Chapter 3 #2
He was, infuriatingly, right. She resented the fact for a full minute before letting it go. They stood apart in the small space. The doorway remained open, rain misting in at the edges. Cold crept through Elizabeth's damp gown and settled into her bones.
Darcy removed his coat and held it out to her.
"No. You will freeze."
"I am wearing more layers."
"That is not a gentlemanly argument."
"It is a numerical one."
She accepted the coat despite herself. It carried the faint scent of rain and wool and, underneath both, something warmer that she suspected was simply him.
His body heat still lingered in the lining.
Elizabeth fixed her attention hard upon the brass buttons.
They were considerably safer to look at than gratitude, or whatever this feeling was that had lodged just under her ribs.
"Mr. Darcy, if we are discovered here, people may talk."
"Yes."
"You say that very calmly."
"I am not calm."
The admission changed the air in the little shelter more thoroughly than the thunder had done.
"I will ensure no blame attaches to you."
"You cannot command gossip."
"No. I can command my response to it."
The storm closed around the pavilion entirely now, rain striking the roof with enough force to make conversation private, though the open doorway kept them visible to anyone who reached the path.
Elizabeth pulled Darcy's coat closer around her shoulders. "What response would that be?"
"The truth."
Elizabeth watched the rain curtain the path in silver. "Truth has poor influence over people who prefer scandal."
Darcy glanced towards the open doorway, jaw tight. "Then I would give them consequence."
"You cannot challenge every matron in Hertfordshire."
He frowned, as though revising a list of possible opponents in his head. "I had not considered matrons."
"Your courage fails early, then."
His expression softened, though the concern did not leave it. "If any man spoke of you dishonourably, he would answer to me."
"That would make the story larger."
"Perhaps."
"And make you its hero."
The softness vanished at once, replaced by something more guarded. "That is not my intention."
Elizabeth regretted the sharpness even as she held the warning behind it. "A woman's reputation is rarely improved by two gentlemen fighting over its remains."
Darcy stepped back from the doorway, absorbing that. "Then tell me what would improve it."
"The people who know the truth should repeat it without drama. Mr. Bingley should say the path flooded. Miss Bingley should say she saw us leave in full view of the drawing room. The servants should say the door stood open the whole while."
"And I should say nothing?"
"You should say precisely the same as everyone else."
He considered this for a long moment. "You do not want rescue."
"I want an ally who does not turn me into a cause."
The distinction struck him. She watched it land, watched something shift behind his eyes.
"You are right."
Elizabeth had braced herself for argument. His agreement, offered so simply, unsettled her far more than a fight would have.
"You need not sound so surprised," Darcy said.
"I am not surprised."
"You are."
Elizabeth pressed her arms against herself, shivering. "I am cold."
"Those two conditions are not easily confused."
"They are both unpleasant."
He looked out at the water, and something in his shoulders eased into memory. "At Pemberley, the drains along the lower walk were rebuilt after a flood, years ago. I objected to the expense at the time. My steward was correct, and I was not."
"You preserve quite a history of being corrected."
"It has become extensive."
"By stewards and women from Hertfordshire?"
"The sources vary."
Elizabeth laughed now, the sound escaping without permission. It felt improper only because it came so easily, standing there wet and alone with him and no one to see.
"You speak of Pemberley as duty."
"It is."
"Only duty?"
Darcy looked towards the line of trees beyond the flooded path, and his whole expression opened.
Not the careful disclosure of a man choosing what to reveal, but the unguarded look of someone who had forgotten, briefly, to choose at all.
"No. It is the place where my parents lived, where Georgiana was born, where every decision I make remains after I have left the room.
Duty is only the part that can be measured. "
His answer revealed more than he had seemed to intend, and they both knew it the moment it was out.
"You prefer what can be measured."
"Do you not?"
"I prefer what can be questioned."
"That explains your conversation."
"And your discomfort."
Another burst of thunder rolled away towards the east, further off now. The rain weakened for a moment, then strengthened again with fresh spite.
Darcy looked at the coat around her shoulders. "Are you warm enough?"
"No."
"That was direct."
"You have praised honesty."
He moved to the other side of the doorway, blocking more of the wind without approaching her. A small adjustment, easily missed. Elizabeth felt it more than she would have felt a grand gesture, and did not examine why.
"Thank you."
"You are welcome."
For several minutes they watched the storm together. Nothing was resolved between them. Somehow that made the quiet honest rather than awkward.
Footsteps splashed beyond the shelter, and voices followed close behind.
Bingley called Elizabeth's name. Caroline called Darcy's, considerably louder.
Darcy moved away from the door before they appeared.
Elizabeth took off his coat and placed it over the back of a stone bench, a useless attempt at order that fooled precisely no one.
Bingley reached them first, hatless again, his hair plastered flat.
Sarah followed with an umbrella held at a hopeless angle against the wind.
McKeever came behind her carrying another coat, his expression a masterpiece of professional neutrality.
Caroline and Mrs. Hurst remained on the drier edge of the path, unwilling to risk their hems any further.
"Thank heaven," Bingley said, breathless. "We saw you turn towards the pavilion, but then the path just — vanished. Are you hurt?"
"No. Only wet."
Sarah wrapped the repaired shawl more firmly around Elizabeth's shoulders, and her fingers shook once against the fringe. Just once, quickly stilled.
Caroline looked from Darcy's coat, still draped over the bench, to Elizabeth. "How fortunate that Charles found you before anyone else did."
Mrs. Hurst's gaze sharpened at that. McKeever heard the sentence too, his face going carefully blank. So did Bingley.
Darcy's face went still in a way Elizabeth was beginning to recognise. "The entire house saw us leave by the south window, Miss Bingley. There is no discovery to conceal."
"Naturally. I meant only that appearances can be cruel."
"Then we shall not assist them."
He took the coat McKeever offered without looking at it. The valet lifted the soaked coat from the bench over his other arm. His glance passed over Darcy's wet waistcoat, over Elizabeth's shawl, over the open doorway behind them, and missed, Elizabeth was quite certain, absolutely nothing.
They returned by a service path on higher ground, single file where the mud demanded it.
Sarah kept close beside Elizabeth. McKeever walked near Darcy, half a step behind, the way a shadow keeps pace with the thing that casts it.
Bingley talked loudly and at length about drainage, weather, and the reassuring evidence of six witnesses, filling the silence so thoroughly that no one else needed to.
Caroline said nothing at all, which was, in its way, the loudest thing she did all afternoon.
In the house, Sarah hurried Elizabeth upstairs. Jane woke as they entered and tried to sit up too quickly.
"Lizzy, what happened?"
"A storm and poor judgement. Neither is uncommon in this family."
Sarah removed the wet shawl carefully. "Mr. Darcy judged the flooded path correctly, miss."
Elizabeth turned. "You were not there."
"Mr. McKeever said the drain drops two feet beside the pavilion. He walked it before breakfast."
Why, Elizabeth wondered, a small suspicious thread pulling tight somewhere behind her ribs, had McKeever walked it before breakfast at all? She could ask later. She filed the question away with the blue silk marker and the conveniently dry terrace.
A knock interrupted her thoughts. Bingley waited outside with a message, looking faintly like a man delivering news he was not sure he approved of.
Mr. Darcy requested a few minutes' conversation in the small morning room.
The door would remain open, and Bingley would stay in the adjoining library the whole time.
Every safeguard had been named in advance, precisely and carefully, which ought to have reassured her and somehow did not.
Elizabeth changed into a dry gown and went down, her hair still damp at the temples.
Darcy stood by the morning-room fire, his clothes changed, his hair still not quite dry.
Bingley made an elaborate, unconvincing show of selecting a book in the library twelve feet away, holding three volumes at once as though genuinely torn between them.
"Miss Elizabeth," Darcy said, "I will be direct."
"That is usually less alarming before it is announced."
His expression remained grave, all the earlier ease gone out of it. "Our absence may be repeated unkindly. Miss Bingley has already suggested as much. I will not allow your name to suffer through an accident I shared equally in."
Elizabeth's fingers found the seam of her borrowed gown and held it, a small anchor.
"What do you propose?"
"Marriage."
The single word left no room in it for tenderness at all.
Darcy continued, speaking of protection, and honour, and the impossibility of leaving her exposed to talk she had not earned. He spoke well. Fluently, correctly, every phrase in its proper place. That, somehow, made the injury cleaner rather than softer.
"Do you wish to marry me?" she asked.
He stopped.