"And that did not mean —"
"It meant I could see what you were capable of before you could see it yourself.
Not more than what you were. More of what you already had.
" He looked at her. "You are pitching a novel to a publisher now.
You were not doing that eight years ago.
I am not saying I caused that. I am saying I saw it coming and I expressed it badly and I have been sorry about that for a long time. "
The floor blurred slightly in Elizabeth's vision.
She had been so certain. For eight years she had been so absolutely, quietly, completely certain. And sitting in this room now, in Charlotte's house, she understood what Charlotte had been trying to say every time she said: you make up your mind about people very fast, Lizzie.
"I was wrong," she said.
Not to him. To herself. Out loud, but to herself.
"Elizabeth —"
"I was wrong," she said again, and her voice cracked on the second word, just slightly, like voices cracked when something that had been held rigid for eight years finally gave at the joint.
"I ended us because of a story a stranger told me in three conversations which confirmed my insecurities, and I never once asked you.
I never once said: is this true. I just decided and I closed it and I —"
She stopped. Her hand came up to her mouth briefly.
Darcy crossed the room. He did not say anything. He simply stood in front of her and opened his arms and she stepped into them and he held her, solidly.
She did not cry for long. She was not built for long crying. But she let herself have the moment. The years of it. The waste of it. The relief of finally knowing what it had actually been.
When she stepped back she wiped her face with the back of her hand and said nothing for a moment.
"It is alright," Darcy said quietly. "Wickham has fooled people far more careful than you. That is what he does."
Elizabeth looked up at him, then toward the stairs.
"I am going to check on her," she said.
"All right." He looked toward the stairs too. "Tell her I would like to talk to her later. When she is ready."
Elizabeth nodded. She started for the stairs, then stopped on the first flight.
"Will."
He looked at her.
It was the first time she had used the short form of his first name since they started living in the same house.
"I am sorry," she said. "For all eight years of it."
He looked at her steadily, warmly, a small smile creeping to his face. “It is fine Lizzy. Go check on Mia.”
She went upstairs.