31. Darcy
Darcy
Lizzy was quiet and tense beside me as we entered the walled garden.
But she was here. Close enough that it struck low in my chest, a hard, unsteady rush.
Her gaze—beautiful, wary, glinting green—caught mine, and my pulse lurched like it had lost its rhythm.
A curl fell across her face, soft and careless, and the need to reach out—to tuck it back, to touch her at all—rose sharp and almost painful.
We stood so near, I could feel the space between us narrowing, charged. I was undone.
Why the hell had I waited so long to talk to her? I moved in front of her.
“Lizzy, I’ve made a complete mess of everything. I’m so sorry for what I said to you on that Sunday at the inn, and what I did to your sister. My behavior was judgmental and harsh and caused pain to your whole family. I’m truly ashamed of myself.”
Lizzy sucked in a breath and clutched around her waist protectively. She was listening, but my gut twisted hard at how much I wanted her to believe in my deep regret.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I reflected on what you said about your sister’s shy demeanor.
I recognized that I was unfairly equating her with the behavior of someone else in my past. I’ve seen the good Jane has been doing in her work at school.
Those things together made me realize I’d made a horrible mistake by interfering.
When I put my wounded pride and prejudices aside, I could see that I had no reason for being concerned about your sister’s motivations.
“My brother ultimately made his own decision, but I am not going to pretend he wasn’t influenced by me.
I’d only wanted to protect him, but instead, like you said—I ruined his chance at happiness.
I’m also sorry I was not respectful of your mother.
I don’t know her and I judged her, and I am appalled that I did that. ”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I know I’ve caused harm and pain, and my actions were unforgivable. And yet I stand here before you and ask you to forgive me. I will do whatever I need to make it right.”
She went quiet, and I could see her process my apology.
Was it enough? A deep dread settled under my ribs.
She raised her face to me, but her arms were still crossed. “I appreciate your apology. You seem genuine and contrite. You have caused my family a lot of pain. You must speak to your brother, and to my sister, and make this right between them.”
“I will.” My voice sounded resolute, and I was. “I’ll talk to my brother immediately after this. I’ll apologize to your sister. Then I’ll arrange for them to meet in a place that is conducive to them talking. I will fix this, I promise.”
“Good.” She thought for a while, but I could see her frustration build. “But why would you think my sister was being duplicitous? Who was this person in your past you equated her with?”
Something wasn’t being said between us. I needed to explain so she would understand why I’d behaved so abhorrently.
I hadn’t wanted to talk about this part of my past with anyone, not even with Wills.
I wanted that mess where it belonged—in the past, dead, buried deep, and forgotten.
I took shallow breaths and braced my body, the bruises awakening, aching.
I hadn’t said their names in a year, but if I had any chance with Lizzy, I had to confess, tell her about them.
My face strained, I gestured to one of the two old arches, the one smothered with white roses. “I think I wanted to tell you everything, because I’ve brought you to the arch.”
Lizzy scanned my face, confused about the arch.
“The most perfect arch,” Lizzy said, examining the stonework warily because she clearly couldn’t see where I was going with this.
“And these roses are perfectly covering it. It looks like something out of a storybook—they look almost like hothouse flowers. How did your gardener get them to grow so beautifully in rainy old England?” She put her face into one and inhaled.
“If I were writing this, I would have a couple stand under this and kiss. The whole picture is perfect. It’s a wedding photographer’s dream. ”
Perfect. Sophia, my former fiancée. I shifted uncomfortably at the thought of her sleekly straightened hair, full makeup, and different neutral outfits appropriate to whatever we were doing—walking in the forest, having tea with my mother in the drawing room, out in London at a modern new bar.
In contrast, the woman in front of me had a smudge of something on her nose, hair strewn with more leaves, a casual oversized white linen shirt over her ripped jeans. And quite a few scratches on her wrists and ankles.
“You always have foliage in your hair.” Without thinking, I plucked out two leaves.
“I’m always a mess.”
“I like it. I mean, you’re not a mess. God.” I swiped a hand through my hair with a desperate laugh. “What I meant to say is…never change.”
“Oh.” She blushed and ducked her head. “Thank you. I don’t think I could change even if I wanted.”
I turned to her with a new energy. “The arch was for wedding photos. My wedding.”
She gasped. “You’ve been married?”
I gave a mirthless laugh. “No, it didn’t happen.
I’m left with this arch, which, as you say, is perfectly covered with white roses.
My former fiancée, Sophia, had the gardener buy mature plants six months before our wedding to ensure they were crammed on the arch like that.
” They’d flourished, which was a torturous reminder, but I didn’t have the heart to ask the gardener to tear them out.
“Oh Darcy, I’m so sorry. Do you mind my asking what happened?”
What should I reveal? It was all pretty ugly, and I didn’t want to tarnish this conversation with the details.
But something in me wanted her to know me better, wanted her to know the pain of my past, messiness and all.
I looked at her lovely, lightly freckled, upturned face, and what I saw there was only softness and the willingness to understand me more.
“Sophia and I met through friends in London. She was beautiful and shy and quiet, but a perfectionist. This arch was another thing she’d engineered for the wedding.
She’d engineered a lot of perfection in our lives.
At the time, I never minded, because I thought that meant she cared so much.
I didn’t realize that she cared more about how she seemed and how our relationship seemed.
I chose to believe instead it meant that she cared about me. ”
Lizzy looked startled by my confession, then her face softened, her brown eyes reflecting my pain. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. It wasn’t in any of the society columns in the newspaper.”
“Nothing about us was in the press, because I kept a low profile even back then. Sophia was always keen to have everything publicized. I was astounded at that because, as I said, she was shy and retiring. Like your sister.”
I felt very foolish for falling for Sophia.
What did that say about my ego that I had been so deceived by her?
A complete absence of judgment or awareness on my part.
I now saw how it colored my thoughts about Jane.
A reaction that had been purely emotional, not rational.
How could a sister of Lizzy’s, a person whom she loved, be as duplicitous as I’d imagined Jane could be?
Realization dawned on her face. “Oh, that’s why…”
“Yes, that’s why I was immediately suspicious of your sister.
But at the time, my biggest concern was for my brother and his history with women, how he so easily fell in love without ever wanting to know someone’s character.
Thinking back on Jane’s interactions that weekend, knowing the good she’s done at her school and how many years she’s worked on that program of hers, I can tell she’s genuine. ”
“She’s genuine. And she’s genuinely shy and retiring.”
“I see that now, and I am so sorry for the way I treated her and your family.”
She clutched at her heart. “That hurt. My family is important to me. My ex was always scathing about my parents, and I know now that’s not something I want to put up with again.”
I exhaled on a slow nod. “I think, too, I was jealous of your relationship with your mother. You’re close, I can see that, and I never had that with my mother.”
“Yes, I can understand that. I’m sorry you weren’t close.”
I didn’t know why sharing that strained, stilted relationship with Lizzy eased my soul a little. “Thank you. I also see how different your sister is from Sophia, and that was very much my mistake.”
She nodded and bit her lip. “I’d like to hear more about your past, if it’s not too painful for you?”
Reliving that time was painful, but I now welcomed the hurt because I needed this to be out and not between us.
“It took some years to figure out what Sophia was, since that shy thing firstly intrigued and challenged me. I see now it was more aloofness, a kind of act that she’d thought she needed to put on for me—to be the right person for me.
I thought she wanted me, but she wanted all this.
” He swept his hand around the grounds and castle.
“The irony was, I thought of Pemberley as a burden, an obligation. I don’t anymore.
Amid all the work, the people and the buildings and the grounds give me joy most days, but back then, I felt ill knowing the prestige of owning this estate was what Sophia wanted of me, what she was after. ”
“What happened?” She moved closer, and compassion shone in her eyes. “When did you realize this?”
“That’s how oblivious I was. I didn’t realize. The truth had to be shoved in my face, and what was supposed to be the best day of my life became the worst when I turned up to the chapel to be informed by one of my friends that my bride-to-be wasn’t going to show up.”
I pointed to a little church spire poking up through the trees, and I could see my hand was shaking.
She gasped, and her eyes went wide, horrified. “On your wedding day?”
Her reaction mirrored mine. This was as awful as it had felt. My heart thrashed wildly around my chest as I tensed. Maybe, as I moved through this memory, the event would make me sound weak, unwantable by Lizzy. Yet somehow, I knew I had to tell her.
“Funnily enough, my best man, Sebastian, was late to pick me up for the short walk to the chapel, and I had to walk over by myself. I strode in, still not suspicious, mind you, and what do you know—Sophia wasn’t waiting for me at the altar.
Everyone else was there and seated. Sophia and Seb then texted five of our friends that they’d fallen hopelessly in love and were headed to the Maldives to start their new life together with a beach break.
I suppose the happy couple wanted to be far enough away they wouldn’t have to look me in the eye. ”
I glanced at her to see her reaction. A sharp gasp tore from her, her face drawn and white in shock.
Based on her reaction, I’d hedge that she was horrified by my story and felt terrible for me.
But what I wanted to know was, did she forgive me for how I’d treated her sister, for how dismissive I had been in the heat of the moment?