THIRTY-TWO #2
“Before I came to Hertfordshire,” he said, “I was not a man in any condition to be of use to anyone, least of all myself. I was angry. Bitter. I had spent two years at Pemberley persuading myself that the world might proceed exactly as it pleased and that I possessed neither the means nor the inclination to take any further part in it.”
He paused. His chest rose with a slow, deliberate breath, the cold air stark against the quiet force of his confession.
“I had decided, quite deliberately,” Darcy continued, his voice lowering into a cadence that struck painfully at her heart, “that what remained of my life would consist merely of obligation and endurance, and nothing further worth desiring.”
Elizabeth said nothing. She listened.
“I arrived in Hertfordshire fully intending to remain precisely as I was. Closed. Finished. Entirely certain that nothing in this neighbourhood, nor anywhere else, could possibly reach me.”
He held her gaze steadily.
“I had not anticipated you.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught sharply in her throat, yet she refused to look away even as her heart beat violently against her ribs.
“You did not pity me like most people,” Darcy said, his voice softening into something wholly unguarded. “You did not manage me, nor speak with artificial care because of the chair, nor look first at what I could not do before considering what I was. You argued with me. You laughed at me.”
He paused, and a smile, lighter and freer than she had perhaps ever seen from him, touched briefly at the corner of his mouth.
“You asked me questions no one else had thought to ask and listened to the answers as though you genuinely wished to hear them. I had forgotten what that felt like. Indeed, I am not certain I had ever known it so completely before.”
The garden remained very still. Behind them the house continued in its ordinary morning rhythm. Somewhere farther ahead, the faint sound of Jane and Bingley’s voices drifted softly across the grounds, but here upon the path the quiet held undisturbed.
“I told myself during those three days you spent at Netherfield,” Darcy said, “that I could not permit myself to feel anything for you. I believed I owed it to Clara’s memory to remain precisely where the accident had left me, and that anything beyond that would be unfair to her.
” He paused briefly, lowering his eyes toward the frozen gravel.
“You told me in November that I was mistaken in that. I heard you then, though it required some time before I fully believed you. I believe you now.”
He looked back at her with the same directness she had always found nearly impossible to withstand without surrendering something of herself in return.
“I loved her,” he said quietly. “That does not change, nor would I wish it to. She was real, and losing her is a grief I shall carry always. But with Wickham’s death, I believe justice has at last been served.
I am ready now to place that chapter of my life behind me.
Not to forget it. Not to diminish it. But to accept that it is finished, and that what comes after may be—is—worth everything. ”
Elizabeth felt something within her settle then, filled with the deep, spreading warmth of a thing that had waited a lifetime to be permitted rest.
“I have been courting you these three months,” he said.
“And those three months have only confirmed what I first understood at Oakham Mount, what perhaps I knew even earlier, if I am entirely honest.” He stopped briefly and drew a steady breath.
“I find that I am in love with you, Miss Elizabeth. I have been so for some time. I did not say it when I ought, for reasons with which you are already well acquainted. I say it now because I am no longer willing to allow those reasons to stand between myself and something I desire very much.”
He drew another measured breath and released it slowly, as though physically mastering the force of his own nerves.
“I would ask you to become my wife. If you will have me.”
The garden fell entirely still.
Elizabeth looked at him for one long moment, unhurried and wholly overwhelmed. Beneath her pelisse her leg trembled suddenly, a traitorous weakness threatening her balance, though she forced herself to remain steady upon the gravel path.
Her thoughts moved helplessly through the history of their acquaintance, every conversation, every shared silence, every walk and argument and gradual understanding which had quietly bound them together over the passing months.
She had first met Mr. Darcy as a bitter and wounded man enclosed entirely within his grief, spoken of throughout the neighbourhood as proud and disagreeable.
Yet from the beginning she had wanted only to understand the man beyond his pride, to know him as he truly was.
And now here he stood in the pale winter light of Longbourn’s garden, asking her to marry him.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said softly. “I will.”
Darcy looked at her then, his dark eyes widening with something very like astonishment. She smiled back at him, bright and entirely unable to restrain her happiness.
Then, because she was Elizabeth Bennet and could never wholly resist herself, one eyebrow lifted slightly.
“You might have asked me considerably sooner, you know.”
A breath of laughter escaped him.
“I am aware.”
The profound relief in his face, the warmth of a man who had believed himself permanently bereft and had unexpectedly found happiness again, banished her teasing at once.
He offered her his arm then, his hand steady despite everything he had just entrusted to her. Elizabeth slipped her gloved hand through it and leaned lightly against his side, allowing his warmth to steady her even as the trembling gradually left her own limbs.
Together they turned back toward the house, their steps falling naturally into the same easy rhythm as they began to consider the altogether formidable matter of informing the rest of the family.