Page 42

Elizabeth had not slept.

The night had passed in a fevered haze, each hour dragging her further into a wilderness of memory and fear. Her mind raced like a storm-tossed sea, pitching her helplessly between two lifetimes—the one she had lived, and the one she had altered—and the sharp, cutting uncertainty of the present.

Every word she had uttered to Mr. Darcy the night before echoed ceaselessly in her mind, each syllable twisted and sharpened by doubt. Had she said too much? Had she said too little? Had she revealed her heart too plainly—or not plainly enough?

Had he believed her?

Would he come ?

Hope and terror warred within her, leaving no peace to body or soul. Sleep had fled her utterly; she had not even sought her bed, but paced the small confines of her room until the first pallor of dawn crept across the sky.

One thing alone she knew with bitter certainty: there would be no letter. Not this time.

The comfort that had once arrived in the form of a letter—bold, anguished, true—would not come now. She had looked too deeply into his soul; she had asked him to trust not his pride, not his judgment, but his heart alone. And that was a burden even Fitzwilliam Darcy might not be willing to bear.

At first light, when the house still lay in slumber, she wrapped her shawl tightly about her shoulders and slipped from the parsonage. Her steps were sure, almost frantic, as she made her way along the winding path to the grove that edged Rosings Park.

The air was crisp, tasting faintly of rain to come, and the ground was damp with early dew. Each blade of grass brushed cold against her skirts, but she scarcely noticed, her gaze straining ahead with desperate intensity.

She hoped— prayed —that she might find him there. That, as once before, his restlessness had driven him to seek solitude in the woods. That some lingering thread between them had drawn him to the same place where once their fates had changed forever.

Her heart beat violently in her chest as she turned the bend near the stone bench where the hedgerow parted and the view stretched wide toward the eastern hills.

And there—there stood a figure.

For one wild, reckless moment, her heart soared.

But it was not Fitzwilliam.

It was his cousin.

Colonel Fitzwilliam stood near the bench, his stance seemingly casual—hands clasped loosely behind his back, head tilted as though surveying the horizon.

But when he turned and their eyes met, Elizabeth saw at once that there was no indifference there. No kindness, either. Only a grim, searching intensity that sent a fresh wave of dread coursing through her.

She faltered, her feet slowing against her will.

The sight of him—alone—seemed a silent verdict .

He has not come.

Her hands clutched the edges of her shawl more tightly, as if to bind herself against the sudden chill that swept through her.

It was not merely the morning air that left her cold.

It was the terrible, yawning fear that she had lost Fitzwilliam Darcy for good.

"You did not sleep either," she said quietly, her voice hardly more than a thread of sound between them.

He did not answer at once. His gaze swept past her, out across the misted hills, as if the landscape might offer clarity where his own mind could not.

At last, with a measured voice, he said, "You told him."

Elizabeth nodded, the movement small but unwavering. "Yes. As I promised."

There was a beat of silence. The early birds chirped overhead in the sparse branches, their songs bright and cruel against the heavy stillness between them.

Elizabeth stepped nearer, the damp grass brushing against her shoes, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. She hesitated only a moment before asking, "Do you believe me?"

The Colonel’s mouth quirked—not in amusement, but in something far more unsettling. Uncertainty. Thoughtfulness. Perhaps even a shadow of sympathy.

"I believe..." he began, then broke off, shaking his head slightly. "I do not know what I believe. It is all too Shakespearean. Too perfectly mad. A lady who claims foreknowledge of all our fates? Even in camp, I have not heard such tales without the influence of strong drink."

Elizabeth’s lips pressed together, her pride wounded but her courage undiminished. She had expected nothing less.

Still, when she spoke, her voice was steady. "Isabel García."

The name dropped between them like a stone into deep water, rippling outward unseen.

Colonel Fitzwilliam stiffened imperceptibly, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. A soldier's reaction. A man assessing new intelligence he could not easily explain .

He studied her then—not as a lady of gentle breeding, not as the daughter of a country squire—but as something far more dangerous: a puzzle he could neither solve nor safely dismiss.

"What do you know of her?" he asked at last, his voice low, wary.

Elizabeth met his gaze without flinching, though her hands trembled where they gripped her shawl. "Enough," she said quietly. "Enough to know why you hate the sound of Spanish music, why you flinch at the scent of oranges, why you never wear your medals."

His breath left him in a short, involuntary gasp—barely a sound, but enough. Enough for Elizabeth to know she had struck true.

The silence that followed was not the easy quiet of old acquaintances, but a strained, terrible thing—taut with the knowledge that too much had been seen, too much guessed.

When he spoke again, it was with a roughness he did not attempt to disguise.

"You have no right," he said.

Elizabeth swallowed hard. "I know."

For a long moment, he only looked at her—his eyes dark with something between anger and awe.

And then, very softly, almost to himself, he said, "God help us all if you speak truly."

Elizabeth said nothing. There was nothing to say. Only the ragged beating of her heart and the fragile hope that perhaps— perhaps —she was no longer entirely alone in her cause.

"I do not understand it," Colonel Fitzwilliam continued after a moment, his voice low and taut, as if the admission cost him dearly. "And I do not know that I ever shall. But I saw his face when he returned to Rosings last night."

He paused, glancing away toward the distant horizon as though seeking words in the pale morning sky.

"He was…" He broke off, shaking his head with a helpless, almost bitter little laugh. "He was not himself. Not lost, mind you. But shaken to the very core. I have seen him wounded before—by pride, by disappointment, even by grief—but never like this."

Elizabeth pressed a trembling hand to her chest, struggling to steady the wild beating of her heart .

"You have done," the Colonel said quietly, "what no man, no letter, no argument has ever accomplished. You unsettled Fitz."

"I told him the truth," she replied simply, though her voice quivered under the weight of all she had dared.

Colonel Fitzwilliam's gaze returned to her, sharp and assessing—but softened now by a compassion he could no longer wholly disguise.

"We need time," he said. "He needs time."

Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly, willing herself to hold fast. Time. Time she would give him. A lifetime, if he but asked it.

"I will help if I can," he added, the words spoken with a soldier’s blunt sincerity.

Elizabeth opened her eyes and nodded, her heart steadying, her breath slowly finding its way back to her. "That is all I ask."

A silence settled between them—less heavy now, though still weighted with uncertainty. Somewhere above, a lark burst into song, its bright notes piercing the grey dawn like shafts of fragile hope.

Colonel Fitzwilliam watched her carefully, the keen intelligence in his gaze tempered now by something warmer, almost brotherly.

After a pause, he asked, "Do you return to Longbourn directly after this visit?"

"No," Elizabeth replied, adjusting her shawl as a breeze stirred the young leaves above. "I am to remain here another week, then I go to London to stay with my aunt and uncle in Gracechurch Street for a time. After that…" She hesitated, the words catching slightly, "I return home until June."

His brows lifted a little. "And what then?"

She smiled, a small, wistful curve of her lips that did not quite reach her eyes. "My uncle and aunt have long wished to tour the north of England. They have invited me to accompany them. We are to travel at a leisurely pace, and while the route is not entirely set, I know we shall visit Lambton."

"Lambton," he repeated, his tone carefully neutral. Yet Elizabeth saw the faint narrowing of his gaze, the quick sharpening of his thoughts.

"Yes," she said softly. "It is not far from Pemberley."

The name hung between them like a talisman—or a curse .

"My aunt grew up there," Elizabeth added, her voice gentle, reflective. "Before she married my uncle, it was her home. She always speaks of the region with such fondness. She says the hills are greener there than anywhere else in England."

She paused, her fingers twisting the edge of her shawl unconsciously. "It was also there," she said more quietly, "that I saw him again—the first time. After everything."

The Colonel said nothing, but his posture shifted—subtly, almost imperceptibly—as though bracing for the weight of what she would say next.

"My aunt insisted on seeing the beautiful grounds at Pemberley," Elizabeth continued. "And it was there—amidst the woods, the water, the fields he loved—that our acquaintance was renewed." A faint smile touched her lips, but it was a fragile, haunted thing. "Everything shifted after that day."

Colonel Fitzwilliam nodded slowly, his expression unreadable. "And it was there, you say," he murmured, "that… everything changed between you and Fitz."