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“No one else so wildly behaved, you mean,” she said wryly.

“You do as you feel is best. Tell me, did anyone in your family offer objections when you were offered the home in Sheffield? Mr Barnes, I know, received your father’s permission to proceed, but I have been worried that you might have had an uphill battle in the process.”

“Well, no. But a home and an income is something quite difficult to argue against. Your father need not have offered it, and I wish he had lived so that I could reassure him. I would never have betrayed your cousin’s secrets.”

He looked at her for a long moment. It was clear that, like Anne herself, Elizabeth believed that he already knew everything there was to know. “It was a shock to me, discovering she had any secrets at all. She has been a sickly, nervous person for as long as I can remember.”

“Perhaps that made it even easier for him. A nefarious man might look at a woman whom everyone else has always ignored, and more easily gain her trust. Undoubtedly, at one time he made her feel beautiful, before he began his abuse of her person.”

A man, abusing Anne. He had suspected that a man had been involved, as unlikely as it had seemed. Here was his chance to discover the rest of the story, and he did not hesitate to take it; above all, he wanted to understand. “You would have been very young; I believe it is why we could not identify you for so long and it is certainly why I discounted any possibility of it being you, despite your appropriate name. My father expected a woman much older, and living in the area where your encounter with her occurred.”

“Miss de Bourgh did not describe me? Oh, but I used my name in the third person, telling her the coins were from an Elizabeth Bennet… She was so frightened, so embarrassed, I hoped that by behaving as…as impersonally as possible, she might accept my help as she would an anonymous sort of servant. Obviously, until she met me at Rosings, she must have believed there was a different person involved. It makes sense.”

“She never did explain how you were able to intervene at such a critical moment,” he said, pushing a little further for a little more.

“Oh, that was quite a coincidence.” She told him about shopping at Carmichael’s, about the employee of the warehouse opening the door to the alley and then failing to close it, of feeling she should do it herself. “The man, she called him ‘George’, was horrible, simply disgusting. I have never heard such cruelty as he displayed towards her, telling her he must leave her there alone in that seedy alley whilst he obtained the money to take her to Scotland, blaming her for it the whole while. He even…” She paused, then squared her shoulders. “He slapped her,” she admitted quietly.

George. I have been unutterably stupid. Even though Father told me of disavowing Wickham at the same time as he informed me of the search for an Elizabeth Bennet, I did not connect the two.

“George Wickham is a scoundrel of the first order. I grieve that Anne was his victim, and am grateful that you were able, somehow, to extricate her from his clutches.”

“I did so very little. I only procured a hackney coach and gave her a few coins. Wait…did you say his name was George Wickham? Not the same lieutenant who briefly served in the regiment in Hertfordshire?”

“Sadly, yes. Before he died, my father charged me with keeping Wickham away from anyone I cared about. When I saw him speaking to you on the streets of Meryton, I knew that I must remove him by any means necessary, and at once.”

She shook her head with what appeared to be amazement. “I have been an idiot. I never saw Miss de Bourgh’s tormentor’s face, and I expected that he must appear as disreputable in person as his behaviour had demonstrated. I imagined him with a wicked scar creasing his brow, perhaps with an eye patch as well. Thank you, sir, for removing him from anywhere near my family. I am only sorry that he is still free to plague other young ladies.”

“As to that, shortly after he was convinced to depart the regiment, he was found to be involved in certain criminal deeds. New South Wales is now his home.”

“May I assume that you were responsible for his arrest and transportation?”

“Not at all. Simply because he was unaware that he was being watched, does not negate his accountability for his own lawless deeds.”

Elizabeth looked at him with shining eyes; reaching up, she softly touched his cheek. “I think you are a hero,” she said.

Darcy felt the caress throughout his whole frame, as her approval likewise filled his soul. Things are looking up, he thought, with vast understatement.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A WILLING HEART

Jane was impossibly, strikingly beautiful, the most beautiful bride to ever grace this chapel, Elizabeth was certain. She had known her eldest sister would be, because Jane was a lovely woman. Yet, there was something else illuminating her pretty features as she gazed upon her bridegroom—pure love, matched only by Mr Bingley’s expression as he returned the look, while the vicar read the words joining their lives in holy matrimony.

Mr Darcy stood beside his friend, tall, grave, wearing dark blue superfine against linens so white that they seemed to reflect the light surrounding him. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen.

He had done everything possible to prevent this wedding that he now stood for; then, upon learning from Elizabeth that Jane was truly fond of his friend, he had repaired all the disruption and damage he had caused. According to Jane, Mr Darcy had confessed to Bingley his concealment of her presence in London, claiming that he had not realised her feelings to be deep ones. Her sister, in typical Jane-like fashion, did not resent him for it. “He believed he was protecting his dear friend,” she had said. “How can I be angry with such good intent? As soon as he discovered that he had been mistaken, he went directly to Bingley with the truth, making no excuses for his behaviour. That could not have been easily done. How many would be so honest?”

Oh, Mr Darcy is honest to a fault, as I have reason to know.

Still, was that the worst failing a man could have? Especially a man who was willing, upon reflection and better information, to change his opinions?

Who else would willingly subject himself to a group of people with whom he could not feel comfortable, extending them every amenity his luxurious home had to offer? He certainly was sincere about his love for me, his every profession of admiration. He still feels it.

She understood him so much better now, she could hardly imagine a future without at least a hope of him. She had not been wrong to refuse a proposal couched in so much disrespect, but she had been wrong about the man who offered it. He was good. I think I am in love, she admitted to herself, as the vicar pronounced Mr and Mrs Bingley husband and wife.

From his front drawing room overlooking the drive, Darcy watched the newlyweds enter the carriage that would take them to Pemberley’s currently unoccupied dower house, a lovely residence overlooking the river, and tried to subdue his feelings of envy. All in all, he could be satisfied; not only had he made amends to the happy couple for his previous interference, but Elizabeth was here, in his home. She had spoken easily to him during the elaborate wedding breakfast; what was more, he had been able to more easily speak to her.

All of his previous doubts had been obliterated. Yes, her younger sisters were often silly or loud or both—but there was a naivety about them seldom seen in young ladies of the ton. The Bennet sisters were often wide-eyed with wonderment at the simple luxuries he was able to furnish, and did not hesitate to express their amazement or their gratitude for it. In Mrs Bennet, he had seen hope for the future soften her nerves. Granted, Mr Bennet paid much more attention to Pemberley’s library than he did to his family; nevertheless, he had been jovial during the wedding breakfast, with none of the sarcasm Darcy had previously witnessed. As for Elizabeth’s ‘low’ relations, it was her aunt Philips, the solicitor’s wife, who had sacrificed her own time and comfortable life in order to aid Elizabeth in settling into the house in Sheffield. He had been able to witness for himself the organisation of the home she had helped establish, and while he suspected that Elizabeth had been given a great deal of say in it, it would not have been possible without her chaperonage. Who knew that the answer to all his misgivings was to pay actual attention to the subjects of them, to try to see people as they were instead of gnawing at the prejudices informing his first impressions?