Page 67 of The Crown’s Gift

"Thank you."

"You are welcome."

The proprietor returned with a parcel and mentioned a disturbance outside. A cart had overturned near the market cross. Darcy went at once.

Elizabeth followed to the doorway.

A wheel had broken. Apples rolled across the street. The carter, an elderly man, sat stunned against the curb while a frightened horse kicked at tangled traces.

Darcy approached slowly, speaking to the animal. He removed his coat, covered the horse's eyes, and directed two men to cut the strap rather than pull it. Once the animal was freed, he knelt beside the carter and sent for a surgeon.

No one called him master. No audience of consequence observed him. He simply acted because action was needed.

Elizabeth thought of her father crossing the assembly room ten years earlier. Courage did not always arrive with a sword at one's throat. Sometimes it knelt in mud while apples rolled beneath passing feet.

Darcy looked up and found her watching.

His expression changed—not pride in being observed, but concern that she might have seen too much of what he preferred to do privately.

The carter had broken no bones. Darcy paid for the horse to be stabled and the cart removed, then returned to the bookshop with mud on one knee.

"You are practiced," Elizabeth said.

"At overturned carts?"

"At acting while others decide whether intervention is dignified."

He looked toward the street. "My father taught me that an estate is full of emergencies which do not wait for rank."

"A valuable education."

"Incomplete in other respects."

They stood near the shop window, sheltered from the curious looks outside.

"Mr Darcy," Elizabeth said, "I owe you an apology."

He became still.

"Not for refusing you."

"No."

"But I believed Wickham because his account suited my first opinion. I questioned details and congratulated myself upon caution, yet I wanted him to be right. I was unjust."

Darcy's face softened with pain. "I gave you reason to think me capable of selfishness."

"Not of what he claimed."

"You did not know the truth."

"I knew I lacked it."

He accepted this in silence.

"I am sorry," she said.

"Thank you."