Page 110 of The Difference of a Darcy
His mind would not still.
From the moment Mrs. Reynolds had closed the door behind her that morning, he had not seen Elizabeth once. No shared glances. No whispered asides in passing. No chance to brush her fingers as he passed the dishes at supper.
He was simplyalone.
And Wickham—Wickham waseverywhere. Stomping through the halls, slurring orders, knocking over a decanter in the study and laughing as the footman scrambled to clean it. From the murmurs of the kitchen staff, he learned Wickham had already sent for wine twice more and spent a full half hour in the music room yelling at the old piano for being out of tune.
“Even the furniture has abandoned me!” he had bellowed.
Darcy clenched his jaw each time he passed the study. He kept his eyes down, as a good servant ought, but every muscle in his body screamed to turn back and confront the man. To drag him bodily from this house and throw him out into the snow.
But he could not.
Not now.
Not when the cost of being discovered might endanger Elizabeth.
As night fell, he retreated at last to the small servants’ room he and Elizabeth had shared since arriving at Pemberley. The bed was neatly made—his hands had done so that morning—but now it looked foreign. Empty. Wrong.
He stood for several moments before sitting down heavily on the edge of the mattress. His hands burned with the effort of the day—blisters forming in new places beneath the calluses he had already earned—but he barely noticed.
He kept staring at the hearth, watching the flame’s flicker begin to die.
Upstairs, in the mistress’s chambers, Elizabeth lay alone.
Worse—she lay connected to that vile wretch, sleeping only a thin door away.
What if the liquor does not dull his… appetite?
Darcy pressed his fists to his knees.
He considered it—rising, creeping upstairs, and settling just outside Georgiana’s chamber door to listen for trouble. He could do it. Heshoulddo it.
But the maids had been whispering. He had heard the rumor passed between servants’ lips with giggles and wide eyes.
“Is it even his child?”
“Did you hear what he said?”
“Maybe it belongs to one of the footmen.”
The blood drained from Darcy’s face at the thought.
If Wickham found him loitering near Georgiana’s door… if he were accused, if Elizabeth were shamed, if Georgiana were further endangered…
He swallowed hard and bowed his head.
No. He must stay away. No matter how much it pained him.
He lay down on the narrow mattress, staring up at the ceiling. The walls creaked. Wind whispered under the eaves. Somewhere a shutter banged loose. And through it all, he listened.
Listened for a cry, a footstep, a scream. If he heard one, he would do whatever was required.
And if Wickham so much as looked at Elizabeth or Georgiana the wrong way—servant or not—he would not be held responsible for what came next.
But no sound came.
At last, near dawn, he drifted into a fitful sleep—his dreams dark and heavy with helplessness. Elizabeth reaching for him, but he could not move. Wickham laughing. Georgiana weeping. Flames consuming the halls of Pemberley as he pounded on doors that would not open.
