Chapter 6 Darcy
Darcy
At sunrise the next morning, Darcy fairly vaulted out of bed, eager to see cloudless skies and relatively dry paths.
He parted the curtains and saw that there were some clouds, but they were the sort of cumulus clouds that boded fair weather…
the sort whose white puffs caught the sun’s early rays and turned delicate shades of pink and gold.
Certain Elizabeth would soon be walking towards their meeting point, Darcy dressed swiftly and hurried to Gulltoppr.
He did not think to attain breakfast foods this morning, but he knew of a fruiting plum tree directly on his way.
He was able to find five plums that were the perfect colour and firmness to indicate that they would be ideal for their breakfast.
When he reached the trail up to Oakham Mount, Darcy saw that Elizabeth had preceded him and held a basket.
He slipped from his mount, took the plums out of his pockets to carefully stow in her basket, and cut up one plum with his pen knife.
As he fed the fruit to Gulltoppr, he apologised for being later than the first time they had met.
“Do you apologise because I won the race to our spot, Mr Darcy?” Elizabeth’s pert question was accompanied by her sweet smile, mirthful eyes, and one raised eyebrow.
“Race?” he asked. “If we are competing thus, we should choose a spot equidistant from both Longbourn and Netherfield.”
“Then you would have to walk, as I must.”
“Poor Gulltoppr would hate to miss out.”
“Also, if we are going to be enamoured by the idea of a fair competition for our early-morning race,” Elizabeth said, “then I believe you should have to deal with buttons up the back—without your valet, of course—and pinning up your hair.”
They both stopped being silly with words in order to be silly with their laughter, and they began the gradual climb up the hill, gloved hand in gloved hand.
There was some mud found on the lowest parts of the walk, and they skirted around two particularly wet spots, but the trail became less muddy, and they found easier footing as they continued to the top.
“Shall we have some conversation, sir?” Elizabeth asked. Again with her eyebrow. Darcy longed to reward her adorable impudence with kisses.
He said, “I am furthering our earlier conversation, in my head. I believe that I have a suggestion for greater fairness in our early-morning race—one that does not involve the impossibility of me pinning my hair up. However, my argument is of a peculiar kind, one that can only be made once we reach the top.”
“Oh, dear, and I was looking forward to seeing you with hairpins taming your curls! I am cruelly disappointed.”
Having been motivated to walk quickly, the two soon arrived at the flat stone that marked the top of Oakham Mount. Elizabeth turned to Darcy with an eager smile and dancing eyes.
“I await your suggestion, sir.”
“I suggest…” he began slowly as he untied her bonnet and removed it.
He carefully retied the strings so that he could loop them over his arm.
“…That we do not worry about me having to pin up my short curls, in order to make our race fair, since that would be impossible….” Darcy boldly began removing hair pins, allowing Elizabeth’s long chestnut curls to tumble down her back, reaching almost to her waist. “…Instead, to make things equal, we could make the agreement that you do not have to pin up your curls, either. Which, as you can see, is at least possible.”
As he finished unpinning Elizabeth’s hair, and slipping the pins into his pocket, he felt half delighted and daring, half embarrassed and shy. For more than two months, he had wished to see her hair down, and he had wondered just how long it was, and how curly.
However, he knew that he had no right to unpin her hair.
Despite their courtship, propriety dictated that her hair remain up around him.
However, the two of them were alone, and had met by private agreement.
Propriety had been strained to the breaking point already.
What was a dozen hairpins, compared to an assignation at dawn?
Those thoughts flitted through Darcy’s brain in a flash while he carefully studied Elizabeth’s face to see how she felt about his rakish behaviour.
She looked as if she were entranced. Her eyes were neither mirthful, as they often were, nor fiery, as he feared they would be.
Instead, they were wide and trusting and…
. He could not be certain, but he thought she might feel desire. For him.
Of course, he might just wish to see desire. He certainly was feeling immense desire for her.
Gazing up into his eyes, Elizabeth at first made a surprised sort of gasp, then she seemed to have ceased breathing for a few seconds before giving a low laugh.
Finally, she responded: “Well, sir, your idea would seem to have merit as far as fairness goes, and as far as bending to the reality of what is possible. However, I believe that such a thing would scandalise most people, and it is not to the benefit of either of us to court scandal.”
She did a quick swoop of her hair and then stuck out one hand, and he gave her a hairpin.
She utilised it and put out her hand for another, and before long his pocket was empty of hairpins, and her hair was neatly pinned up, other than the usual short curls that surrounded her face, and Darcy realised with a pang that he had not had time to run his fingers through her long locks, as he yearned to do.
“Are you angry with me?” he whispered.
Elizabeth responded with the most serious tone he had ever heard from her. “Fitzwilliam Darcy, I love you, and you love me. In my heart, we are already married, and I cannot but assume that you feel the same way.”
“I do.”
“Given the fact that we are as true to one another, as attached to one another, as if we were already wed, it is very much a point in our favour that we are still attempting to do the expected things: waiting until we have known each other more than two months, waiting to gain permission to marry from my father, speaking to one another with courtesy titles, being discreet about our private meetings, taking only minimal liberties.”
Darcy pondered the word discreet, and he decided that Elizabeth’s words were wise.
He said, “I thought I could be patient, that I would not push for an early engagement or swift marriage, but I find myself increasingly impatient. However, no matter my feelings, I should not act on them, and I apologise.”
“Well,” Elizabeth said, “you are five and twenty, and you have been living as if you were a monk….” Her cheeks turned red, and she said, “Oh, dear, I do not know where I was going with that comment. Pray, just ignore me.”
“My cousin would say, ‘A man has needs,’ as if that is an excuse for any behaviour.”
“A cousin that I happen to know?” Elizabeth asked.
“Oh, dear, now you will have to ignore me.”
“We must work on my father more, Mr Darcy. We cannot allow him to postpone the discussion indefinitely. I, too, grow impatient.”
Darcy smiled; it felt lovely to have expressed his own more unpleasant feelings only to find that Elizabeth shared them. But as he thought about what he could do that day, what he might bring to Longbourn, he had another uncomfortable thought.
“Miss Elizabeth, I would ask you not to try to protect my own feelings as you answer this question, but rather please tell me the unvarnished truth: I have brought your mother flowers and, another day, your father a gift. Do you feel a bit left out? As someone courting you, ought I to bring you gifts?”
She smiled a genuinely delighted smile, and he relaxed again as she replied, “The unvarnished truth is that both of those gifts felt as if they were given to me. I treasure the goodwill you have shown to my parents. I was surprised to see that your lovely gesture towards my mother resulted in fewer effusions rather than more. I was thrilled to see how much my father loved the first edition. And, honestly, I am not certain if it is entirely proper for you to give me gifts until we are actually engaged. I have no experience in such matters, and my mother has not trained us much in matters of propriety, since she herself seems to be a stranger to the subject, but I have a feeling that personal gifts might be frowned upon by society.”
Darcy nodded and said, “Good. We seem to share the way I have been looking at gift giving to your parents, and we also share inexperience in the ways of a courting couple.”
Feeling certain that Bingley would know more about courting than he, despite the fact that he was younger, Darcy decided to ask him for advice on the topic.
Bingley had never seriously courted any woman before—at least, not to his knowledge—but he regularly called on women he had met at balls and assemblies, characterising them as angels and dedicating several weeks to each object of his infatuation before his focus switched to another young woman.
Suddenly, it occurred to Darcy that every one of Bingley’s “angels” was blonde and blue-eyed, with a tall-and-willowy body type—just like Elizabeth’s sister, Miss Bennet.
And he remembered how much Bingley had hovered near Miss Bennet the day they met.
He should definitely speak with his friend to ensure that he did not play with her emotions and then swiftly move on, as he usually did.
Darcy pushed aside all of these complex thoughts as he determined that it was time for him to speak to Elizabeth, as he had planned, about the Darcy fortune.
He led her to their log—and it was humorous to himself to consider the fact that he had somehow taken possession of that log after only one morning’s use—and he said, “Remember, I had wished to speak with you about my fortune. Or, really, our fortune.”
“And do you remember that you need not do so ever, and certainly not before we are formally engaged?”