Chapter THIRTEEN
ELIZABETH’S PHONE started buzzing less than ten minutes after her article went live.
Notifications piled in: comments, reposts, likes, follows. Her inbox was flooded with messages from readers, former classmates, bloggers, and even a few industry journalists wanting a quote. Her phone felt like a live wire, buzzing endlessly on the coffee table.
And yet, she didn’t touch it.
She sat curled on the couch, arms wrapped around a pillow, her eyes blankly staring past the screen.
She had done a good thing.
She had exposed the manipulative side of a man too powerful for his own good. A man who had used technology and charm as weapons. A man who, in her estimation, deserved to be held accountable.
So why did it feel like she’d just done something wrong?
Her heart wasn’t celebrating. It was racing.
She tried to ignore it, but the question surfaced anyway:
Was I fair?
Caroline Bingley had handed her the ammunition. Louisa Hurst had pulled the trigger. And Wickham—well, he’d loaded the gun long before any of them.
But Darcy? Darcy had tried to speak. He’d opened his mouth. And she—
You interrupted him. Every time.
Her stomach twisted.
She had left no room. No space for rebuttal. She hadn’t wanted to hear him—not really. Because if he’d said something sincere, something human, then she might have believed him. She might have seen him as Mr. F. seen him as the man she enjoyed talking to. As the man she was falling for.
A knock at the door shattered her thoughts.
She jumped.
Her eyes flicked to the time. It was Nearly ten p.m.
Only one person would show up at that hour. Jane. She must’ve read the article. Or maybe she was just worried. Maybe she’d seen through the flimsy excuse about a work emergency.
Elizabeth crossed the living room, her brain scrambling to shape the words she’d use.
"I thought I left a message saying I had a work emergency. You should—"
She opened the door.
And froze.
It wasn’t Jane.
It was Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Still in the same black suit he’d worn at Bingley’s dinner. Tie loosened now. Hair slightly mussed. And eyes that looked—
Haunted.
Her mouth parted, but nothing came out. Her voice had abandoned her.
"Mr… Mr. Darcy," she managed, heart thudding. "What… why… what is the—"
He raised a hand, slow and calm.
"If you won’t be in a haste to ask me to leave—and I will, if you do—I came to tell you the truth. Just that."
She stared at him.
"The truth?"
He nodded. "My side. What really happened. And then I’ll go. You can do whatever you want with it."
Elizabeth hesitated. Then stepped back.
"Will it be too much if we could sit?" he asked. "I don’t think you’d prefer to have this conversation standing by the door."
She swallowed, then gave a small, reluctant.
They moved to the living room. Darcy didn’t sit until she did. He looked out of place there, among her throw pillows and worn books.
"How did you find my house?" she asked, suddenly.
He hesitated. "Jane."
Elizabeth blinked, startled by the vulnerability in his tone Her eyes narrowed. "She gave you my address?"
"You’d forgive her if you knew how hard she resisted," Darcy said quickly. "But she agreed that I owed you this. She was right."
Elizabeth crossed her arms. "So? Talk."
He exhaled slowly.
"For the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to convince myself to move on from what happened between us. I told myself it was better this way. Cleaner. But seeing you tonight—seeing you walk out the moment I came back into the room after my call—I realised I couldn’t leave things like that."
His voice was steady, but it trembled faintly at the edges.
"To address the elephant in the room: George Wickham.
You asked about him at the café. Yes, I do know him.
We grew up together. When you said your 'source' told you about him, I had to find out who that was.
Because what happened between George and my family has been treated with the strictest confidence.
Only a handful of people know the truth. "
He hesitated, then added, "I asked my investigators to trace the leak. Tonight, I got a call confirming it was Wickham himself. He’s been using a fake account to comment on social media—that account’s email linked back to a Substack account that recently liked your posts."
Elizabeth lifted her chin. "It is within my professional ethics to protect my sources."
Darcy's phone buzzed. He looked at the screen and hissed, declining the call. "That was work. It can wait. I’ve set my phone to Do Not Disturb."
He met her eyes again. "George was like a brother to me. To Georgiana. My father raised us both. His own father was our gardener, but also one of the most decent men I ever knew. He taught me the value of working with your hands."
Elizabeth didn’t speak.
"But George changed in his teens. After my father died, he refused university.
He bounced from one business idea to another.
I funded as many as I could. We're talking millions.
Every single venture failed. Not because they were bad ideas, but because George gambled the money away.
Sports betting. Casinos in Vegas. You name it. "
He shook his head. "I tolerated it for years. Until I couldn’t. So I stopped."
Elizabeth watched him carefully, her pulse a little louder than it should’ve been. His voice held just enough restraint to feel rehearsed, and something in her hesitated—because this sounded true, yes, but it also sounded like the version he was willing to tell.
She spoke softly, not quite totally convinced. "What about the items in the will?"
Darcy frowned. "What will?"
"My source said he was supposed to inherit properties—but they disappeared. That you and your lawyers erased him from it."
Darcy's face was unreadable. "He inherited a stake in a fashion business my father launched, and a house in New Jersey. He didn’t want either. Said fashion wasn’t his thing and Jersey was too far. After appraisal, I bought both from him. Paid in full."
Elizabeth's stomach twisted.
"He blew through that money and still came back, asking for the properties. I said no. I had given him more since—loans, even handouts. Nothing helped."
She could barely breathe.
Darcy's voice softened, but it darkened too. "That’s not all. What I’m about to tell you is... difficult. I only ask that you keep it private. Not as a journalist, but as someone I trusted."
Elizabeth swallowed, her palms damp. "You have my word."
He nodded. "Two years ago, Georgiana was sixteen. She became distant. At first, I thought it was just adolescence, but something felt wrong. I hired a PI. What he uncovered..."
Darcy stood and walked toward the window, his voice growing colder.
"George was grooming her. My sister. Messaging her, telling her they could get married and be together when she turned eighteen. Promising her freedom from my ‘overprotectiveness.’"
Elizabeth gasped. Her hand flew to her chest.
"She was a child," Darcy said, his jaw tight.
"Thankfully, nothing physical happened. I confronted them. Georgiana was horrified—she hadn’t realised how calculated it all was.
She thought it was something real. I mean, she was just a confused teenager, barely beginning to make sense of anything.
He should have guided her, not tried to use her. "
He exhaled through his nose, the tension still wound tight in his posture.
"Based on the whole thing, Georgiana asked to be pulled off social media. We erased everything. Her digital footprint, gone. She wanted a clean start."
He turned back. "As for George, I had him removed. I didn’t want the police, because it would force Georgiana to testify.
I didn’t want her dragged through the mud.
But I made sure he knew never to come near us again.
My security has orders to detain him on sight if he ever comes near Georgiana or me. "
Elizabeth felt sick. Her own face burned with the heat of shame.
"Still, I’ve had to repay loans he took from acquaintances who believed he still had access to me. I finally told them to ask me first before loaning him any amount, or risk losing their money."
Darcy shook his head, his voice tight with restrained frustration.
"I haven’t heard from him since then, except through that anonymous account he uses to troll my companies and tries to sabotage anything I’m involved in.
It’s one of the reasons I keep my online life private.
Then tonight, during that call—I found out from my PI that he’s currently training to become an officer in the New York National Guard. "
He paused, the disbelief still catching in his throat.
"I don’t know if they did their due diligence, or if he slipped through using false documents, but I intend to write to that facility.
They deserve to know the kind of man they’re handing authority to.
I’ve protected him long enough, and now I see how foolish that was.
Not just because I won’t stand by while he drags my name through the mud or hurts someone I care about—but because putting a man like him in uniform, in a position of trust, empowers him to do far more harm. I won’t be part of that."
Elizabeth whispered, "Jesus."
"As for if what I said is the truth, I have documentation. Everything. Chats. Bank records. Screenshots. I kept it all. For moments like this. For the truth. I am even willing to show you a copy of that will."
She ran her hand through her hair, her voice shaking. "I’m... I’m so sorry. When I wrote my article—"
Darcy grimaced. "What article?"
Elizabeth blinked. Then she remembered.
"The article," she repeated. "Oh God. It’s still online."
She turned abruptly and reached for her laptop.
Darcy remained still, confusion flickering across his face as she opened it and began navigating furiously.
She spoke in a low but steady voice as she explained everything about the article, what she had written, and how she had published it in anger before he arrived.
By the time she finished, she had deleted the post and the accompanying tweet.
When she looked up, her face was pale. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. I thought I was doing the right thing, giving people the truth. But I was wrong. I was foolish. I was manipulated.”
Darcy didn’t speak right away. He just watched her, his expression unreadable.
Elizabeth’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I should never have trusted him. I should never have published the article. What Caroline and Mrs. Hurst said... it just pushed me over the edge.”
Something flickered in his eyes. He gave a slow, tired breath and glanced toward his pocket, where his phone still rested.
“I didn’t connect the dots until now,” he said quietly. “The calls I got tonight were from the board. Probably legal too. I’ve been ignoring them all evening.”
Elizabeth froze. “Because of... the article?”
He nodded. “That’s the only explanation that makes sense. There’s no reason I should be getting several work-calls this late. I didn’t know it was your article—not until now. Not until you said it.”
The silence that followed wasn’t loud, but it pressed in close. Dense with consequences and words that came too late.
“About tonight… I need to apologize for that too,” Darcy said quietly. “I overheard Caroline and Louisa as I came back in.”
He looked at her fully now, no deflection in his gaze.
“Yes, I created my TrueNorth account as an experiment. After what happened with Wickham… after all of that, I stopped believing people could be trusted. I mean, the moment he betrayed me, it made something in me break. It made connection feel risky. Fragile. I didn’t trust anyone.”
He paused, his voice softening just enough to let something through.
“I concluded I was not cut out for dating or love. But then I started talking to you. To the stranger called Bazile. And it felt different. Like I could breathe again. I didn’t even realise how much I missed that kind of honesty.”
Elizabeth wrapped her arms around herself. Her voice refused to come. But the warmth spreading in her chest was sudden and unsteady, like light through a cracked door.
“When I found out it was you,” Darcy continued, “I told myself I could keep going. Finish the three dates, thank you politely, and walk away. But I was lying to myself.”
A faint, almost self-conscious smile tugged at his mouth.
“As of the frozen yogurt shop, I was already gone.”
She opened her mouth, tried to speak, but the words tangled behind the weight in her throat.
“When I couldn’t stop thinking about you after that, I knew I couldn’t wait. That’s why I hurried the third date. And when I asked if we could keep seeing each other, I meant it. Not to throw you off. Not for damage control. And definitely not out of pity. I meant it.”
His confession just lingered there, suspended in the air, fragile and heavy all at once. As if anything said afterward might bruise the weight of it. Elizabeth swallowed several times before she could gather enough breath to speak.
Her throat tightened. “I assumed the worst. My prejudice against you wouldn’t let me see past my own bias. What happened at the gala, and when you said I wasn’t handsome enough to tempt you, stuck with me. It shaped everything I thought of you.”
“I didn’t mean that,” he said slowly. “I just wanted to get Bingley off my back. I’m sorry. I was under pressure to deliver TrueNorth. I didn’t want to dance. I wanted to disappear.”
“You don’t need to apologise,” she said softly. “I should be the one doing that. I let anger ruin a good thing.”
“You had every right to be angry,” he said, gentler now. “You were misled. And when you realised it, you didn’t just run. You acted. You took responsibility. You tried to do what you thought best.”
She shook her head, blinking fast. “I just… I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean to…”
The rest fell into a tangle of breath and regret, her apology swallowed by rising tears.
Darcy gave her a quiet, almost melancholic smile.
“I just thought you deserved the truth,” he said. “And I want to thank you. For listening and for taking down the article.”
Then he stood.
She watched, frozen, as he walked toward the door.
Her voice cracked as she looked up. “You’re leaving?”
“I didn’t come expecting anything,” he said, hand resting on the doorframe. “But I owed you this.”
He paused.
“If nothing else… thank you for letting me say it.”
Then he stepped into the hallway and was gone, leaving behind only silence, a racing heart, and the ache of truths that sometimes arrive too late.