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Chapter Six

E lizabeth had not written about him.

Not directly.

There were metaphors, of course. Imagery. A pair of boots abandoned by the hearth. A falcon with a frayed jess. One particularly vicious sketch of a hedge maze with no exit and too many mirrors.

But no names. No initials.

Certainly no mention of… well, that was just inconvenient.

She was back at Longbourn now, curled sideways in the window seat of the morning room while Jane read a letter aloud from their aunt Gardiner.

It was all cheerful things—Mr. Gardiner’s new merchant contact in Newcastle, a painting purchased at auction, their eldest child’s peculiar taste in porridge.

Elizabeth nodded at the right places. Smiled.

But her eyes were on the glass. The yard was muddy with the last of spring, and one of the chickens had taken shelter beneath the lilac bush. She had written about that once, too—the stubbornness of chickens. The bloom that came whether they deserved it or not.

“Lizzy,” Jane said gently. “You are woolgathering again.”

Elizabeth turned back. “Only a little.”

“You have been quiet since London.”

“London was loud enough for both of us.”

Jane hesitated. “Did something happen?”

Elizabeth considered lying.

Instead, she offered a careful truth. “I believe I have worn out my welcome in at least one drawing room.”

“Oh, no.”

“It was bound to happen eventually.” She stood, stretching. “My opinions have always been dangerously shaped.”

“By what?”

“Experience. Irritation. A deep mistrust of velvet.”

Jane smiled. “Do you regret it?”

Elizabeth opened her mouth. Closed it.

“Regret” was not the word.

She did not regret writing what she had. She regretted that he had read it. Been wounded by her words out of the proper context of their usual debates. Regretted the coldness that had followed. The tight-lipped bow. The way his voice dropped a degree with every word.

And most of all, she regretted the part of her that had been glad to see him.

She picked up her notebook from the window ledge, thumbed through the pages. The passage was still there, a little smudged now. She did not cross it out. She never did.

“I regret,” she said finally, “that some people make far better characters than companions.”

Jane, sweet Jane, said nothing at all.

Elizabeth sat again. And wrote nothing.

For once.

June, 1810 Pemberley

I t was raining at Pemberley.

Not the sort of rain that threatened floods or made for poetic despair—just the slow, insistent kind that glazed every window and made the house feel too large by half.

Darcy was in the library. Not reading.

He sat at the desk with a stack of letters before him—half of them opened, one abandoned mid-reply. His pen hovered over a blank sheet. Nothing came.

The fire hissed behind him. A log cracked.

Georgiana entered without knocking, as she always did. She had a book under her arm and her spectacles sliding down her nose. She did not need them. She just thought they made her look studious.

“You have been sitting like that for an hour,” she said, dropping onto the chaise beside the hearth.

“I have been thinking.”

“You have been sulking.”

He looked over at her. “I do not sulk.”

“You become profoundly still and make the air feel guilty.”

Darcy exhaled. “It has been a long week.”

“It has been three weeks since you came home from London,” she said casually, flipping open her book.

He said nothing.

Georgiana peered over the edge of her page. “Did something happen?”

Darcy returned to his letter. Dipped the pen. Still did not write.

“Someone read something they should not have,” he said at last.

Georgiana frowned. “You, or someone else?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I read it.”

“Ah.”

There was a pause.

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“No.”

“Did you yell?”

“No.”

“Did you write about it in your own journal with a sharp quill and excessive punctuation?”

Darcy blinked. “Why would I do that?”

Georgiana smiled. “You are not the only one who knows how to observe people.”

He set the pen down.

She set her book down, too.

“It was one sentence,” he said. “One single, ridiculous sentence.”

“But it was a very good sentence,” she guessed.

He did not deny it.

Georgiana crossed her arms. “And is this why you have been walking around the house like a proverb?”

“I have not—”

“You sit in the darkest part of the library. You do not reply to letters. You have corrected my Latin declension twice this week.”

Darcy leaned back in his chair.

“She called me furniture,” he said.

Georgiana made a face. “Oh. She , is it?”

She did not ask which “she.” She did not need to. His grandmother, the dowager, had spoiled that particular secret the way one might spill ink on purpose—slowly, and with excellent aim.

“Polished. Handsome. Rearranged.”

Georgiana burst into laughter. “How odd that you encountered her again in London. Are you not starting to think Providence is laughing at you, Brother?”

He glared.

“She meant it as an insult.”

“Or as an observation,” she said. “You are handsome.”

“That is not the point.”

“And a bit difficult to move when you have made up your mind.”

“I said that is not the point.”

Georgiana leaned her head against the armrest. “You could write to her.”

Darcy stared at the blank page. “She would only make a joke of it.”

“Then you must write better than she jokes.”

He closed the inkwell. Stood. Moved to the window and watched the rain.

Georgiana did not press him.

After a long silence, she said, “She must be very clever. To write one sentence and still be in your head after three weeks.”

Darcy did not answer.

But his hand drifted to his coat, draped neatly over the arm of the chair.

From the inside pocket, he drew out a small, carefully folded square of paper—the only piece he had kept.

Not her notebook. Just a single scrap that had slipped loose, half-hidden and barely noticed, as though it had been meant for no one—or for him alone.

He unfolded it slowly.

It was not insulting, not precisely. Not like the furniture jab.

Just a line that suggested he was something to be studied. Rare. Slightly ridiculous. Worth remarking on only because he almost never smiled at all.

But there was something beneath it. Something more than mockery.

He had seen the way she clutched that notebook like a passport.

Watched her write with the urgency of someone trying to trap a thought before it vanished.

She did not write for attention. She wrote because it was the only way to make the noise quiet down.

Because no one had ever truly asked her what she thought, and the page had never interrupted.

He should have discarded it.

Instead, he folded it again. Tucked it into his breast pocket.

And went back to his desk.

April, 1811 Pemberley

T he letter from Lady Catherine was on his desk. Still unopened.

It had arrived two days ago, heavy with authority, sealed in green wax, and likely brimming with demands for his presence at Rosings by Easter Monday. Darcy had left it untouched, as if delaying its contents might delay the week itself.

He sat at his desk with his head in his hand, a half-written response to Colonel Fitzwilliam lying limp beside a stack of reports.

Georgiana’s elopement—no, her near -elopement—had upended everything.

He had returned to Pemberley three weeks ago with mud on his boots and shame on his collar, having spent a full day chasing down a carriage that had no business leaving Ramsgate without a chaperone.

The man—if he could be called that—was gone now.

Paid off, quietly. Expelled from his circles.

But not before Georgiana had cried herself sick and locked her music away.

And not before the gossip had begun.

The dowager had been discreet. Others would not be. If the wrong person caught wind of it—if it reached the ears of those who already watched Darcy with envy or expectation—it would not just harm Georgiana.

It would define her.

He had tried not to blame her. Had spoken gently, haltingly, as though the fault lay nowhere. But gentleness did not come easily, and his own guilt made everything sound like an accusation.

Georgiana had said only, “ You left him in our drawing room.”

And she had been right.

Wickham had returned that winter, all smiles and empty charm, claiming he had heard Darcy might be preparing to bestow the Kympton living and that “surely his father’s wishes had not been entirely forgot.”

Darcy had refused—politely, at first. Then less so.

But the door had been opened.

Wickham had waited until Darcy was occupied with tenants’ matters, and in that slim window between civility and suspicion, he had found Georgiana.

Drawn her in with stories of her childhood, of their shared summers, of long-ago promises spoken beside the lake at Pemberley.

And she had told him that her brother meant for her to go to Ramsgate soon.

Darcy had not seen Wickham since his father’s will had been read. He should have known better.

He had known better.

Darcy’s jaw locked. He had handed Wickham a key—no, worse, he had left the bloody door open and walked away whistling! The memory burned hot in his chest. Then colder. Much colder. He could not afford to be angry now. Not when Georgiana needed him calm.

But still, he had left them alone. Not on purpose. Once. In a drawing room he had walked past in the pursuit of other business because George Wickham was supposed to have already been shown out.

And that was the part he could not forgive.

Darcy rubbed his eyes. The deadline hung in the air now like a sword with no hilt—only the edge. Ten months.

He was to marry by next February.

He had thought he would have time. He had chosen his plan with purpose and clear, regulated intent. After the harvest, before the spring sessions. A clean calendar. A clean conscience. The last box to tick before he came of age.