Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Going Public, Page 12

About this chapter

Engaged, blessed, and utterly unprepared for the part nobody warns you about: everyone else finding out. The morning after her father's blessing, Lizzie sits on the porch steps with her thumb hovering over a post that will hand the whole town a version of the most private thing that has ever happened to her — and can't press it. Inside, the news is already loose and mutating. Mrs. Bennet, who spent a year calling Darcy unbearable, has become his most devoted admirer overnight and is planning two weddings before breakfast; Mr. Bennet declines to let her rewrite history. Charlotte claims she called it back in March. Aunt Maddie, who kept his secret for weeks, cries in a car. Caroline Bingley congratulates her through a smile that never reaches her eyes. Lydia, being Lydia, texts to ask whether Lizzie could spot her now that she is basically rich. And two hours away behind a set of iron gates, a long black car sits outside a cold grey house where Ms. de Bourgh has stopped taking her nephew's calls. On the leafy lane at golden hour, Lizzie finally asks Darcy the question she has been circling since the moment she said yes — when did you first know? — and the answer is not the grand one she braced for but a small, specific, devastating one: three miles of mud, and a woman who did not care what anyone thought of her. That night he finds her on the porch with the post still unwritten and tells her she owes nobody an announcement. She knows. She wants one anyway. The chapter closes on the same steps and the same golden light it opened with — except this time she isn't alone in the frame, and the version going out is the only one she actually chose.