Chapter 12 #2
"I am sorry your name was used in it," he said. "And sorrier still that I let others decide what you had a right to know."
"You have apologised twice in one fortnight, sir."
"I hope not to establish a schedule of it."
Her laugh came quiet and unguarded. It did not absolve him. It invited him to stay all the same, and Darcy found he wanted nothing else half so much.
He took the risk he had been putting off since the storm.
"Elizabeth. I love you."
Her Christian name left him before he had asked permission for it. He stopped himself too late. "Forgive me."
She only stared at him, colour rising up her throat and into her face. "You need not apologise for the name."
Somewhere behind them, through the open doors, the orchestra began again. A few uncertain notes finding their way into a tune.
"I love you," he said again, and this time let himself mean it plainly, without the careful edges he usually kept round every sentence.
"I loved you before I ever offered marriage.
I hid it behind duty, because duty could be refused with far less consequence than affection could.
You refused both, in the end, and I had earned every bit of it.
I ask for neither an answer nor a promise from you tonight.
I ask only whether I might court you openly — with your father's knowledge, and your consent. "
Elizabeth glanced towards Jane and Bingley, still visible in the doorway. Near enough for propriety, and far enough for honesty.
"You may court me," she said. Her voice came out steady, though her fingers had found the seam of her glove and were worrying at it without her noticing.
Darcy's hand tightened at his side, a fist closing around nothing.
He did not deserve the steadiness in her voice, not yet.
He meant to earn it, one call at a time, if that was what it took.
"That is not an acceptance of marriage," Elizabeth said, rather firmly.
"I understand."
"Nor a declaration."
"I understand that too."
"You look remarkably pleased, sir, for a man who has received so very little."
"You have given me exactly what I asked for," Darcy said, and could not, for the life of him, keep the smile from breaking through.
He offered his arm. She took it. This time, he thought, she took it because she wanted to, and not because propriety demanded it.
As they passed the retiring room, Sarah stood waiting at the door with the blue shawl folded over both hands, as though it were something considerably more precious than a length of wool. She held it out to Elizabeth.
"I am sorry, miss," Sarah said again.
Elizabeth touched the repaired fringe, running her thumb once over the blue silk stitches. "We will speak tomorrow, Sarah."
Sarah dropped a curtsy. McKeever stood across the hall, watching the shawl change hands with the fixed attention of a man overseeing a treaty signing. The pair of them looked so relieved that Darcy nearly laughed outright, right there in the corridor.
Darcy and Elizabeth returned to the ballroom for the last four dances. Bingley had rejoined Jane by then. Strain still showed around his mouth, but he stood straighter beside her, as though her nearness alone had done him some good.
"I owe you an explanation," he said, the moment Darcy and Elizabeth approached.
Jane glanced round at the guests still nearby. "Not here."
"Tomorrow, then."
"Tomorrow."
Bingley looked relieved that honesty could be delayed a few hours without curdling into concealment.
Sir William claimed Elizabeth for the next two dances, full of compliments about St James's that Darcy suspected he had delivered word-for-word to every young lady in Hertfordshire this season.
Darcy partnered Charlotte Lucas for the same pair and gave her sensible remarks his full attention, which she seemed to find surprising in a man of his reputation.
He did not watch Elizabeth every second of it.
He did not need to. He knew exactly where she was.
That certainty, he was discovering, felt entirely different from possession. Lighter, somehow, and far more welcome.
For the final pair, Elizabeth came back to him. "You have danced with three women tonight, sir. Miss Bingley would consider the number wholly inadequate."
"Miss Bingley has left the ballroom."
"I noticed."
"Do you wish to discuss her?"
"No. I want the final two dances tonight to belong to us, and not to her scheme."
Darcy bowed. "Then we shall not give her another sentence of it."
They danced.
No confessions interrupted the figures this time.
No servant came carrying a warning. Elizabeth teased him for turning too early.
He accused the musician of playing too fast. She rejected the defence outright, laughing, and Darcy found the sheer ordinary pleasure of it almost more than he could bear.
This — just this, an evening with nothing wrong in it — is what I want for the rest of my life.
At the very end of the evening, Mrs. Bennet announced, to no one in particular and everyone at once, that no ball had ever been finer in the history of Hertfordshire.
Hurst agreed from the card room without the faintest idea what he was agreeing to.
Bingley laughed, properly laughed, for the first time since the east saloon, and the sound of it seemed to settle something in the room.
Guests began to take their leave. Sarah carried armfuls of shawls back and forth. McKeever ordered carriages with brisk efficiency. Mrs. Nicholls stood watching every single transfer as though she intended to account for each glove herself.
Darcy saw the labour underneath the evening properly now, for the first time. A ball only looked effortless because other people spent the whole night holding its disorder out of sight, on aching feet, for wages that did not come close to covering what they had risked tonight.
Elizabeth stood near the entrance with her family, the blue shawl once more settled round her shoulders, right where it belonged.
"Tomorrow?" he asked.
"You may call after noon. My father will expect a proper conversation."
"About the courtship?"
"About your intentions, your judgement, and very probably your library."
"Then I shall prepare myself for the most serious question of the three."
"The library?"
"Naturally."
She smiled again, that small private smile that was entirely her own. Darcy bowed over her hand without quite touching it, though every part of him wanted to. The carriage carried her away at last, beneath a sky that had cleared to stars.
McKeever joined him on the steps. "A successful evening, sir?"
Darcy looked out at the departing lamps swaying down the drive, the open hall behind him, Bingley standing just inside it with Jane's promise of tomorrow still warming his face.
"Eventually."
"Sarah will be pleased to hear it, sir."
"Sarah is to sleep. So, McKeever, are you."
"Yes, sir." Which was not, Darcy noted, remotely the same thing as agreeing to it.
Neither servant obeyed at once, of course.
Netherfield still wanted clearing and counting and closing up for the night, and matchmaking, however successful, had never yet excused anyone from carrying candles.
The two of them went back to their ordinary duties.
Duties which, Darcy reflected, watching them go, had never once been ordinary at all.
He had once believed their meddling was the danger in all this.
Tonight, it had turned out to be the defence.