Page 104 of Dear Friend

“You really should have told her earlier, Darcy.” Colonel Fitzwilliam shook his head and lowered his feet from the empty chair upon which he had rested them sometime during Darcy’s account.

Darcy looked across the breakfast table at his cousin. He had spent the better part of twenty minutes since his arrival relating everything that had occurred at Netherfield, from Caroline Bingley’s discovery of Elizabeth’s letter to the confrontation which followed, and Richard had listened without interrupting him. Darcy had almost preferred the silence. “I am aware of that.”

“Are you?” Richard asked, though there was little accusation in his voice. “Because from everything you have just told me, Miss Bennet’s greatest objection was not merely that you read the letters. It was that you continued to know what was in them while allowing her to believe otherwise.”

Darcy’s jaw tightened. He hardly required the distinction explained to him when Elizabeth’s own words had repeated it often enough in his mind these past four days. “I intended to tell her that evening.”

“After nearly two months.”

“Yes, Richard. After nearly two months.” Darcy pushed his untouched coffee aside and rose from the table. “If you mean to tell me that I behaved badly, you may spare yourself the effort. Elizabeth accomplished it rather more effectively on Saturday.”

Richard watched him cross towards the window. “I am not trying to quarrel with you.”

“No. You are merely succeeding without trying.”

That drew the faintest smile from his cousin, though it disappeared almost at once. Darcy looked through the window at the grey London morning, conscious of the fatigue behind his eyes and the dull ache in his head which had been his companion since leaving Netherfield.

“What kept you so long? You said you left Hertfordshire on Sunday,” Richard said after a moment. “Yet you arrived in London only this morning. Where have you been?”

“At an inn.”

Richard’s brows rose. “For three days?”

“Two nights. I had intended to come directly to London when I left Netherfield, but by the time I had travelled some distance, I no longer trusted myself to do anything sensible upon arriving.” Darcy rested one hand against the window frame. Even now he could remember how often he had looked back along the road during those first hours. “I considered turning back. More than once.”

“To Longbourn?”

“Where else?”

“And do what?”

Darcy turned from the window. “I had no notion. That was precisely the difficulty.”

Richard’s expression sobered.

“At one moment I thought I ought to speak to her father. At another, I convinced myself that if Elizabeth would only allow me ten uninterrupted minutes, I could make her understand why the whole miserable business had begun. By the time I stopped for the evening, I had nearly persuaded myself that her demand never to see me again had been spoken in anger and therefore need not be taken literally.”

“I am glad you stopped.”

“So am I.” Darcy returned to the table and sat. “By the following morning, I could see what I had been attempting to do. Elizabeth asked me to leave her alone, and I was searching for some interpretation of her words which would permit me to do exactly as I wished. I realised I could not do that. I remained at the inn because I needed to decide what I could still properly do without imposing myself upon her again.”

“And what did you conclude?”

Darcy’s gaze moved towards the travelling case he had brought with him. “What I had thought from the beginning. The letters belong to Miss Harding. They always did. Whatever happens between Elizabeth and me, that much can still be put right.”

Richard followed his gaze. “You brought all of them?”

“Every one.”

“And you mean to give them to Miss Harding?”

“Yes. And I will prefer to do it today.”

Richard nodded, then reached for his coffee. “And Georgiana? Have you seen her yet?”

Darcy shook his head. “No. I came directly here upon reaching London. I have not been home.”

That appeared to surprise Richard more than the two nights at the inn. “You came to me before seeing your sister?”