Page 169 of Companions of Their Youth
He had not thought so deeply on the matter before. He had never needed to. But now, preparing to give his vows to a woman who had walked her whole life with integrity, with innocence, he found himself sickened by what had once seemed acceptable.
He threw off the covers and sat at the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, palms pressed to his face.
The fire crackled.
He stared into the embers and whispered the Lord’s prayer, something he had done hundreds of times throughout his life.
But it felt like shouting into a void.
He bowed his head, tried again.Dear Lord… I do not know how to pray about this. I do not know what to ask. Forgiveness? A clean heart? Am I even capable of one?
The silence pressed in around him.
He had spent his life believing himself a man of conscience. Principled. Responsible. His sins had been the quiet, manageable kind—pride, stubbornness, aloofness. But this… this was harder to face.
This was aboutwhohe had been.
He buried his face in his hands.
There was no answer. Only the slow crackle of dying coals and the emptiness in his chest.
But he could not leave it there.
Tomorrow was Sunday. The second reading of the banns.
He would go to church. He would listen.
And perhaps, in the place where God’s voice was known to speak—in the steadiness of a sermon or the stillness of a prayer—he might find what he lacked.
Redemption.
∞∞∞
The second calling of the banns passed in a blur.
Darcy sat beside Bingley in the pew at the small Meryton chapel, his gloves in his hand. His heart felt like a weight behind his ribs. Jane sat with her mother just ahead of them. Elizabeth, radiant even in her modest Sunday gown, sat flanked by her sisters and father.
He barely heard their names read aloud.If only Fitzwilliam were here,he thought—but his cousin had returned to London after the execution, promising to return in time for the wedding.
It should have been a moment of joy. But he felt raw. Exposed.
When Reverend Sanderson mounted the pulpit, Darcy steeled himself.
He had met the man only once before, briefly, to arrange the banns. An elderly clergyman with a soft voice and wispy white hair, Mr. Sanderson had struck him then as courteous but unremarkable.
But today, Darcy hung on his every word.
The sermon was taken from the Gospel of John. A familiar story—the woman taken in adultery, brought before Christ in the temple by those seeking to stone her. He had heard it dozens of times. Perhaps hundreds.
But never like this.
Darcy sat motionless as the parson’s voice filled the little country church.
“Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act…”
He could hardly breathe.
He saw the woman in his mind—cowering, ashamed. Exposed before a crowd that condemned her. Filthy, guilty, alone.
