Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Unmatched, Página 11

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Lizzie rides home from the estate a different person than the one who left, Darcy's letter reordering every memory she was sure of — George's warm, wounded coffee-shop story now reading as a con, Darcy's cold warnings now reading as the truth she got backwards. At home she finally tells Jane: she was wrong about both men, George lied about everything, and one piece of the truth isn't hers to repeat, so they'll say nothing and just watch. Then the militia crowd throws its going-away bash and Lizzie has to face George one last time. He fishes about her visit to the estate; she, finally armored, tells him she's 'heard both sides now,' and for one flat second the easy warmth drops off his face before the hollow charm snaps back and he melts into the departing crowd. But the danger doesn't leave with him: Lydia announces she's been invited to follow the whole crew to the coast for the summer, thrilled and oblivious, and when Lizzie begs her father to stop it he waves it off with a dry 'Lydia will be a cheaper fool away than at home.' Underneath the Wickham of it all, Jane sees the heavier thing Lizzie is carrying — Darcy. Lizzie admits it: she met a genuinely good man and told him he was the last man alive she'd ever want, and the woman who prides herself on reading people got the only two that mattered completely wrong. The chapter closes at her dark window, the opened letter in her hands: she will never see him again, and only now does she wish she would.