Page 142 of Honor Requires

She smiled through her tears.

Neither moved for a time. Their hands remained joined, and Elizabeth became acutely aware of the warmth of his fingers about hers. Such a simple contact ought not to have felt extraordinary, but after years spent believing she would never touch him again, the sensation was almost overwhelming.

She tightened her hold slightly.

The answering tenderness in his expression made her heart ache with a happiness so profound it bordered upon pain.

“I would marry you this instant,” he said, his voice unshaking despite the emotion beneath it, “if all were resolved. If I were free to claim my name without consequence.”

Elizabeth’s expression shifted. “Then why do you persist?”

He understood her meaning at once.

“You have wealth,” she said. “Enough for any life we might choose. Must you pursue this course? Must you seek vengeance when happiness lies within your reach?”

Darcy drew a breath. “It is not vengeance alone. It is justice. I cannot allow those who have done this to remain unpunished. And there is more than myself to consider. My sister—”

“I have seen her.”

He stilled.

“She is in Town, if you did not know. I called upon her. She spoke of her husband with such affection. She longs for his company.”

Darcy’s expression hardened. “I knew. You see only what she wishes you to see. Wickham is not the man she believes him to be.”

He told her then what he had learned. Of Wickham’s excesses, his instability, his entanglement with Hargrave, the manner in which he had been used to secure control over Pemberley.

Elizabeth listened carefully.

“It sounds,” she said slowly, “like a man filled with remorse.”

Darcy’s brows drew together.

“You say he spoke of her in such a way. Like a man whose faults are laid painfully bare by her goodness. If he is destroying himself, it may be from the guilt of what he has done.”

Darcy was silent before he replied. “That is…to his credit,” he admitted at last.

Elizabeth studied him. “Will you persist?” she asked. “Will you continue on this path, even at the risk of losing yourself to it?”

He shook his head. “No. I will not lose myself. Not while I am bound to you.”

Her expression brightened.

“I have set things in motion,” he insisted. “Not through deceit, but through the exposure of truth. Hargrave and Langford will be undone by their own actions.”

“And Wickham?”

Darcy looked away briefly, then back again. “I do not know.” He exhaled slowly. “Part of me would see him punished as thoroughly as possible. There is another part—one that remembers what we once were—that would show mercy.”

Elizabeth reached for his hand. “Then listen to that part,” she said gently. “Let mercy guide you where justice allows it.”

He looked at her, and in her gaze he found not judgment, but understanding.

Perhaps, he thought, having Elizabeth will suffice.

They did not rise at once.

What followed their conversation was not empty, but full—of understanding, of long-suppressed feeling, of sentiment newly restored between them that neither wished to disturb too hastily. Elizabeth’s hand remained in Darcy’s, her fingers resting lightly against his, testing the reality of him still. The garden lay peaceful about them, the faint rustle of leaves and distant murmur of the house the only reminders that the world had not altered entirely to match the change within her.