Page 117 of Companions of Their Youth
It had been a theory before. A fear. A shadowy what if—lingering in the background of every tender glance Mr. Darcy gave her, every warm word exchanged, every hopeful thought about the future.
What if he found out about Papa?
What if he could not forgive it?
But now… now it was not awhat if. It was not theoretical. It had already happened.
He had cut off his closest companion—his childhood friend, his university mate, a man he had once trusted implicitly—all because of…what? His proclivities? Perhaps not even an act. Just a leaning, a preference.
And Darcy had turned away.
Elizabeth’s stomach turned. The garden around her blurred into misted autumn sunlight and the low murmur of Kitty’s laughter ahead.
He had already done it.
He had drawn the line in the sand—and Wickham, for all his charm and apparent honesty, had been left on the other side of it.
Her father…
She pressed a hand to her side, fingers curling into her shawl. What would Mr. Darcy do ifthattruth ever came to light? If he knew that the respectable Mr. Bennet, squire of Longbourn, was living a secret, hidden life? That he committed a crime so shameful he could have been hanged for it?
Would he recoil?
Would he call off the courtship?
Or—if a marriage had already occurred—would he forbid her ever to speak to her father again? Would he use it against her? Againstthem?
A rock had settled in her chest, heavy and cold.
All her reason whispered that Darcy had grown. That he was no longer the harsh young man Wickham described. And yet… the note in the book. His horror at the idea that it might have been written by a man. The vehemence of his tone when they quarreled. “I will not call light what the Lord has called darkness.”
That had not been the voice of a man merely upholding principle.
It had been personal.
Deep.
Fixed.
And suddenly she felt like a fool for ever thinking it might be otherwise.
She had hoped… perhaps even believed… that one day she could tell him. She just did not knowwhen, but she knew that that shemusttell him. She could not marry with such a secret between them.
But now she realized that she could not tell himat all.
Because if she did, she would lose him.
Or worse—lose Papa.
And that thought—that unbearable possibility—was what shook her most of all.
How can I choose?
Chapter 25
Darcy stood at the window of the morning room, his arms crossed tight and his boot tapping a sharp rhythm against the parquet floor. Outside, the trees had begun to drop their gold-edged leaves, and a sharp wind stirred the air—brisk and biting. Still no sign of Bingley.
He crossed to the window again, pressing one gloved hand to the cold glass. The morning sun was weak, filtered through shifting clouds, but it caught at the gold-tipped edges of the trees. Longbourn lay just beyond the hills, and with it, Elizabeth.
