Chapter 19 #3
The same eager curiosity, the same family loyalties, the same public judgments and private kindnesses ran beneath both.
The names changed, the accents shifted, and the rooms were smaller, but village life had a pattern all its own.
Elizabeth understood that pattern. She knew when to laugh, when to yield, when to notice, and when to pretend not to notice at all.
At Lambton, she would not stand apart like some fine lady enduring rustic company for duty’s sake.
She would speak with Mrs. Price until the woman forgot to be nervous.
She would know which child needed shoes before the child’s mother admitted it.
She would walk the lanes, learn the cottages, tease the steward, charm the tenants’ wives, and return to Pemberley with mud on her hem and useful intelligence in her eyes.
Elizabeth at Pemberley.
The thought arrived so naturally that Darcy did not at first understand what he had done.
Then he did.
His hand tightened on the arm of his chair.
He had not imagined Elizabeth visiting Pemberley.
Not merely walking through the gallery as a guest, not admiring the woods or standing politely beside the lake.
He had imagined her belonging there. Moving through its halls.
Knowing its people. Returning to him with that arch look of hers and some observation that would make him laugh despite every attempt at severity.
He had imagined her as mistress of Pemberley.
As his wife.
The realization struck with a force that left him strangely breathless.
Across the room, Mrs. Bennet was telling Miss Bingley that Jane had always been the sweetest-tempered creature in the world, and Lydia was whispering to Kitty behind her hand.
Bingley, poor besotted Bingley, listened to every word about Jane as though Mrs. Bennet were delivering scripture.
Nothing in the room had changed, and yet Darcy felt as though some great internal boundary had been crossed.
He had known he admired Elizabeth. He had known he was drawn to her, that her eyes disturbed him, her wit delighted him, and her courage commanded more respect than many women of rank and fortune had ever earned from him.
He had known, too, that he thought of her far too often.
But admiration and attraction could be reasoned with.
They could be managed, restrained, placed at a safe distance.
This was not safe.
He was falling in love with her.
Perhaps he already had.
The thought ought to have been impossible, or at least imprudent enough to be dismissed.
Darcy had made his plans long ago, not because he wanted them, but because duty had left little room for wanting.
Pemberley was improving, yes, but slowly.
Too slowly. Georgiana’s dowry remained intact in trust, but the interest that should have provided her comfort had too often been turned back toward the estate at her own insistence.
He could still see her standing before him, no longer a child and not yet a woman, her hands clasped so tightly together that her knuckles whitened.
“Let me do this,” she had begged. “It is my legacy as well. I am a Darcy just as much as you are.”
He had argued. She had persisted. And because she was right, and because the tenants needed roofs more than Georgiana needed pin money under Lady Matlock’s roof, he had allowed it. The decision still troubled him, though she had never once reproached him for it.
For Georgiana’s sake, for Pemberley’s sake, for the sake of children not yet born and tenant children already living beneath repaired but fragile roofs, Darcy had resigned himself to marrying well.
Not brilliantly, perhaps. He had not hoped for affection.
But he had expected to seek a woman with a dowry large enough to restore what his father’s folly and his own necessary sacrifices had consumed.
Thirty thousand pounds, if he could manage it.
Enough to replace lost income, secure repairs, reopen the house fully, and make certain his own children did not inherit another generation of retrenchment.
Next season, he had told himself.
He would go to London, endure the balls, consider the young ladies paraded before him, and choose the best-dowered woman he could respect.
Or at least tolerate.
He had thought it a hard plan, but a possible one. Duty often required unpleasant bargains. He had made many.
But now his heart, which he had never before allowed to enter the calculation, had chosen without consulting prudence at all.
Darcy looked toward the door, though Elizabeth was not there. She was above stairs with Jane, where she had spent most of the morning, caring for her sister with the same fierce devotion she brought to everything she loved.
Everything she loved.
The words settled in him with a dangerous warmth.
Could he give her up?
Could he sit across from some heiress next spring, measure her fortune, admire her accomplishments, and bind himself to her while knowing that somewhere in Hertfordshire lived the woman who could make a library feel like a sanctuary, a dinner table like a challenge, and an ordinary glance like a promise?
For the first time, Darcy did not know whether he could make the sacrifice duty demanded.
And for the first time, he was afraid duty might not be enough for him.