10. A Husband’s Duty #3
“You are very good.” Elizabeth moved to the wide doorway, watching the rain sheet down. “How long do these squalls typically last?”
“Minutes or hours. There is no predicting.”
“Then we shall have to entertain ourselves.” She turned to face him, water still dripping from the curl at her temple. In the grey light, her eyes seemed darker, her expression harder to read. “Unless you find my company too tedious for extended confinement.”
“Your company,” Darcy said carefully, “is the very opposite of tedious.”
She shot him an arch look tempered with a smile and turned back to the rain. The silence between them, rather than being empty, seemed filled with everything they had yet to say.
“May I ask you something?” The words came before he could think better of them.
Elizabeth glanced back at him. “You may ask, but I reserve the right to deflect with wit and misdirection.”
“A fair bargain.” He paused, searching for the right words. “The romance the county has invented for us—the secret love, the dramatic passion. Do you find it… absurd or insulting, perhaps?”
“Absurd, certainly. The timeline alone defies logic.” Her mouth curved. “Though I confess I find it more amusing than insulting. The county possesses a most fertile imagination, if not a particularly keen regard for the truth.”
“But you did not have that. A true courtship and romance.” He heard the roughness in his own voice and did not know how to smooth it. “You had a proposal in your father’s study and a wedding arranged in haste. No declarations and no… no gestures.”
Elizabeth was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke, her voice was lighter than the words warranted. “Are you asking whether I feel cheated, Mr. Darcy?”
“I only wonder what you would have wanted. Before… before circumstances made other considerations more pressing.”
The rain drummed on the roof, and Elizabeth turned fully to face him. She looked up at the rafters, pensive.
“What every girl wants, I suppose: a man who saw me—truly saw me, not the second-prettiest Bennet sister or the one with the sharp tongue. Someone who made me laugh and challenged me, who chose me for myself and not for my dowry or willingness to manage his household.” A ghost of a smile touched her lips.
“Grand dreams for a country squire’s daughter with four thousand pounds divided five ways.
I was always more practical than romantic, Mr. Darcy, even before it became a necessity. ”
“And now?”
She tilted her head, considering. “My family is secure. Jane’s letter arrived yesterday—my father is responding to the treatments.
The cough is less wet, less strained. He sleeps through the night now, which he has not done in months.
And the roof repairs at Longbourn are finally underway, after years of my mother’s complaints falling on deaf ears.
” She paused. “You have given me that—the ability to help them without sacrificing my sisters’ futures or my own dignity. I am… satisfied.”
Her words landed heavily, revealing her true wishes.
She was merely satisfied—the word of a woman who has made her peace with less than she deserved and was determined not to complain about it.
That she felt at ease to tell him meant she had no romantic designs on him.
Perhaps it was just as well, but… a tiny ache nagged that he had, in the corners of his heart, wanted more.
“Satisfied,” he repeated.
“It is more than many women have. More than I expected, when my father first fell ill, and we began counting the months until the entail took everything.” Her chin lifted, that stubborn Bennet pride surfacing. “I am grateful, Mr. Darcy. You need not look at me as though I have announced a tragedy.”
“I am not—” He stopped, unsure what he was not doing. Looking at her with pity or guilt? Or with the growing, uncomfortable awareness that he wanted far more from this marriage than satisfaction, and that he had no right to want anything at all?
“You gave me a roof and a name and a child who handed me his wooden horse and told me to hold it safe.” Elizabeth’s voice softened. “Those are not small things. I do not need midnight declarations on top of them.”
“Elizabeth.” Her name felt different in his mouth than “Mrs. Darcy”—more intimate, dangerous. He saw her still at the sound of it. “If I could give you more than satisfaction… if I could give you something closer to what you dreamed—”
“Mr. Darcy.” She held up a hand, and he saw something complicated move behind her eyes. “Please do not make promises out of guilt. I have accepted our arrangement as it stands, and I do not require… I am not asking for you to go against your principles and playact a romance for my benefit.”
“What if I am asking?” Darcy’s breath hitched.
He saw the shift in Elizabeth’s posture, the way she pulled back, guarded and wary, and his stomach plummeted.
He had promised her security, a life of quiet respect, not the agonizing, unpredictable demands of a heart he had tried to keep buried. By suggesting more, he was reopening a door she had been wise enough to leave shut.