Chapter Thirteen #4
Her name escaped him in a whisper. “Elizabeth.” He touched the sides of her face with gentle hands and bent his head. She tipped her face up to meet him, and he brushed his lips lightly against hers.
It was a touch charged with the sort of electricity that he had only felt once before, when a lightning bolt had split an old Spanish oak at Pemberley not five hundred feet away from him, making his hair stand on end.
He kissed her again, a little more passionately this time, but not enough to frighten her.
Now that she had said yes, they had time for that. They would have time for everything.
“I do hope that means you have something important to ask of me,” Bingley said laconically from some distance away. Darcy did not move to ascertain how far. “She is my sister now, you know.”
Darcy placed a gentle kiss upon Elizabeth’s brow and pulled slowly away. “So you have informed me,” he responded to Bingley. “And to be perfectly clear, this is the sister I prefer.”
“Yes, this is the sister everyone prefers, Darcy,” Bingley replied teasingly.
“Are you certain?” Elizabeth asked Darcy softly. “If you are having second thoughts, I am sure Miss Bingley would be only too willing to meet you at the church.”
“Do not say that even in jest,” he warned her, but the side of his mouth tugged up, and she smiled warmly at him in return.
“Lizzy,” Mrs. Bingley called. “Come upstairs with me, dear.”
“I suppose I should,” Elizabeth told him. “Jane can be a rather fearful creature when pressed.”
Darcy shuddered dramatically. “As we have seen. Go on, then.” He chuckled, kissed the back of her hand, and watched as she joined her sister. Mrs. Bingley embraced Elizabeth, and they removed from the room.
“Well, Darcy?”
He dragged his gaze away from the door and back to his friend. “Bingley, I shall speak with Mr. Bennet on this topic. But know that Elizabeth has accepted my hand, and I intend to marry her as soon as may be.”
Bingley smiled. “Congratulations! Now, in addition to another sister, I shall have you as a brother. Fortunately, there is no way I shall ever confuse you with Hurst.” He clapped Darcy on the back.
“How long had you planned this?” Darcy inquired.
“Plan?” Bingley asked, confused. “There was no plan, not really. I noticed at Pemberley that you were enamoured of Lizzy, but at the wedding I realized that you could not stop looking at her. You are a serious man, Darcy. To still be interested in Lizzy after all this time . . . I just thought if I delayed you here long enough that you would both be in the same house at the same time and that eventually you would come up with the correct words to tell Lizzy how you felt.”
“When did you involve Anders?”
“At the wedding breakfast. I just stepped outside for a moment to have a word, but it was very quick as your coachman is rather astute. He was aware that you had not been yourself and he wanted to help.”
“And the clothes?”
Bingley chuckled. “I have just been informed that Jane was responsible for that. She had already requested your clothing be laundered in preparation for your journey, but then Lizzy had confessed that she had feelings for you. So Jane simply asked the staff to delay finishing the task in lieu of other more pressing matters.” Bingley glanced at the door.
“My wife is more subtle than I am. I ought to have consulted her right away, and from now on, I shall.”
Before he could finish this conversation, Darcy felt compelled to speak. “Bingley, what you did to keep me here was not only dishonest—it was truly underhanded. Involving Anders in the lie, which made him extremely uncomfortable—it was beyond wrong.”
His friend merely cocked his head to one side. “You are welcome.”
Darcy shook his head. “Thank you. But do not ever do that again.”
“I will not. You are unlikely to ever again require that sort of extravagant action. Besides, it will be Lizzy’s place, not mine, and judging by her sister, I daresay she would make a better job of it.”
Darcy laughed, thinking of his Elizabeth setting him straight. “I daresay you are right, Bingley.” God help him, he was greatly anticipating it.
“Go to your father,” Mr. Darcy whispered in her ear. “He wishes to speak with you.”
Elizabeth stood and studied Mr. Darcy’s expression. “Was he very hard on you?”
He smiled. “Not at all. But I of all men know how difficult it must be to allow you to wed and move away.”
Mary and Kitty were staring at her with their mouths slightly agape. Elizabeth smiled at them and nodded at the chair she was now vacating. “Sit down and become acquainted with my sisters,” she murmured, amused. “For they shall soon be yours as well.”
“Where is your mother?” was his hushed inquiry.
She almost laughed. “In her chambers. The cold bothers her.”
“She thinks this is cold?” he asked, lifting his brows. “She would not like the peaks near Pemberley, then.”
“Not in winter at any rate,” Elizabeth replied. “I must go to my father now. Sit down, Mr. Darcy, and be pleasant.”
He shook his head at her. “If I must. Miss Mary, Miss Catherine,” he said as he turned to address them, “I am pleased to see you. We did not have much time to speak at the wedding.”
With her sisters and her betrothed settled together in the parlour, Elizabeth took a deep breath and walked to Papa’s book room.
“Elizabeth,” Papa said as she entered, confusion writ upon his countenance. “Have you not always hated this man?”
She closed the door behind her. “As late as April of this year, I did believe I hated him,” Elizabeth said quietly.
“But what I held to his account was either a misunderstanding on my part or something he has remedied since. You know we met each other at Rosings, and then again when my aunt and uncle wished to see Pemberley.”
Her father eyed her shrewdly. “And you began your acquaintance over again at Rosings?”
She shook her head. “We quarrelled at Rosings, but it was there I learned how wrong I had been. I did not expect to see him again, and I was determined not to regret him.”
“But then you met again at Pemberley.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Elizabeth, tell me truly. Did you meet him there by chance or intention?”
Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Entirely by chance. He was not supposed to arrive until the day after our visit, but he rode ahead of his party, and I met him as he walked up to the house from the stables.”
Her father stroked his chin. “And how did he receive you, after you quarrelled in the spring?”
“He was everything good, sir. He finished our tour himself and invited my uncle to fish in his streams. Miss Darcy came to call on us in his company the very morning of her arrival, and my aunt and I returned the call the day after.” She paused.
“We were invited to dinner on the day following, but . . .”
“You were forced home by your youngest sister’s folly?”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Yes.” She held out Aunt Gardiner’s letter to him, and he took some time reading and rereading it.
“Well now,” he said, drawing the words out and leaning back in his chair, tapping one corner of the folded page against his lips before handing it back to her. “So I have Mr. Darcy to thank for Lydia’s rescue. I shall think on that. But it is clear his feelings for you are not of short duration.”
“Nor mine for him, though it took me longer to understand.”
“And this is why you have been so unhappy. I must say, it was terrible to watch, Lizzy.”
“I thought I had lost him forever, Papa.”
Her father’s expression softened as he gazed at her. “I wish you could have told me of it, but I suppose affairs of the heart are not a thing a young lady takes to her father. And I admit I would likely not have known how to advise you. Did you two speak at all when he came in September?”
She shook her head. “I was sure, then, that Lydia’s behaviour had made it impossible for him to speak, even had he wished it.”
“I see.” He opened a drawer and withdrew what appeared to be a legal document, “it seems he left for town in September in order to retrieve this, my dear, but as he thought you did not wish for his presence, he did not return.” He moved around the desk and took the chair next to hers.
“What is that?”
“It is a common license.”
“A license?” She gasped as the meaning struck her. “A marriage license?” Mr. Darcy had not said a thing about when they would marry. She had guessed he would leave it to her. But had he inquired, she would have wished to marry as soon as possible.
And now they could.
“The issue, as Mr. Darcy has explained to me, is the license itself. It is only valid for three months, you see,” Papa told her, a little glint of mischief shining from his eyes. “And that means you must be married on or before the twenty-fourth of December.”
Elizabeth’s mouth hung open for a moment. “But that is less than a week away.”
“It is indeed.”
“I will be married by Thursday?”
Her father smiled. “It could not be timed better, in my view, for the Christmas feast your mother already has planned can double as your marriage celebration. Waiting two and half months for your sister’s wedding is not something I feel prepared to repeat just yet, not if I can avoid it.
” The smile faltered when she did not reply.
He hesitated for a moment before he moved to the chair across from Elizabeth, where he took her hand and asked, earnestly, “Would marrying Mr. Darcy next week make you happy, my dear? For truly, that is all that matters.”
“Papa,” Elizabeth said, very seriously, “You know how important Mr. Darcy is, and I am afraid a simple country wedding will not suffice. I would rather wait. Six months should be enough.”
Her father’s face paled considerably, but to his credit, he did not protest. “Very well, my Lizzy. You shall have everything you wish for.”
She smiled brightly. “You absolutely deserved that, you know.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I shall marry Fitzwilliam Darcy as soon as may be. I feel as though I cannot wait even the entire week.”
Her father laughed uncertainly, placing a hand over his heart. “Good Lord, Elizabeth Bennet. You frightened me.”
“Papa,” she said, clasping her hands together and resting them upon her lap, “now I must be serious.”
He waited for her to continue.
“You did not listen to me about Lydia.”
She could see him stiffen.
“I do not mean to chastise you, Papa. I only wish you to listen to me now. Please, make a concerted effort to know Mary and Kitty better.”
He gazed at her steadily, and she took it as permission to continue.
“Mary tries too hard to be accomplished because she does not like being compared to her sisters and found lacking. You could give her books to read and discuss the notion of charity with her so that her opinions and judgments are softened. Kitty’s French is improving, and she has a fondness for poetry.
She is a lovely girl but has been left too often without guidance beyond that of Lydia. ”
Papa’s guilty expression hastened her conclusion.
“They are neither of them loud or unseemly, Papa, and they would blossom under your care. Will you promise me to provide it?”
He nodded, then leaned forward to kiss her forehead. “I shall. I give you my word.”
Elizabeth took his hands. “Thank you.”
“Now,” he said, a bit of humour making its way back into his voice, “what say you to inviting Miss Bingley to your wedding? It seems only right, as she missed her brother’s nuptials, that she should attend yours.
You are, after all, her sister, and she will wish to fulfil her duty to you, will she not? ”
“Papa,” Elizabeth scolded him laughingly.