Page 28 of Companions of Their Youth (Pride and Prejudice “What if?” Variations #9)

E lizabeth froze at the sound of his strangled cry, her outstretched hand now lingering in air. He had whirled around as if struck when she had touched his arm, his chest heaving, eyes wide and unseeing, the letter crumpled in one trembling fist.

She had seen men unnerved before, like when her father was thrown from his horse, but never like this.

Darcy looked… absolutely terrified.

Slowly, she reached out again and once more placed her hand gently on his arm. He recoiled with a strangled gasp and turned on her as though expecting to face an assailant. The sheer panic in his eyes startled her more than his shout.

“Mr. Darcy,” she said, soft but firm.

As their eyes met, something shifted. The wild panic that gripped him gave way to a disoriented confusion, and then, slowly, to recognition.

His breathing remained ragged, but his gaze steadied. She kept her hand where it was, guiding him with a touch.

“Come. Sit,” she urged, nodding to a nearby bench tucked beneath a lilac tree. “Please.”

He did not speak. He let her lead him, and when he sank down onto the wooden slats, she remained beside him. His hands trembled. She could feel the tension radiating off him, as though every nerve in his body were pulled taut.

“Breathe with me,” she said gently, turning to face him. “Like this.”

She inhaled slowly, drawing the breath deep into her lungs, then exhaled with control.

She did it again, and again, watching until he followed suit.

Gradually, his chest began to rise and fall more evenly.

His shoulders eased from their rigid lines.

His fingers unclenched from the paper in his grasp.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered. “I should never have opened it. I thought it was a bookmark. I did not mean to violate your privacy.”

He shook his head, finally speaking—his voice low and hoarse. “It is not your fault. You could not have known.”

Elizabeth hesitated. “I must admit that I did see some of the words. It—it frightened me. I do not mean to pry, but—who sent that note?”

Darcy looked away. A muscle in his jaw flexed, then loosened. “I do not know,” he said. “That is what alarms me the most.”

“What do you mean?”

Darcy’s eyes closed, and when they opened again, they were full of torment. For a long moment, Elizabeth thought he might refuse to answer. But then, as though the act of speaking would lighten the burden he carried, he began—haltingly at first, then with greater urgency.

“This was not the first,” he said. “There have been letters… notes… left for me. No return address. Feminine hand. They began months ago. I thought nothing of them—only vague nonsense about love and fate. But then…”

He swallowed, his hand tightening into a fist upon his knee.

“One arrived just after I had sent my sister to Ramsgate. It mentioned her by name. It said she was in danger.”

Elizabeth inhaled sharply.

“I thought it coincidence. A guess. But when I reached Ramsgate—Georgiana had nearly eloped with a scoundrel, a depraved man of the worst kind. She was only fifteen years of age.”

“But she is safe now?” Elizabeth asked.

“She is,” he said. “Thanks to my arrival. Her companion had sent me an express, but it would have arrived too late. But the note was right. Someone knew. And now…” He gestured vaguely toward the garden. “Now I am here—far from London, far from Pemberley—and the notes are still coming.”

Elizabeth glanced toward the hedgerows, her arms tightening around her waist.

“You believe someone is watching you?”

“I do not know what to believe,” he admitted, bitterly. “Only that this person knows more about me than any stranger should. And I do not know who they are. Or what they want.”

Elizabeth looked at him closely. His cravat was askew, his eyes weary and hollowed with doubt. He, who had always appeared the most composed of men, was unraveling before her.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “No one deserves to live under such dread.”

Darcy gave a bitter smile. “Least of all those who do not understand it.”

They sat in silence, side by side. And though the sun had begun to warm the garden, a chill seemed to settle over them. Elizabeth glanced at him, at the weariness etched deep in the corners of his eyes, and felt a surge of protectiveness unlike any she had known.

He was proud. He was difficult. But he was not invulnerable.

“Mr. Darcy,” she said quietly, “we will figure this out. You are not alone.”

He turned to look at her—and for the first time, she saw fear there. Not the fear of a man threatened by scandal or reputation, but something deeper. Something that had clawed its way beneath the surface and taken hold of him.

She met his gaze, unwavering. And he, for a moment, looked as though he believed her.

∞∞∞

By the time Darcy entered the small library tucked along Netherfield’s west corridor, the morning sun had already risen high, casting delicate, shifting patterns across the carpet through the diamond-paned windows.

He carried with him a worn notebook and a growing sense of unease.

The incident in the garden—Elizabeth’s steady presence, her calm insistence that he breathe—had both grounded and disturbed him.

He could not remember the last time he had been so vulnerable before another person. And a woman, no less. But there had been no ridicule in her eyes, no amusement.

Only concern. Kindness. Like she truly cared about me and what I was experiencing.

He still could not believe what he had confessed to her. About the letters. About Georgiana. About the fear.

Several hours had passed since the moment in the garden, yet Fitzwilliam Darcy felt no closer to recovering his composure. After breakfast, he had gone directly to his room and sorted through every volume he had brought from London. He had found three more notes.

One, slipped inside a small treatise on the Corn Laws, read:

If only I were invisible, then I could watch you in your room as you sleep. If I were invincible, then I would make you mine right now, tonight .

The second, pressed deep into a volume of philosophical essays, was more chilling still:

I wonder where you are, and I wonder what you do. There is no one but me who can love you like I do .

It was the last note that felt the most ominous, found in a novel he was contemplating gifting to Georgiana but wished to read first.

I will never let you go—no, not for any price. I need you now just like I needed you then; I vow, Darcy, that we will meet again .

The realization struck him cold. These were not harmless flirtations.

These were not the misguided affections of some silly debutante.

These were obsessions. And the precision with which the notes had been planted—within brand-new books, in a locked carriage trunk, untouched until this very week—meant that someone with access to Pemberley’s interior staff had to be responsible.

Or someone else had passed the items to one of his servants.

He had to begin somewhere.

The one small point of clarity was that he could begin narrowing the field of suspects. Someone must have had access to his books between the moment they were delivered to Pemberley and when he packed them for the trip to Hertfordshire. That reduced the field—at least slightly.

He opened the notebook and began to make a list of everyone who had access to his trunks in the days before he departed for Hertfordshire. The names came to him quickly: Mrs. Langford, the housekeeper; a few maids who helped pack; a footman tasked with loading the trunks.

He had just written the eighth name when the door creaked, and Elizabeth stepped into the library.

She wore a simple morning dress of deep blue that set off the brightness of her eyes, and her hair was pinned more loosely than usual, the soft wisps around her temples giving her a faintly windswept look—as though she had just stepped out of the breeze itself.

He rose at once.

“Miss Bennet,” he said. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Mr. Darcy.” She curtsied lightly, her voice warm. “I hope I am not disturbing you.”

“Not at all,” he said. “I was merely… gathering my thoughts.”

She nodded and looked around the room. “I was hoping to find a quiet corner to read. This room looked especially inviting yesterday.”

“In spite of its woefully empty shelves?” he said, allowing himself a rare smile.

She laughed—a clear, unguarded sound that made something stir in his chest. “Oh, yes. Emptiness has its charms—curtains and sunlight and quiet. And it is usually unoccupied, which is a great advantage.”

He nodded and sat back at the desk, returning his eyes to the notebook. After a few minutes, he became acutely aware of the silence—and of his own rudeness. He glanced up to find her seated near the hearth, her book open in her lap but not actually reading it.

He cleared his throat. “Forgive me. I have been absorbed in something. Are you reading anything interesting this morning?”

“I was,” she said, “until I saw you writing. I wondered if it was a letter.”

He paused, deliberating, then gestured towards the notebook “No.

Not a letter. A list. Since you know something of my troubles, I see no reason to conceal it.

I am attempting to determine who might have had access to my books.

Knowing that the note you discovered was in a book that had only been in my possession for a day significantly narrows down the list of suspects.

Elizabeth shut her book gently. “May I?”

He nodded, and she stepped behind his shoulder. Her rose-water scent teased the air. He tried not to notice the nearness of her hand resting lightly on the back of his chair.

“I hope you do not mind,” she said. “I am curious.”

“Curiosity is hardly a fault,” he murmured. Her presence was unnervingly pleasant. He felt her breath as she leaned closer, her hand resting lightly on the back of the chair. Her fingers were within inches of his. He longed to shift his hand just slightly. One brush of skin—