Chapter Twenty-six
Elizabeth
Several days later
Since Mary’s rescue, the house on Portman Square had become, in Elizabeth’s estimation, the most pleasant place to be.
This was not something she would have acknowledged at the start of the season, but the transformation was real and she was glad of it.
The fire in the drawing room burned at the same rate it always had.
The breakfast table held the same number of cups.
Yet the difference was that everyone had stopped being occupied by their respective plans and collectively arrived at a general state of unity.
Mrs Bennet had spent recent days in a state of total maternal devotion that was largely affecting.
She fussed over Mary at breakfast and apologised for fussing and then fussed again.
Mary, who had always borne any sort of excessive attention with patient endurance, bore it now with undisputed affection.
That was because she recognised it for the raw show of feeling it was, undiluted and driven by care and sacrifice rather than malicious reasons.
Mary was at Mr Thwaite's townhouse this afternoon, with Mrs Bennet in attendance as chaperone.
This was, in itself, a small development worth remarking upon: that Mrs Bennet, who had spent much of the season treating the connection as a family asset to be secured and accelerated, had changed her goals to simply being present for her daughter.
She had left the house this morning with the straightforward intention of being near Mary, and Mary had gone with the intention of spending time with Mr Thwaite.
The two goals had accommodated each other without the complicated negotiation that had characterised most of the season's earlier arrangements.
Elizabeth was pleased by the way matters turned out.
Mary was her immediate younger sister, the one who was next in their line of sisters and in some ways the one Elizabeth had always understood best after Jane.
They both shared a trait that Jane did not have and that Lydia and Kitty had too much of: they were both deeply interested in specific subjects, and both kept their deepest interests at some remove from public display.
Elizabeth was glad Mary had Mr Thwaite, who was the only person who had encountered that trait in her sister and not found it wanting.
At the moment, Jane was in the park with Mr Bingley, chaperoned by Lady Hamilton.
Mr Bingley had proposed a day before, as the two were out in the garden planting Jane’s favourite flowers, an event Jane had described as being exactly what she hoped for.
She had moved through the house afterwards with a wide-eyed, fanciful stare that made it clear that she was quietly astonished by Mr Bingley’s romantic request for her hand in marriage.
Elizabeth sat in the drawing room with a book in hand. Amidst the season’s events to attend and everything else, she had a lot of reading to catch up on.
Kitty had her face inches from the window glass, which she had claimed offered superior light for reading, but dismantled her own point by not holding any book.
Lydia was on the sofa and she picked up a piece of needlework that Elizabeth was fairly certain had not moved in three weeks.
"He is on the steps," Lydia said without glancing up, a smile creeping along her face.
Elizabeth turned a page, her heartbeat increasing. "Who is?"
"You know perfectly well who."
Kitty burst into laughter, her hand shielding her face.
"Kitty," Elizabeth said, "you can see perfectly well from a chair."
"The light is better here."
Elizabeth set the book down and smoothed her skirt, which did not require smoothing, but she did so anyway. The act made her cognisant of the full extent of her own ridiculousness, which she accepted hesitantly.
She felt as if she had suffered an inexplicable reverse. She had never been the sort of person to act anxiously in the presence of a caller. She did not recognise herself in the behaviour. She chose to attribute it to residual exhaustion from recent events.
This was a sensation she had watched in Jane with fond amusement, had observed it in Mary with tenderness, and privately maintained confidence that her own disposition was too clear-sighted for such susceptibility. She was being educated out of this at great speed.
In the days since they had found Mary, Mr Darcy had been…
attentive was the word she found for it, because it was the most accurate.
He had sent a note the day after to enquire after Mary's recovery, which was kind and appropriate.
He had sent a second note to enquire after Elizabeth's own rest and health, which was more specifically directed.
Then he had begun calling on the Bennets. On those occasions, he had asked politely after Mary before requesting to speak to Elizabeth in a register she would have had to be considerably less perceptive than she was to mistake for mere social courtesy.
He had turned to her, during those moments, with an expression she had spent weeks misreading and now read correctly: not assessment, judgment or the studied regard of a man forming verdicts.
It was the kind of attention that belonged to the person it was directed to without hesitation, making it clear they were the subject of interest.
She had responded to this with what she hoped was adequate composure, but Lydia's suppressed amusement suggested that may not be the case.
She was in the full and somewhat vertiginous condition of a woman who had fallen in love with someone and had not yet quite accustomed herself to that fact.
It produced specific symptoms: an air of heightened alertness in any room where he was present, a tendency for her thoughts to arrange themselves around recent conversations with him in the intervals between other subjects.
And—this was the symptom she found least dignified—a propensity to blush deeply when his name was mentioned without warning, which Kitty and Lydia had noticed and were exploiting, having been waiting for an opportunity of that exact kind.
Mr Darcy was let in by the butler, who exchanged some words of greeting before directing him towards the drawing room.
When he entered, he greeted the room with appropriate civility, and then looked at her.
It was a direct look. It made no pretence of scanning around the room. His gaze, from across the room, communicated what she could not reduce to words but which she understood without difficulty.
She was glad she had set down the book, after all. The thought of further sudden movement made her anxious.
Kitty and Lydia performed a brief and unconvincing theatre of greeting and then returned to their respective pretences. A maid poured the tea, and Mr Darcy picked up the cup to drink, whereas Elizabeth managed a tiny sip before setting hers back down on the tray.
"I hope all is well," he said.
"Quite so. Jane and Mr Bingley are out together. Mary and Mr Thwaite are growing more settled around each other, and she is more herself than ever. We owe you a very significant debt, Mr Darcy."
"The debt is not mine to claim."
"You are deflecting a true expression of gratitude."
"I am clarifying that the gratitude is disproportionate to my contribution. What I did was not difficult to arrange."
"Your contribution included Bow Street officers and their carriage, the presence of mind to arrange all of this in a single evening, and the willingness to go visit the day before that and be dismissed for your trouble. I would not call that disproportionate."
A flicker of amusement crossed his features. "You have an apt memory for occasions on which you have been unjust to people."
"I do have a good memory for occasions on which I have been wrong because I like to hold myself accountable. Thank you for siding with that."
Kitty had found an urgent interest in the pattern of the curtain fabric. Lydia bent her head over the needlework studiously.
Mr Darcy set down his cup deliberately. He turned to her with a glance she had not seen from him before, or rather, she had seen its parts, but not this specific arrangement.
This was, she realised with a slight adjustment of her expectations, an expression that held uncertainty within it. Fitzwilliam Darcy, who navigated the world as though he had always been sure of his position in it, looked, at this moment, unsure and…nervous.
"Miss Bennet," he said. "I have something I wish to say. Something I am not assured that I have communicated clearly, or at all, in the way I intended, and which I find I cannot allow to remain unspoken any longer."
"What things?" she murmured, a wave of anticipation building up within her.
"I am deeply in love with you. I have been for some time. Longer, I think, than I was willing to acknowledge to myself, which I recognise does not reflect well on my self-awareness. But I know it now, completely and without question, and I wish to say so."
Kitty’s jaw fell open and Lydia reached over to close it, her own eyes as wide as teacups.
Elizabeth took in the formidable surface of his face. What was visible beneath that exterior, was less composed and more real. Affection. Honesty. Dedication. Responsibility. She felt any remnant of inhibition, if it ever existed, dissolve.
"I am glad you said it plainly," she responded.
"You have not always been easy to read, Mr Darcy, and I have not always read you accurately, but I think we are both better served by directness.
" She met his gaze head-on. "I am in love with you as well.
The reason why I failed to realise this early is because admitting it would have required me to revise a number of opinions I had formed rather strongly. "
A soft look appeared on his face, closely followed by a bright smile that was considerably more to her preference.
"Then I should very much like to ask you something."
"You may ask."
"Will you marry me?" He appeared to consider briefly whether elaboration was appropriate and decided it was.
"You would have Pemberley, which I should tell you contains the finest library in Derbyshire, and I am sure you would appreciate that specifically.
You would have Georgiana, who already thinks so well of you, and who would benefit enormously from your company and your willingness to make her conjugate French verbs when she deserves it.
You would have Colonel Fitzwilliam, who is invariably good company and who will take your side in any argument simply to be contrary, which means you will almost always win.
" He stopped, and when he resumed it was in a quieter register, full of emotion.
"And you would have me. Which I offer with considerably more humility than everything else on the list, because I am aware that I am the variable of most uncertain value, and because I find, somewhat to my own surprise, that your good opinion is the one I most wish to secure. "
Elizabeth laughed, a ringing joyful sound.
"You do not need to present further inventory. I had already decided before you began listing benefits."
"Have you, really?"
"Certainly. The library is an advantage I will not pretend I am indifferent to. But I would accept you without it, and I would like you to know that."
He reached across the space between them and took her hand, which was in somewhat imprecise alignment with the conventions that governed interactions between a couple in stages of courtship, but she did not care in the slightest.
From the sofa, Lydia spoke up, no longer content to remain a silent audience: "Well, I would say Mama's ambitions for the season have been thoroughly vindicated. She said it would be a success and she was not wrong, was she? Two engagements and a near-kidnapping. Very productive."
"Lydia," Elizabeth said.
"I am only making an observation. Moreover, Kitty agrees with me. You do, don't you?"
"I do, indeed," Kitty said, grinning widely.
Mr Darcy, who had not yet released her hand, said nothing. He appeared content and disinclined to disturb the direction of the conversation by adding to it.
Elizabeth smiled at him with as much happiness as her heart could muster, which turned out to be endless amounts. Then she thought about that morning in early January when she had stood at the window in the drawing room tracking accounts in her head as the season stretched ahead.
She had come to London for Jane's sake, and her mother's sake, not knowing what else would result from that single course of action.
She knew now.
The season had turned out quite pleasantly indeed.