Chapter 10 #2
The room buzzed around them, half-shocked, half-delighted, but neither moved to explain. For a moment, they just stood there, still breathing the same borrowed air.
Elizabeth turned first, retreating into the gathering with trembling fingers smoothing her skirts.
Darcy stood a moment longer, as if anchoring himself to the spot by will alone.
She slipped back to her seat beside her aunt with a composure that was more muscle than grace. Her cheeks burned. Her chest ached.
* * *
Mrs Gardiner rose smoothly to her feet with the easy authority of a woman used to managing nieces and wayward cousins.
“Come, Lizzy,” she said lightly, offering her arm. “The air grows close. I think we have all had enough excitement for one evening.”
Elizabeth blinked, dazed, still pink-cheeked from the dance, and hesitated.
But Mrs Gardiner’s hand closed around her wrist, firm but not ungentle.
“It is time,” she said, with a glance sharp enough to brook no argument.
Elizabeth swallowed, dropped a small, trembling curtsy to Darcy, and allowed herself to be led from the room. The guests murmured and shifted, the mood dissolving back into polite conversation.
Darcy stood very still, hands flexing uselessly at his sides, watching the door close behind her.
Mr Gardiner remained sitting a moment longer, arms folded, mouth tight. He caught Darcy’s eye across the room, and though he offered a brief, polite nod, the warning in it was unmistakable.
Once the door closed firmly behind them, Mrs Gardiner wasted no time.
She turned to Elizabeth, her face pale and tight with strain.
“When you told me,” she said, voice low and trembling with anger, “that you wished for a ‘companion for long nights,’ I trusted you meant something discreet.”
Elizabeth stiffened, color rising to her cheeks.
“I did,” she said. “I do.”
Mrs Gardiner shook her head sharply. “This is not discreet, Elizabeth. This,” she flung out a hand toward the distant sounds of laughter and music, “this is dangerous.”
Elizabeth set her jaw. “It was an impromptu dance in a parlour among family,”
Mrs Gardiner cut her off, voice rising just enough to sharpen the air between them. “It was a public display of partiality. In front of titled guests. In front of half the county.”
Elizabeth faltered, but recovered quickly. “They were laughing. No one took it seriously.”
“I took it seriously,” Mrs Gardiner said, stepping closer, her voice shaking now not with anger, but with fear.
“And so will every woman with a daughter to marry off. So will every man who sees your name linked with his and wonders what kind of woman flaunts herself like that under another man’s roof. ”
Elizabeth drew herself up, chin high. “I did nothing shameful.”
“You did something visible,” her aunt said, almost pleading now. “You are a widow in trade, Lizzy. You cannot afford visibility like this. Neither can we.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard, the blood roaring in her ears.
Mrs Gardiner pressed a hand briefly to her brow, gathering herself. “If you are labeled, if people begin to whisper, you will lose more than your pride.”
Her voice softened, almost broke.
“You will lose your business. Your independence. And we…” she closed her eyes for a moment, “…we could lose everything we have built beside you.”
The silence stretched long between them.
Finally, Elizabeth looked away, her voice a low rasp.
“I know.”
Mrs Gardiner exhaled, slow and shaking.
“Then for goodness sake, Lizzy,” she said, “be careful.”
* * *
Elizabeth opened the door only partway. The soft golden light behind her made her wrapper glow faintly at the edges, as though she were lit from within. Her hair was unbound, a few dark tendrils still damp at her temples.
Darcy stood very still in the hallway. Hands behind his back. Shoulders rigid with purpose or restraint.
“I only came to talk,” he said.
She stepped aside without a word.
Inside, the room was hushed. One candle burned low on the dressing table, its light flickering in the glass and gilding the room in amber.
He avoided looking at the bed.
She remained by the fireplace, one arm crossing her waist. Her face was unreadable in the wavering glow.
“I need to say something,” he began. “Without an audience. Without a waltz between us.”
Elizabeth’s mouth curved faintly at that, but she said nothing.
Darcy took a breath. Then another.
“I know what this is,” he said quietly. “I know it is unconventional and yes we have started all wrong.”
A pause. The fire popped in the grate.
“But I also know what I want. I want you. I want to build something permanent with you. Not just passion. Not just memory.”
He swallowed.
“I am asking to court you, Elizabeth. To see you. To honour you. With the intention of marriage, even if it will take years for you to consider it.”
Her lips parted. He raised a hand before she could speak.
“I do not want you to say anything tonight.”
He stepped closer. Slowly. Like she might vanish.
“I want you to think about it. Properly.”
Then, so gently it was barely a touch, he bent and pressed a kiss to her brow. His breath stirred her hair.
She closed her eyes.
He lingered for a moment. One breath. Two.
Then he stepped back.
“I shall leave you to rest,” he said.
And he turned and went, without another word.
* * *
The walled garden pressed close around them, heavy with the scent of roses and the hum of bees. Elizabeth walked with her aunt, the gravel crunched beneath their shoes, the summer heat settled like a weight across her shoulders.
Mrs Gardiner glanced sideways at her, her expression shrewd.
“He asked to court me.”
Elizabeth said it as they passed under the arch of climbing roses, her voice light enough that it might have been mistaken for small talk, except for the silence that followed.
Mrs Gardiner stopped walking. She turned to her niece, blinking. “Court you?”
Elizabeth nodded once. Her hands were folded neatly in front of her.
“As in… with the intention to marry?”
“Yes.”
There was a beat of stillness.
“But-” Her aunt’s voice faltered. “But he knows, does he not? He knows about… ”
Elizabeth didn’t flinch. “Yes.”
Mrs Gardiner let out a short, stunned breath. “And still he asked?”
“Yes.”
They stood between rows of overgrown herbs and early peonies, the hum of bees the only sound between them.
Mrs Gardiner looked frankly disoriented. “Lizzy… this is Mr Darcy we are speaking of. Pemberley. A lineage that predates the Reformation. He knows you are barren, and still, he offered?”
Elizabeth’s jaw twitched, just slightly. “He did not use that word. Nor did I.”
“But you think it,” her aunt said gently.
“I have no reason not to.”
Mrs Gardiner shook her head, almost laughing. “My word. I must sit down before I faint from shock.”
Elizabeth gestured toward the bench tucked under a cherry tree, and they sat. Her aunt stared at her for another long moment before speaking again.
“And you said…?”
“I have not given him an answer…. yet.”
Mrs Gardiner pressed her hand to her chest. “You are going to refuse him?”
Elizabeth hesitated. Then, with a clarity that surprised even herself:
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elizabeth looked out at the far hedge wall, where the sunlight struck against old stone and soft leaves.
“Because he thinks he knows what he wants,” she said.
“He believes he can accept a marriage without hope of children, without the assurances most men in his position would demand. But he will hope. Quietly. In the secret places of his heart, he will pray for a miracle. And when that miracle does not come…”
She looked down at her hands, flexing them once, then letting them fall still again. “He believes his love will carry the day. That affection will overcome disappointment. That devotion will silence resentment.”
Mrs Gardiner’s face had changed, the disbelief was giving way to something more sober.
“Mr Darcy is not your late husband.”
“No,” Elizabeth agreed. “He is better. He is good. Which is exactly why I will not let him waste his life hoping for something that cannot be.”
Her aunt reached for her hand. “You do not know that he will do that.”
“But I do.” Elizabeth turned to her. “Because he is already doing it. He says he does not need children, that Pemberley is secured. But I saw the way he looked at his cousins’ daughters in the drawing room.
The way he lifted the smallest into his lap like it was second nature.
He says he does not care, but he does. And he should. He deserves to.”
Mrs Gardiner was quiet for a long time.
“You have always had a habit of deciding what is best for other people.”
“And sometimes I am wrong,” Elizabeth said. “But not about this.”
She rose. Her voice, when she spoke again, was low and level.
“I would rather he hate me now than pity me later.”
* * *
Elizabeth walked alone now, her path winding past the walled garden and towards the small cottage hidden beyond the hill that loomed in the distance.
The sunlight was softer here, filtered through the canopy of oak and birch trees that lined the path.
The air was cooler, but her skin still burned, whether from the summer heat or the weight of her aunt’s words, she could not say.
What would it mean to accept Mr Darcy and a life tethered to Pemberley? To become his wife?
The very thought made her stomach twist. She recalled that December morning when she’d finally confronted her husband about his visits to the other woman.
“You will not speak of this again,” he’d said, very quietly.
“She was wearing my mother’s earrings, Thomas. The ones you said were lost.”
He’d gripped her wrist then, steered her to her chambers. She’d been too shocked to struggle when he’d shut the door, the key turning with a definitive click.
“Until you remember your place,” he’d called through the wood.