Chapter Thirty-Three #2
“You feared losing me.” Elizabeth gave a small, incredulous shake of her head. “And so you allowed me to continue loving you without knowing the truth.”
Darcy went still. He saw the instant she understood.
Her eyes searched his face, and whatever she found there made her recoil as though he had confessed something worse than everything which had preceded it.
Elizabeth turned away.
“Elizabeth, I am sorry,” Darcy muttered under his breath.
“Please do not.”
“I must.”
“No.” She faced him again, and this time the tears in her eyes did not lessen the anger there. “You have had months in which to speak. I have had scarcely ten minutes in which to discover that the man I trusted knew me before I ever knew him.”
Darcy fell silent.
“You knew my thoughts before I chose to give them to you. You knew my fears, my foolishness, my opinions, even what I thought of you, and all this while I believed I was discovering you as you discovered me.” Her voice faltered, but she continued before he could interrupt.
“How am I now to remember any conversation between us without wondering whether you understood me because you cared enough to listen, or because you had already read what I meant?”
“You made me admire you yourself,” Darcy said, unable to endure that conclusion. “Whatever I knew before coming here, what I feel for you now belongs to the woman I came to know in Hertfordshire.”
“But how am I to know the difference?”
He had no answer.
Elizabeth's gaze remained upon him for another moment before she lowered it. “That is what you have taken from me, Mr. Darcy. I cannot even trust my own understanding of how we came to this point.”
“What I feel for you is real.”
“I do not doubt that you feel it.” Her answer was quiet, almost weary. “But that does not make what you did honest.”
Darcy's chest tightened. “Then allow me whatever opportunity is necessary to make amends.”
“I do not want you to make amends to me.”
He stared at her.
“I want you to leave me alone.” Her fingers tightened around the fan until the sticks gave a faint protest beneath her glove. “Do not come to Longbourn tomorrow, or the day after. Indeed, I must ask that you do not call upon me again.”
“Elizabeth...”
She raised one hand, and Darcy stopped. He had never imagined that such a small gesture from her could render him so entirely powerless.
“I cannot continue receiving your addresses. I cannot stand here tonight and pretend that nothing has altered merely because yesterday I...” Her voice failed, and she looked away before mastering it. “I would rather leave than remain here and risk embarrassing Mr. Bingley or my family.”
Darcy wanted to stop her. Every instinct urged him to ask for another minute, another conversation, some assurance that again did not truly mean never. Yet he had already taken too much upon the assumption that what he wanted justified another intrusion upon what belonged to her.
His hands fell uselessly to his sides. “As you wish.”
Elizabeth looked at him once more, and whatever she might have said remained unspoken. She turned and crossed the entrance hall towards her father.
Darcy remained where she had left him.
He watched her speak quietly to Mr. Bennet, who first looked surprised and then concerned.
His gaze travelled across the hall and settled briefly upon Darcy, but he asked his daughter no question that Darcy could hear.
A moment later he offered Elizabeth his arm, and together they moved towards the entrance.
Darcy did not follow.
Only when the doors closed behind them did he remember Julia.
His breath caught. He had meant to tell Elizabeth that her friend was alive, had carried that one piece of happiness through the entire miserable day, and when the moment came he had forgotten it.
He took one step towards the entrance before stopping himself.
To run after her now would be to disregard the very last thing she had asked of him.
The music continued from the ballroom, but Darcy had no desire to enter it. He turned instead towards the staircase and climbed slowly, conscious of an exhaustion which seemed to have settled into his very bones.
There was nothing more to be done tonight.
Tomorrow he would leave Netherfield and go to Julia Harding.
The letters upstairs did not belong in his possession and never had, and he would place every one of them into the hands for which they had been intended.
He would do whatever could properly be done for Miss Harding and her father, and ask for nothing in return.
Even if Elizabeth came to hate him, perhaps he could at least give her back some part of the friend she had lost. If it was the last thing he was ever permitted to do for her, then it would be his parting gift.
Beyond that, Darcy could form no plan. For months he had told himself that one more day of silence might preserve what was growing between him and Elizabeth.
Standing alone upon the landing, with the sound of Bingley's ball continuing merrily below and Elizabeth already on the road back to Longbourn, he could no longer hide from the simpler truth.
He had preserved nothing. He had merely postponed the moment when she discovered what his silence had cost them.