Page 21 of One Night with Mr. Darcy

She had told him, in no uncertain terms, what she wanted from him.Go away and never return.

He had promised.

He’d done enough awful things to her without breaking that promise.

CHAPTER SIX

AFTER MR. DARCYleft her, Elizabeth roamed around the rectory, feeling a kind of frenetic energy that seemed to need an outlet of some kind, and she didn’t want to give it the outlet it needed.

At first, she looked in on her ill and sleeping husband.

Then she went and peered at her tiny, tiny son.

Finally, there was nothing for it. She went to the sitting room, shut the door firmly, found a very comfortable easy chair, curled up there, and sobbed.

At first, she thought things like,I could have been mistress of Pemberley, shallow sorts of things that were easier to think than the other sorts of thoughts that were threatening to overtake her.

Eventually, they happened anyway.

He had loved her all along.

He still loved her.

She had done this to her life, had married that, had lied to everyone, had been so very, very alone, and all she had to do was to find her way to him. Why, she could have gotten a post coach, found him with the Bingleys, told him about the child, and he would have married her on the spot.

How could she not have realized this?

How had it been easier to think that he hated her, that he’d used her, that it was impossible for her to have a happy ending?

Sin, she supposed.

You weren’t to do that, what she’d done. You weren’t to get very drunk and go to a man’s chambers with him. You weren’t to allow him to kiss you or to put his hands on your bosom, no matter how nice it felt. You definitely weren’t to allow him to put his hands inside your clothes or to remove them to insert his prick into your—

Sin.

She had sinned, now she would pay the wages.

But pointlessly.

Truly, in the end, she had been determined to punish herself and now she was in this awful predicament and it could never be remedied.

Well, never?

She began to think a series of thoughts, an awful series of thoughts. Her husband was going to die. It might not be that long. It might only be a few years—

He is sick because of you, Lizzy.

And then when he was dead, she would be quite free to marry again. And little Willie, he could have Rosings, and then she could have another child, a proper heir for Pemberley, and wouldn’t that be nice, both of their children with their own inheritances and—

You have deceived Mr. Collins and now you are as good as killing him. Yes, let’s just go and put a pillow over his head right now.

Mr. Darcy wasn’t going to marry her, anyway.

She had just banished him from her life.

One look in that man’s face, his destroyed face, his guilty face, and she knew he would abide by her wishes. He wouldn’t come back. She would never see him again.

Well, perhaps it was all for the best.