Chapter 26 #2
She shook her head at such a foolish errand. “Why did you trouble yourself to consult a physician?”
“I was wild to find a way to give you a chance for a longer life. I would send to the world’s end for whatever treatment might aid you, and if none would undertake the task, I would go there to fetch it myself.
” He looked at her in earnest, and her heart was now pounding for an entirely different and entirely wonderful reason.
Darcy raised himself from the floor to sit next to her, and looked at their joined hands for a moment before releasing hers. “No matter how just I once thought my silence was, or how afraid I was that you would hate me, I ought to have told you sooner, and I am sorry.”
“I am in an extraordinary situation,” she said to herself as she felt tears of joy forming.
“Yes, you must, of course, be relieved to learn that you are healthy. How you must hate me for not being honest with you. And you would have made a different choice for your marriage had you not thought you would die.” He looked devastated. “Those feelings of distrust and regret would be natural.”
“It would also be natural for you to resent being married to someone you wed for convenience and with the knowledge that it would be a short union.”
“Elizabeth, you now have the expectation of a long life, and I cannot presume, given the nature of our arrangement and my deception, that you would wish for me to have any part in it. If you want an immediate and eternal separation from me, to have as much freedom as I can grant you, I will see it done. I love you too well to see you made unhappy, even if being with you is what I want most.”
By now, Elizabeth’s spirits were fluttering in private rapture, but she could not yet speak from such happiness.
Darcy said, “I do not know what I can do in the future to do away with the past enough so you can forgive me. No matter what your feelings are, I will always love you and aim to make you happy, even if you can never say the same.”
A few joyful tears fell as she comprehended how little she had said of her own feelings and wishes. “Darcy, the assurance of your affectionate feelings for me is the realisation of all of my hopes.”
“Are you in earnest?” A tentative smile lit his face. She had never before seen an expression of such dawning expectation and delight. “I want your happiness above anything else. You know that I would never command you to stay with me? I would never command you to submit to anything.”
“What will make me happy is if you tell me everything and keep nothing from me.” He readily agreed. “Then I can lay open my own secrets in return. I will submit to anything you may command me—but cease to respect you, to adore you, to love you, I never can or will.”
He closed his eyes in what she understood to be exquisite relief.
She felt the same relief deep in her own heart.
Darcy opened his eyes to meet her own in a silent question, which she answered by dropping her gaze to his mouth.
He leant forward infinitely slowly. Elizabeth curled both hands around his neck and pulled him the rest of the way to her lips.
Darcy tilted his head, nudging her lips open with his.
His breath shuddered as she deepened their kiss, and he rested both hands gently around her waist. Darcy kissed her with exquisite tenderness, almost reverence.
It was more intimate than the fierce, passionate way he had kissed her a fortnight ago.
“I am desperately in love with you,” she whispered against his lips.
“I had no idea that you were half in love with me, let alone that your heart was irrevocably mine.”
She felt her heartbeat quicken and smiled. She need no longer fear that every beat could be her last. “When did you first know that you loved me?”
“I never had the talent of affecting sensations foreign to my heart, so I trust you will believe me when I declare that when we married, I had no idea that I should ever love you as I now do. I could not say what set me off for loving you in the first place.”
“Did you love me before your cousin visited us and we learnt where Mr Wickham was? Or perhaps it was after the accident at the toll gate?”
“I suppose your generous behaviour toward my sister helped to lay the foundation, but I was in the middle before I knew I had begun.” Upon seeing her frown, he laughed and said, “Do you need to know the date and the hour? Will you check your journal and answer for the same? Does it say, ‘Thursday, called on Charlotte Lucas, ordered two pounds of sugar, acknowledged to myself that I am in love with Darcy’?”
“I might have recorded it, but I would have written Mr Darcy. You have been formal with me, after all.”
He looked a little ashamed. “A first name is a powerful thing, and Georgiana was the only one who called me by it. For years, she held its exclusive use, and then she was no longer ill but dying and I . . . In the beginning, I think I had too much anger and too much grief, and I wanted to keep you at a distance.”
“And now?”
He leant closer, and she felt the heat of his warm breath on her neck. “And now, I want to call you Elizabeth.” She sucked in a breath as his lips grazed the skin behind her ear. “My dearest, loveliest Elizabeth.”
“How familiar of you, Mr Darcy.” She tried to sound sportive as his lips moved down her neck, but doubted her own success given how breathless her reply was.
Darcy pulled away to look into her eyes.
“I should never have told you my name was only for family, because that is precisely what you are. Once I knew how much I wanted a relationship where you called me by my name . . . I have done everything wrong.” He hung his head.
“Will you give me my name whenever we are alone? Will you be the only person to use it, the only person I would wish to use it?”
Elizabeth was shocked to understand that he had not been prepared for the intimacy of their relationship, and when he was, he thought there was no hope that she would return his feelings before she died. “Fitzwilliam, I love you.”
Darcy gave her such a heartfelt smile that Elizabeth responded with all the passionate tenderness of her lips. He embraced and kissed her with eagerness, pulling her toward him to set her on his lap. She put her arms round his neck and, for a while, was distracted by a nearly ungovernable longing.
But if our marriage is to be a truly happy one, I need to know why he left my room that night.
She drew back, and he asked, “What is the matter, Elizabeth?”
He ran his hand lightly up and down her arm, and looked at her with such concern that she hated to upset their newfound happiness.
Elizabeth shook her head and ran her fingers through his hair. “Nothing that cannot wait, but we ought to have some conversation about what to do now. Shall we go to the Lakes, or do you intend to show me this Pemberley, of which I know nothing?”
Darcy smiled warmly. “You must be careful to ask me such a question. Pemberley is a subject on which I cannot tire.”
“When you married me, you never thought I would see the place. I suspect your noble relations did not expect you to make such a union. You love me, but I hope it is enough to want me as the mistress of such a home.”
His smile fell. “I know that I have disappointed you with my deception, but you must not think that I am in any way disappointed in you. Some of my friends and relations may think I made an unsuitable connexion, but now that you will truly be mine for the rest of our lives, I want nothing more than to bring you home.”
She felt a thrill at these words that almost did away with her worry over why he rejected her that evening. “It is still not a promising beginning if most of your family will be against you.”
“For you to have value in some of their eyes, I would have had to make a brilliant match with wealth and connexion, without any regard for affection. My true friends will rejoice in my having made a match with the one woman who can make me happy.”
“I feared that once you learnt that I was not going to die, you might resent your situation. If you did decide to keep me as your wife, I was afraid you would have to be talked and finessed into an affection for me.”
“I may not have confessed my love and devotion as soon as I ought to have done, but you must have known how highly I admire your abilities and esteem your character.” Elizabeth shifted off his lap, still wondering why he walked away from her that night if he had an ardent affection for her. “Can you not forgive me after all?”
“I can—although I reserve the right to tease you about being able to live on less than your income for the rest of our lives. Can you imagine my absolute shock, Fitzwilliam, to learn what you truly are? Will you tolerate my sporting with you about it?”
“In return for having a lifetime with you, I can tolerate your teasing manner, or anything at all.” He gave her a searching look. “Your heart is well! I am full of joy at the news. Why are you not?”
“I suppose I have not yet reconciled myself to having everything that I wanted.” She gave him a warm smile.
“You have not answered my question: are we to go to the Lakes, or to Pemberley? I suspect you will say the Lakes for my sake, but you must want to go home, and I do have a great curiosity to see Pemberley.”
“Would you like to see Jane before we travel anywhere? Since you are perfectly healthy, there can be no harm in strengthening your connexion with her.”
“Yes!” She did want her sister to meet the man who had come to mean the world to her. “What a lovely idea.”
“If we spend a fortnight in town, you can have a few mornings at home to entertain Jane and also to meet my friends.”
The implied meanings of this simple sentence were not lost on her. They would not stay with Jane or in a hotel or with his family because Darcy had ten thousand a year and kept a house in town. “Where in London is your house? I suspect it is not in the city.”
“Charles Street, Berkeley Square, but you must take the carriage to Gracechurch Street whenever you like.”
Elizabeth settled into Darcy’s arms, resting against his shoulder.
“I suppose you keep a fine carriage, and a stable of horses, and a curricle, too? Not to mention a few hundred tenants and servants in Derbyshire who are under your care. I suppose you have a few livings in your disposal, as well. Shall you allow me to undertake the welfare and good management of Pemberley and this house in town?”
He pressed his lips to her temple. “It took me too long to be sensible of how necessary you are to me, and when I did, it brought me little joy since our time together was to be so finite. I ought to have told you the truth sooner. Please do not fear that I did not want to share my life and responsibilities with you.”
She did not doubt Darcy’s words or his regret in his deceiving her, but the question of why he refused her that evening hung over her fully appreciating her happiness. “Well, we ought to decide where to go after town. I suspect you would like to go home after having been gone for a year.”
“I do not want you to give up seeing the Lakes.”
“I have a greater interest in seeing Pemberley, I assure you.” She crossed the room and pulled the bell. “We have much to manage to close the lodge and open the house in Charles Street. Why do we not arrange everything so we can leave the day after tomorrow?”
“As you wish.” She turned away, but he called her back.
“Are you made unhappy to know my uncle is an earl, that I have ten thousand a year, and move in different circles than you previously inhabited? Our connexions are different, but you cannot think that you are quitting the sphere in which you were brought up.”
“Of course not. You and I are equals.”
Darcy nodded in agreement. “Then I hope you will soon tell me what is the matter.”
She did not feel equal yet to lead the way to any such subject. Elizabeth did not deny it, but nodded and rested a hand on his cheek. “I love you dearly.”
“I love you more than my own life.”
She felt tears in her eyes as she thought of the accident at the toll gate. “You ought to have left me there. I am so ashamed that I risked your—” Darcy silenced her with a press of his lips to her forehead.
“It is too painful a subject to dwell on.” His hands moved from her shoulders to take a light hold on her hips.
“In fact, every unpleasant circumstance that led to bringing us together ought to be put out of our minds. Since you now have the promise of a long life, I would rather us think on our own hopeful future.”
Elizabeth brought her hands around his neck and answered him with another lingering kiss.