14. For Now #2
Colonel Fitzwilliam retreated to the stables to see about the horses while Darcy settled at his writing desk.
The note to Mr. Bennet was easy. Congenial and short, conveying his regret at the sudden departure, his gratitude for Mr. Bennet’s hospitality and generosity in the matter of the entail.
It was a clean letter to a man he had considered his friend, and he was sorry he had to cut his visit short.
But he could not leave without a note to his Elizabeth, and this letter…
He reached for a fresh sheet, then hesitated.
What could he say? I did not wish to leave without telling you—telling her what?
He had told her everything last night. Every truth he possessed, every feeling he had concealed, every fault he had committed.
He had emptied himself on the floor of that parlor like a man turning his pockets inside out, and she had sat there with the firelight on her face and given him a nod and a silence and sent him away.
He could not write I will return because he did not know whether she wished him to return.
He could not write I remain yours, because she had not agreed to receive him.
He could not write anything that constituted speaking, because he had promised—sworn, in the most binding terms a gentleman could offer short of a vow before God—that he would not speak again unless she gave him leave.
And so, he wrote what he would say if she were never to read his words. Would she think of him? Miss him? Not think too ill of what he had confessed? He did not dare ask if she would want him or yearn to see him again.
Love him.
And he did not answer the questions because every statement of hope would violate the silence he had promised to keep.
If he never heard from her again, at least he had asked the right questions.
He folded up the single sheet of paper, neatly and evenly, because that was how he was taught.
He did not crumple the paper, could not burn it, because the words, although inadequate, half-formed and broken, were the truest words he had written.
The answers he wished she conveyed from that single nod.
“Darcy.” Richard’s voice was sharp from the doorway. He had the good grace not to look at the desk, though Darcy suspected he had seen enough. “The horses are ready.”
“A moment.” Darcy folded the note to Mr. Bennet and handed it to Vernon. “See that this is delivered to the house before we reach the Meryton road.”
He stared at the remaining letter, the one carrying his heart.
He could not leave it on the table for anyone to find.
Vernon was already leaving, and Richard had stepped outside.
Darcy looked at the desk and then at the gap below it, where two stones met.
The plaster had pulled away, and the mortar had crumbled.
The plasterer had missed it during the repairs, and so, without further thought, he pressed the folded letter into the gap, shoving it where it would not be seen—his unsent questions, his helpless love—left behind at Longbourn, as though he might leave some part of himself behind with them.
I came for you. I stayed for you. I surrendered everything for you.
And you gave me nothing. And I still love you.
Drawing on his heavy greatcoat, he retrieved his hat and gloves from their accustomed peg, stepped across the threshold, and faced the keen, frosty December air. He swung himself into the saddle and gathered the reins, bracing himself for the road ahead.
Richard was already at the gate, waiting. He glanced back but said nothing. The Colonel knew when to press and when to leave a man to his own reckoning, and this, apparently, was a moment for the latter.
The cottage fell behind first—the low stone walls, the patched roof, the window where he had stood watching the lane—and then the outbuildings, the stable and yard, the paddock where Jane’s mare poked her nose over the frost-rimed trough.
The lane curved sharply beneath the overarching oaks.
Longbourn’s roof appeared above the hedgerow—the familiar chimney, the upper windows catching the first real light of the morning—and Darcy reined in.
The house sat in the pale winter light with the settled patience of a building that had seen Bennets come and go for generations and would continue standing long after this particular chapter of its history had closed.
Smoke snaked from the kitchen chimney. A lamp burned in an upper window—the east-facing room, second from the left.
He did not know whether she was watching or even knew he was departing.
He could not have said whether a figure stood behind the glass or whether it was only the curtain catching the draught, a pale movement that might have been a hand drawing back or might have been nothing at all.
But he looked back and raised his hat anyway—a small, private gesture to the woman who had trembled in the firelight and given him nothing except the devastating knowledge that his heart was no longer his own—and to the faint, unreasonable hope that she might, one day, give him leave to speak.
Goodbye, Elizabeth.
He forced himself to look away, to settle his hat and urge his horse forward. He did not know if he would see her again, but he would never stop wanting to. Goodbye, for now, Elizabeth.