11. A Wife’s Response
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A WIFE’S RESPONSE
Elizabeth squeezed the water from her bonnet, blinking the raindrops from her lashes as Darcy wrapped a rough horse blanket around her shoulders, covering her soaked riding habit.
The horses had found the feed bin and were munching with the contentment of creatures who understood that storms were best waited out in warm, dry places, while Darcy stood back stiffly, as if assessing her condition.
He looked away in a valiant effort not to stare at the way her hair hung loose around her shoulders, dripping steadily onto the packed-earth floor.
His question, more persistent than the raindrops on the roof, hung unanswered between them. What if I am asking?
She could not fathom why a man like Darcy—serious, proud, so thoroughly convinced of his own rightness in all matters—would concern himself with neighborhood speculation.
They had a perfectly serviceable arrangement.
She had Thomas to mother and a household to manage, and he had a wife who would not embarrass him at dinner parties, at least not too much.
Romance had never been part of the contract, and she had made peace with her decision to secure her sisters’ futures.
Yet here he stood, a stray wisp of hay in his hair and his cravat a casualty of the weather, regarding her as if her answer might alter the course of his existence.
“What exactly are you requesting?” She settled on a reply balanced between wit and honest inquiry.
“If you are asking whether I require moonlit proclamations, then I can reassure you that I am quite capable of supplying poetry for your recitation. I have memorized several particularly overwrought sonnets that would have Georgiana swooning before the soup course.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “I never perform for the neighborhood, and my sister would read romantic intent into a simple request that you receive the vicar’s wife.”
“Well, then, you need not concern yourself with romantic intent, Mr. Darcy. We are well past the banns we did not post, and the uneaten wedding breakfast that was not provided. I have been assessed and vetted while sitting in the Darcy pew, and if you fear I might relinquish my position as your wife due to unmet romantic expectations, your concern is misplaced. You have done your husbandly duty admirably this afternoon. I hazarded Mrs. Bickford’s interrogation and old Hobson’s delight at my seat—quite ladylike, he had proclaimed.
With the horseback tour of Lambton attended by the surrounding whispers, I believe I am thus thoroughly oriented. ”
“I would wish you, Elizabeth—” He caught himself on her name, as though it had escaped without permission. “Mrs. Darcy, for you to be entirely comfortable with what I can provide. You may have wishes I have not addressed, and I would not want to be remiss.”
Did he wish to be seen by the community as the perfect husband? But why, when he had already fulfilled his part of the bargain? Her father’s debts were settled, the roof was on its way to sanity, and her mother’s nerves soothed by the liberal application of pound sterling.
Elizabeth lifted her chin, half-suspecting the rain had unsettled his wits.
This was not the same disagreeable gentleman of Meryton memory, and she found herself at a loss.
That man had never troubled himself with her comfort or her feelings—certainly not when he delivered his infamous insult at the assembly, nor during his glacial silences at Netherfield, nor in any of their brief, awkward encounters before the day he had marched into her father’s study and offered for her hand.
“I rather thought we had covered the essentials,” she said lightly. “Roofs and settlements and the proper care and feeding of two-year-olds who bite.”
“Elizabeth.” He cleared his throat. “May I call you Elizabeth?”
“I thought you had already established that particular claim, but yes, should you require my assent again.” A faint suspicion stirred, even as she spoke.
Men had their needs, as her mother had often hinted, gesturing vaguely at heirs and obligations.
Perhaps this was merely the overture to asserting what he was owed by the marriage contract.
“I would rather you grant me a privilege rather than take a claim,” he asserted, and the hesitation in his tone compelled her to look more closely.
He had drawn nearer—when had that happened?—and she became acutely conscious of the warmth radiating from his nearness, the breadth of his shoulders beneath the damp coat, and the way his gaze held hers without wavering.
She nodded, swallowing against a sudden tightness in her throat.
He wanted her, but was polite enough to ask.
So, then, this was the moment leading up to the kiss.
Was that not how it worked? A man spoke honorable words, assuring her of his regard, murmuring about weddings and about how she was the cleverest woman he had ever met, before maneuvering a woman into a dim, enclosed place, like this hay barn, and then he would touch her cheek, lift her chin, and…
Except this man had already married her.
He had every right to the compliance she owed him as a wife.
She braced herself, tilted her chin, and waited, not daring to breathe.
Darcy was handsome, even while rude and insufferable, and he had been wretchedly kind since the day he marched her to the chapel.
The distance between them had been eroding for weeks: he had gifted her a writing desk, bound her wounded thumb with liniment, and wrapped her in this musty blanket.
“You have gone very quiet,” he observed, his hands remaining at his sides. His gaze held hers, dark and steady and fraught with a want she was not so na?ve as to mistake. Yet he stood in the hay-sweet dimness and waited.
Did he require an invitation? Elizabeth felt suddenly adrift.
“I do not know what it is you want, Mr. Darcy. I have fulfilled our agreement. Little Tom offered me his wooden horse, and I intend to govern your household, perhaps not to your mother’s exacting standard, but I shall endeavor.
Have I not been the wife you supposed you wanted? ”
“You are more than I thought I wanted.” He swallowed and rubbed the back of his neck. “But perhaps I have not been the man you would have married had you a free choice in the matter.”
“A little late for regrets, is it not?” She heard the flippancy in her voice and chided herself for it. “Or is it an annulment you seek?”
His eyes widened, and he shook his head severely.
“Never that,” he said, his voice rough and low.
“I would not… I am not speaking of dissolution, Elizabeth. I am speaking of…” He ran a hand through his damp hair, looking at the rafters as though the cobwebs might offer him the words he could not assemble.
“I had not thought, when I entered into this arrangement, that I would… that I did not anticipate…”
“You are doing a remarkable impression of a man with a stone in his shoe, Mr. Darcy.”
His gaze snapped back to her, and something almost like relief crossed his features at her teasing. “I am making a cake of myself.”
“You are.”
“I would wish for your affection, Elizabeth.” The words came out rough, unpolished, nothing like his usual careful speech. “But not if you do not freely give it. I would not compel you or take that which is not willingly offered. I would wait, if that is what you require.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught. He was offering her a choice, not a command. The knot in her chest eased, for he stood there, plainly longing to bridge the distance, yet refusing to claim what was not freely given.
“If you wish for affection, Mr. Darcy,” she said, suddenly emboldened, “perhaps you should begin with honesty. Why this sudden interest? Why now, when you made your feelings so clear at Meryton, when you pointedly avoided me in Hertfordshire, when you thought me tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt you?”
“I judged you based on limited information and allowed pride to blind me. I spoke that insult because I needed to convince myself you were not worth wanting, because I had looked at you across that assembly room and could not look away, and I was not prepared for what that meant.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught. She had braced herself for evasion, perhaps a dignified apology, but not this—never confession.
“I spent the entire winter trying to forget you.” Darcy’s voice lowered almost to a whisper. “I could not. When circumstances demanded I find a wife, you were the only name my mind ever offered up. The only woman I could imagine in that role, or any role.”
“You told me that,” she said softly. “In my father’s study. That I was the one woman you could not manage to forget over a winter of trying.”
“I meant every word. I have simply been too proud to speak plainly about what it cost me.”
Elizabeth studied the tension etched about his eyes, the way his lips parted as if to speak, and then closed again. Something fluttered in her chest—a hope, unfamiliar and perilous, that this marriage might yet become something she had not dared to imagine.
“You have changed, Mr. Darcy. The man who spoke so harshly at Meryton would never have offered such words.”
“I have had time to reflect,” he admitted. “And time to see past my own preconceptions.”
A sound from the hay behind them made them both turn, a rustle and then a soft chirrup, and a tabby cat emerged from between the bales, tail held high, picking her way across the packed earth toward them with the self-possession of a creature who had appointments to keep and considered them merely obstacles.
“Good heavens.” Elizabeth crouched to pet her, grateful for the interruption, for the excuse to look anywhere but at his face while she assembled her thoughts.
The cat wound around her damp skirts, purring with the satisfaction of an animal who knew attention was her due. “Who is this imperious creature?”
“The barn mouser. The grooms call her Cat.”