Chapter 41
Aman emerged from behind a bookshelf, tall, clean-shaven, broad-shouldered, dressed in black—every inch a gentleman, imposing and powerful. Elizabeth’s heart leaped. Robbie!
Or was he?
The room erupted around her while Elizabeth sat very still and tried to reconcile the man standing before her with the man she loved in her mind.
The humble, kind-hearted secretary she had worked beside for countless hours, who had conversed with her and with whom she had laughed.
The man she had kissed. Was… Fitzwilliam Darcy? Her eyes locked with his.
He shuffled his feet, his jaw clenching just as his hands did at his sides. He swallowed hard. “Elizabeth,” he whispered.
Her hand touched her throat at the sound of his voice.
“Robbie?” she breathed. He relaxed at her use of his name.
But was he Robbie, or was he Mr. Darcy? The man standing before her was more polished, more formal, commanding.
This man belonged at Pemberley in a way Robinson could not.
But his eyes were so familiar to her. And without his beard to cover his face, he could not conceal his emotions.
Relief, joy, fear, hope—it was all bare, exposed for her to see.
“Forgive me,” he said to her, as if they were the only two people in the room.
“Darcy!” Lady Matlock’s voice broke the silence like shattered glass.
“This is… How is this possible? I verified all his…” Lord Matlock’s confounded gaze moved from his nephew to Mr. Wickham, his expression cycling through astonishment and dawning fury.
Colonel Fitzwilliam crossed to Robbie and clapped him on the back with the relieved force of a man who had kept a secret for far too long. “Welcome home, cousin!”
“I knew it.” Lady Catherine looked about the room imperiously. “I knew he was not dead. I said as much from the beginning, and yet nobody listens to me.”
“Yes, Mama, you were right,” said Mrs. Schweitzer in a placating tone, to which her husband clapped and added, “How very clever you are,” in his accent. Lady Catherine huffed at the compliment.
Mr. Wickham’s solicitor was nowhere to be seen.
Elizabeth could hardly blame him for making a hasty retreat.
As for Mr. Wickham, his confidence had shriveled ever so slightly, but he remained rooted in place.
He could not quit the room until the will was read.
Perhaps he still held the belief that he would inherit, solving all his problems. It was the sort of delusion he would cling to, believing as he did that money was the solution to misery.
Charlotte squeezed Elizabeth’s shoulder.
Elizabeth reached up to give a responding squeeze, but she could not look away from Robbie…
Darcy. Oh dear, what was she supposed to call him?
To her, they were two distinct men, two opposites.
Her father looked between them, rubbing his hands over his face.
Elizabeth almost pitied him. He had revealed the worst parts of himself to the very man he had sought to please—yet another regret to add to an ever-growing list.
“I apologize for the dramatic entrance.” Mr. Darcy addressed the room.
“Given the claims against me and the evidence presented, we thought it best to allow the scheme to be established before the refutation.” Elizabeth heard the same voice, the same careful phrasing, the same slight pause before a word to which he wished to convey more meaning—and yet, he sounded different.
Not cold or harsh, but authoritative. He belonged here. He was Mr. Darcy.
And then his eyes found hers again, and he was Robbie. Two versions of the man she thought she knew collapsed into one, and the realization was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying and entirely too large for her mind and heart to contain.
Through her jumbled emotions, one truth was painfully clear: He had deceived her. Did the man she had fallen in love with truly exist? Was he a performance?
“Darcy.” Mr. Wickham crossed his arms over his chest and spoke up boldly. “We thought you were dead.”
Mr. Darcy’s glare settled on Mr. Wickham. “How convenient for you.”
“The evidence—”
“The forged passenger list? The bribed sailor?” Mr. Darcy glanced at Mr. Wrayburn, who held out the family ring.
With the ease of familiarity, Mr. Darcy slid the ring onto his finger, saying more in one gesture about who he was and who Mr. Wickham was not than any debate could.
“Or do you refer to the ring you stole from my father’s study ten years ago? ”
Mr. Wickham’s grip tightened around his chest. “I do not know what you—”
“Your greed made you careless, as it always has,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said.
“Your father promised me—”
“My father promised you nothing,” Mr. Darcy’s even tone brooked no argument.
“You presumed upon his generosity, and when that presumption was threatened, you fabricated evidence to take what was never yours. You have built your life around an inheritance you were never going to receive. Every debt you have accumulated, every promise you have made that you cannot keep, rests on that illusion.”
“I was educated for this! Your father favored me.” Mr. Wickham pounded his chest. “He loved me more than he loved you!”
Elizabeth saw the arrow hit its mark, saw the pinch in Robbie’s eyes when the hateful words pierced his heart.
She made to rise, her hand already reaching out to him, but her father prevented it.
“Let them have their say,” he mumbled. “This is not your fight.” It was not fair that Robbie should have to face these ugly accusations alone.
Mr. Darcy took a deep breath, and when he spoke, it was with stunning calm.
“My father gave you every advantage. An education. Opportunity. His time and attention.” His gaze flicked to Elizabeth, then back to Mr. Wickham.
“And still you tried to manipulate Miss Elizabeth into securing for you what you could not earn for yourself.”
“My regard for Miss Elizabeth was genuine,” Mr. Wickham countered.
“Your regard was for Pemberley. Miss Elizabeth was the means of ensuring I was not in your way.” A pause. “It did not work because you underestimated how perceptive she is. You never realized that she is not influenced by wealth, status, or even her own comfort.”
How well he understood her! This man—her Robbie, Mr. Darcy—accurately described her values in front of his family, and the pride with which he spoke of her made something shift in her chest.
“I wanted to meet the young woman who, as a girl, had captured my father’s notice so much that he determined that our futures should be joined.
I regret the circumstances that prevented me from revealing my full identity, but I cannot regret the time I spent at Longbourn in her company.
” Robbie’s words touched Elizabeth, but her eagerness to trust him made her doubt herself.
“You speak as though you did not deliberately lie to her. How can she believe anything you told her? Have you no honor?” Mr. Wickham turned to her.
“What kind of man deceives the woman he claims to esteem?” Elizabeth felt her pulse slow and her thoughts race.
It was a valid point, though she suspected that Mr. Wickham knew precisely what he was doing in raising it.
She did not look at Robbie. She was not ready to.
He did not look away from Mr. Wickham. “You wish to speak of honor. Did you not fake my death and propose marriage to my betrothed on the presumption that you would inherit this estate?” Mr. Wickham said nothing.
“You offered her Pemberley because you believed it was yours to offer. You made promises to creditors across three counties on the same presumption. You have built a life around an illusion of your own creation—a house of cards.”
Mr. Wickham’s jaw clenched, his look one of blatant, stubborn rejection. “You do not want to admit that your father preferred me over you. You never were anything more than a disappointment to him.”
Robbie took a deep breath. “I disappointed my father many times, that is true. And my deception toward Miss Elizabeth was unjust. I do not deny that either, and I am not finished answering for it. However, I did not use her to enrich myself. You cannot claim the same.”
Mr. Wickham sat, his face aflame. Any other man would quit the room, but he could not. He would stay to hear the will as he must, watching for a turn of fortune which would not come. There was something both pitiable and pathetic about it.
Lord Matlock cleared his throat. “Well, now that that unpleasantness is cleared up—”
“Unpleasantness, Uncle? Is that what you call attempting to have me declared dead?”
“I acted in good faith. The evidence seemed conclusive.”
“The evidence was fabricated by a man you would ordinarily be inclined not to trust, but you wanted it to be true so badly that you gave your support against your better judgment.”
“Now see here!” Lord Matlock blustered.
“I do not blame you for wanting Richard to inherit, but your support of a man you know to be unreliable is unbefitting a man of your reputation and status.” Lady Matlock placed her hand on her husband’s arm, her expression subdued, her eyes looking down in shame.
Lady Catherine looked about with an air of self-righteousness.
“I, for one, was never fooled. Not for a moment.” Her brother was not amused, but if Lady Catherine noticed his disdain, she chose to ignore it.
“Now that it is firmly established that you are alive, Darcy, we may discuss your obligation to my Anne.”
“Mother,” Mrs. Schweitzer snapped in quiet warning.
Before Lady Catherine could reply, Robbie said, “There has never been an agreement between Anne and me.”
Elizabeth sucked in a breath. Another engagement? She looked at Anne, whose eyes rolled upward in daughterly frustration while her husband patted her hands and clucked his tongue at his mother-in-law for upsetting his wife.
“Mother, I am married. I have a husband I love and children who bring me more joy than I deserve. Let Darcy have the same.” She looked at her cousin, her eyes brimming with the strength of her sentiment.
“We ought to be ashamed of how we treated you. I am. I am sorry, Darcy, and it is my sincerest wish that you might allow me to be the friend to you that I ought to have been.”
Mr. Schweitzer kissed his wife’s temple. “Beautifully said, my love.”
Lady Catherine snorted. “I do not understand a word he says.”
Mr. Schweitzer did not trouble himself to make another attempt to speak more clearly, though he did kiss his wife again. She smiled at him while her mother scowled at his displays of affection. “We wish to be Darcy’s friends, Mother. To be the family we ought to have been to him all along.”
Sitting back with a huff, Lady Catherine said, “Very well, but do not expect me to be happy about it.”
“I would not dream of it, Aunt,” Robbie said under his breath.
His eyes met Elizabeth’s, and there it was: the crinkle at the corners, the twitch tugging his lips into a slow smile, the expression in his eye that communicated with her as clearly as words.
This is my family. Do you find them so fearsome now?
She pressed her lips together. She was not ready to laugh.
She was not ready to forgive. Not yet. There were questions she needed answered and truths she needed time to contemplate before she could trust her own heart.
But there was a gauntlet of emotions in Robbie’s expression—too many for the greatest actor in the world to perform. This was him. This was real. That, at least, was something. That, for now, was enough.
Mr. Wrayburn cleared his throat. “If the family is quite ready, perhaps we might proceed to the reading of the will.”