Page 23 of Penned By Mr Darcy
They said little as they walked, the candlelight swaying between them, casting twin shadows along the corridor walls. When they reached her door, she turned to him.
“Goodnight, Mr Darcy.”
“Goodnight, Miss Elizabeth.”
She opened the door, glancing back at him as she hovered between the safety of her room and the danger of him. He stared at her, as he so often did, but his eyes were not as hard and unforgiving as they had been before. As she nodded her head in farewell, he smiled.
Chapter Eight
Darcy
Fitzwilliam Darcy had never been quite so conscious of his own footsteps.
He stood in the hallway for a moment after Miss Elizabeth had disappeared behind her door, the candlelight still flickering gently against the polished wood. She had not thanked him. She had not smiled.
And yet, he could not shake the feeling that something significant had just passed between them.
He turned away at last, retracing his steps down the corridor. The library was still warm when he returned to it, the fire hissing softly in the grate. He set the empty plate down and stared at it for a long moment, as though it might reveal something he had missed.
She had said he was not easy to like.
He nearly laughed at that—nearly. It was too true to sting. What surprised him was not her honesty but the fact that she had offered it without cruelty. She had spoken as one might speak to a companion, or an equal. With her, there was no pretence, no careful diplomacy.
He both despised and craved it.
He sat heavily in the chair by the fire, his elbows on his knees, hands clasped. The silence of the house folded around him again, but it no longer soothed. He had always loved solitude—sought it out, even. But now it felt too sharp. Too empty.
He remembered her in the kitchen, bent over the pantry with candlelight tracing her profile. He remembered the way she had smiled when she joked about thieving bread, and the way her expression had changed—subtle, but real—when he had insulted her with careless precision.
Why had he said such a thing?
He knew the answer. It was the same reason he had spoken coldly to her at the assembly in Meryton, the same reason he watched her now with such unbearable attention: she unnerved him.
She turned him inside out.
Darcy rose abruptly, crossing to the desk in the corner. He opened a drawer and pulled out his journal—plain, leather-bound, the paper inside thick and smooth. He stood with the quill in hand, unmoving.
He had written nothing for three days.
He dipped the nib in ink and began.
I am a fool.
Not because I spoke to her. Not because I walked her to her room like some clumsy schoolboy trailing after a village beauty. No, I am a fool because I let her speak to me. Truly speak, without expectations or propriety, and I listened.
And worse still. I wanted to listen.
She is not what I expected. She is sharper than I imagined, warmer too. Curious. Honest to the point of discomfort.
And, God help me, I wanted to kiss her tonight. When she looked at me in the kitchen, the candlelight catching the edge of her smile… I wanted to.
But what would she do, if she knew the truth? If she knew what I had written? If she knew what I had done in the privacy of my own chamber, that I had…to those forbidden thoughts of her?
She knows. Or suspects.
She asked me tonight whether I kept a diary. Her voice was too even, her gaze too measured. She is not a fool. She was fishing for something.
There is no possible way she could have read my thoughts, for I guard this book most fiercely. Is she trying to steal it from me, perhaps? Would she read my thoughts like an entertainment? I found myself trying to recall all the moments I left the book in my room - could she have found herself a chance to steal a glance?
