Mr. Darcy presents himself as a devoted suitor, arriving with jewels and settlements while he monitors Elizabeth Bennet’s correspondence and maps out the life she will lead once they share a household.
She still intends to marry him with a secret that could ruin Charlotte, knowing he understands exactly what her silence is worth.
Their arrangement requires her hand, not her yielding, yet his unexpected restraint after dark unsettles the contempt she has clung to since Kent, and wanting him feels like a betrayal of who she used to be.
Rumors about Collins’s death are beginning to travel, and Charlotte is falling more completely under Colonel Fitzwilliam’s protection.
Elizabeth has accepted the wedding; she has not accepted the loss of the will her friend may yet need.
