One
April, 1811
Fitzwilliam Darcy could not hear the birdsong.
Or, he could hear it. It simply did not register. Not over the ringing in his ears, the hammering of his pulse, the sound of his boots grinding gravel into dust as he paced the grove at Rosings Park.
He stopped and took his hat off. He ran a trembling hand through his hair and put the hat back on, then gritted his teeth and paced some more, for good measure.
Last night had been a massacre.
Elizabeth Bennet had taken a knife in her slender hand and made several precise cuts, slicing his heart into small, neat pieces. Then she had thrown them into the fire at Hunsford parsonage, and he, fool that he was, had stood beside her watching them burn to ash. He had not even argued well. He had stammered. He hadjustified. He had stood there, explaining to his executioner that the axe was at the wrong angle, and she had swung it anyway.
The last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.
That one left a mark. That one left a crater.
The letter was his last card. His only card. Eight pages, front and back. Written between midnight and dawn in afury of ink and sleeplessness, one broken nib, and hands that would not stop shaking. Everything he should have said last night and could not, because she had been standing there with eyes burning with fury and he had forgotten how words worked.
He checked his watch. She walked the grove most mornings. He knew this because he had made it his business to know it. To be fair, even he found it disturbing. If it were someone else doing it, he would have informed the magistrate. But she came every morning.
He looked down at the letter he held firmly. She had to read it. And she had to understand. Or else... No, he would not think of that. Not when there was the slightest possibility of hope.
She appeared on the path, and his chest clenched, a fist closing around his lungs. Even now. Even after she had gutted him and left him bleeding on the parsonage rug. The sight of her dark curls, the straight shoulders, that walk,God, that walk, hit him square in the sternum.
She saw him and stopped in her tracks. Her face shuttered.
“Miss Elizabeth.” He stepped forward and extended his hand, which—damn it—was visibly shaking. “I have no intention of repeating the sentiments that so disgusted you last night. But I beg you to read this.”
Her hand instinctively opened, and he placed the letter firmly in her palm. She looked at it, blinking. Then she pinched her lips.
“No, Mr Darcy. My dignity suffered more blows than it could survive last night. I have no desire for a second round.” Her eyes flicked to the letter. “Thank you. No.”
She tore it in half, and handed him the pieces. The remaining pieces of his broken heart.
“I wish you a good day, Mr Darcy. And a good life.”
Then she turned and stomped in the opposite direction. Her spine was ramrod straight, unhesitating, magnificent. She had just delivered the final blow, and he was still admiring her figure as she went out of his life forever.
The birdsong was loud, melodic, and obscene around him. But inside his chest there was only a roar, covering the beats he knew must be there, although he was absolutely certain he was dead.
Darcy stared at the pieces, then thrust them into his pocket, his fingers trembling against the torn grain of the vellum.
The walk back to Rosings was a blur of punishing footfalls. The air smelled of early lilac, a sweetness so misplaced it made him want to retch. He kept seeing the set of her jaw. She had not even paused to wonder if he were offering an apology or a curse. She had simply reached out, taken the labour of his soul, and broken it.
I have no desire for a second round.
He set his teeth, his jaw aching with the force of it. He would leave. He would go to London, find a dark corner of his club, and stay there until the image of her finally faded from his mind. He would never speak her name again.
He crossed the threshold, barely registering the motion.
“Mr Darcy.”
He stopped. Mrs Jenkinson stood at the foot of the stairs, her face the colour of pale bone. She did not linger in the shadows as she usually did. She stepped directly into his path, her hands knotted so tightly in her skirts that her knuckles were white.
“Her Ladyship requires you. In Miss de Bourgh’s chambers. Immediately, if you please.”
Darcy frowned, his hand instinctively twitching towards the pocket containing the letter. “The drawing room, surely.”