Courting Elizabeth (Around Jane Austen #3)

Chapter 1

DARCY

I had expected her astonishment.

I had even hoped it would rob her, for a few seconds, of that lively gaze that disarmed me with a constancy grown humiliating.

For months, Elizabeth Bennet had taken pleasure in contradicting my certainties, smiling at my silences, and finding in my every word a pretension I could not always deny.

To see her finally speechless should have granted me some advantage.

I had not anticipated that this silence would frighten me.

She stood near the fireplace in the small parlor of the parsonage, one hand resting on the back of a chair. Rain beat against the windows. Mrs Collins was absent, Mr Collins detained at Rosings, and each drop seemed to measure my waiting.

I had spoken too long. I knew it now. I had laid bare the ardor of my feelings, the struggles they had forced upon me, my family's objections, the inferiority of her connections, the prudence I had been compelled to overcome.

Everything that, in my mind, proved the strength of my attachment must have seemed, in hers, an inventory of her defects.

Yet I loved her.

I loved her enough to forget what my name demanded.

Enough to offer Pemberley to a woman whose mother shouted her matrimonial schemes in assembly rooms, whose younger sisters lacked all restraint, and whose father too often retreated behind a book when he should have been governing his household.

Enough to stand before her with no defense but my certainty of being accepted.

That certainty cracked when she raised her eyes.

“You are asking me to become your wife, Mr Darcy?”

Her voice was calm. Too calm.

“That is precisely what I am asking.”

“After reminding me of everything that makes this marriage undesirable in your eyes.”

I clenched my fingers behind my back.

“I wished you to understand what my feelings have conquered.”

“You have chiefly taken care to explain what they must endure.”

Part of me was irritated that she should dwell on form when I had just offered her my entire existence. Another part knew she was right.

“I expressed myself clumsily.”

“You expressed yourself with great precision.”

She turned her face away. The warmth of the fire carried toward me the scent of her hair, a trace of soap and rain.

I knew every movement of that neck without ever having touched it, every inflection of that mouth without ever having kissed it.

I had never desired a woman with such violence.

This thought, in the close silence of the parlor, seemed almost indecent.

“If I were to consider accepting,” she resumed, “I would not renounce my family.”

Something gave way beneath my ribs.

If I were to consider.

Those words nearly erased everything else.

“I will not ask it of you.”

“My mother will embarrass you.”

“No doubt.”

Her mouth twitched.

“Lydia will speak too loudly. Kitty will imitate her. Mary will recite sermons at table. My father may offend you through negligence as surely as my mother through excessive attention.”

“I am prepared for many things.”

“I do not believe you are.”

“Then tell me what I do not know.”

She lowered her eyes to her hand resting on the chair. Her fingers tightened on the wood.

“I know that you separated Mr Bingley from Jane.”

The joy that had risen in me hit a wall.

“I acted for my friend's good.”

“Without caring what he might want.”

“I did not know your sister was attached to him.”

“Because she does not display herself when she loves!”

The reproach was just, but I was not ready to acknowledge it when the future I desired seemed to hang on my every answer.

“I may have been mistaken about her feelings,” I conceded. “I was not mistaken about the improprieties to which Bingley would have been tied.”

She straightened.

“The same ones to which you wish to tie yourself.”

Heat rose to my face.

“Bingley is not in my situation.”

“No. He is merely more amiable.”

I should have taken offense. I would have with anyone else. With her, irritation mingled with the absurd admiration her courage inspired. She had neither fortune nor rank to set against mine, yet she spoke to me in the tone of a woman who sees no one in the room above her.

That was also why I loved her.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“That you stop making decisions for your friend. That Jane may be welcomed in my home without feeling you judge her unworthy to enter it. And that you accept my judgment will not bend to yours simply because you offer me your name.”

The firmness of her demand shook what remained of my confidence.

“Do you think me capable of demanding your obedience before I have even obtained your consent?”

“I believe you quite capable of confusing conviction with right.”

I held her gaze. She knew me well enough to see my pride, but not yet well enough to know what it sometimes protected. I could not ask her to bind her future to mine while claiming my intentions alone could justify every decision I made.

“I will give you my reasons when my decisions concern you.”

“And when you judge them wrong?”

“You will tell me. I shall endeavor to hear you before contradicting you.”

She studied me long enough that I felt my pride stripped of its last defenses.

“There is one more condition,” she said at last.

“Name it.”

“You will not attempt to govern my thoughts. You may give me reasons to change my mind. You will not decide for me that I have.”

“I have never desired to govern your mind.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You have just told me with great certainty what I ought to think of my family and of Jane.”

“I wished you to understand the strength of my feelings.”

“I understood their violence.”

The word struck me strangely. Perhaps because it was true. Perhaps because I did not yet know whether it frightened her or merely troubled her.

I took a step, then stopped on the other side of the chair.

“And your answer?”

She inhaled slowly. Her chest rose beneath the light muslin of her dress, and I looked away with an effort that reminded me how fragile my self-control had become around her.

“My opinion of you is not fixed, Mr. Darcy.”

I did not respond.

“You wounded me by what you did to Jane,” she continued. “I may have judged you too hastily on other points, but I do not yet know what man lies behind the one you show the world. If I give you my consent, it will be with this truth between us.”

She was not refusing me.

My mind, carried away by hope, retained only that.

“I do not ask you to deny your grievances.”

“No. You ask me to marry you despite them.”

“Yes.”

“And you will accept my continuing to contradict you?”

“I doubt I could prevent you.”

A fleeting smile lit her face. I saw in it more tenderness than it perhaps contained.

“Then, subject to my father’s consent, I will be your wife.”

No man should be capable of feeling, in the same instant, such triumph and such disbelief.

“You accept?”

“I have just said so.”

I remained motionless.

I had imagined this answer in the silence of my nights. I had seen her blush, smile, perhaps lower her eyes. I had imagined taking her hand and telling her what modesty still forbade.

She did not blush. She no longer smiled. Yet she had said yes, and my happiness was commanding enough to banish all prudence.

I moved around the chair.

“Elizabeth.”

It was the first time I had spoken her Christian name in her presence without the “Miss.” It seemed to me it already belonged to the most intimate part of my life.

She raised her chin, surprised.

“May I take your hand?”

She hesitated before giving it to me.

Her fingers were cold through the glove. I enclosed them between mine, then bent forward. My lips touched the fabric, and this trifling contact awakened in me a hunger so fierce that I had to close my eyes.

She did not withdraw her hand.

I took her stillness for an emotion similar to my own.

“Tomorrow I will ask permission to travel to Longbourn,” I said. “Nothing will be announced before I have spoken to your father.”

“Thank you.”

“I will do everything in my power to make you happy.”

A silence followed.

“I hope we will learn to be so together,” she replied.

We.

I did not perceive all the caution in that word. I heard only the promise it held.

When I left the parsonage, the rain had stopped. The sky remained heavy, the paths waterlogged, and yet the entire world seemed changed.

Elizabeth Bennet could become my wife.

I knew she doubted my judgment, my actions, and my ability to accept her family.

I did not understand that the most important doubt concerned her own heart.