Chapter 24
Elizabeth stopped so abruptly that the hem of her gown brushed against a frost-stiff clump of grass.
For one wild instant, she thought she had imagined him.
She had been thinking of him too much; perhaps fatigue and cold had fashioned him from mist and longing.
But no. He was there, tall and dark against the pale morning sky, his hat in his hand, his horse tethered a little way off near the trees.
He looked as though he had been waiting, though whether for her or for courage, she could not tell.
Her heart gave one hard, painful beat.
“Mr. Darcy,” she said, because no one else was there to require formality.
His expression changed at the sound of his name—not much, for he was still Darcy, still guarded by habit and discipline—but enough that she saw it. Relief. Fear. Hope.
“Miss Elizabeth.”
The name, spoken so quietly, undid every careful thought she had gathered on the walk. For several seconds she could only stand there, the cold air between them, her plans for her mother, Netherfield, Mr. Collins, Longbourn, and every prudent future swept aside by the unbearable fact of him.
He took one step toward her, then stopped, as though he feared coming nearer without permission.
“I hoped I might find you here,” he said. “You once spoke of walking this way.”
“I did.”
“I know I have no right to intrude upon your solitude.”
“No,” Elizabeth replied, though the word emerged less steadily than she intended. “I suppose you do not.”
He bowed his head slightly, accepting the rebuke. “Then I must ask your pardon and your patience. I have been a coward, and I have hurt you. I cannot let another day pass without saying so.”
The wind moved between them, stirring the dry leaves at Elizabeth’s feet.
She had imagined many things on the climb to Oakham Mount that morning.
This had not been among them.
∞∞∞
Darcy had intended to begin with an apology.
He had rehearsed one, in fact. Several times.
On the ride from Netherfield, while waiting at the top of the path, even in the moment before she rounded the bend and stopped short at the sight of him.
It was to be plain, humble, and orderly.
He would say he had been wrong. He would say she had deserved better.
He would ask permission to call upon her properly, and only if she allowed it would he speak of anything more.
But Elizabeth stood before him in the pale morning light, her cheeks touched by cold, her eyes wary and wounded, and every ordered sentence deserted him.
“I have behaved abominably,” he said.
Her lips parted, but he pressed on before courage failed.
“No, do not—pray, do not excuse me. I know I have. I know what you must think of me, and I cannot say you are wrong. I was cold to you. I avoided you. I saw that I hurt you, and still I did it. I told myself it was wisdom, but it was not. It was fear. Pride, perhaps, but mostly fear. I have been afraid for so long that I mistook it for principle.”
He stopped, dragged in a breath, and looked away because her eyes were too much. The whole of Hertfordshire lay quiet below them, gray fields and bare trees and the thin silver of morning mist, but he saw none of it clearly.
“I have always done what was required,” he said, then shook his head at himself.
“No, that sounds arrogant. I do not mean it so. I only mean—my life has not often permitted me to ask what I wanted. Or perhaps it did, and I trained myself not to hear the answer. Pemberley needed me. Georgiana needed me. Tenants, repairs, accounts, creditors—there was always something. There was always some reason to put aside preference. That became easier, after a time. Not happy, but easier. One learns not to want very much.”
Elizabeth’s expression shifted, but he could not read it. The wind stirred the ribbons of her bonnet, and he found himself absurdly aware of the small movement, as though his mind, in its distress, had seized upon any detail that might keep him from faltering.
“My father left Pemberley wounded,” he continued, more quickly than he ought.
“Not ruined beyond repair, but wounded. Debts, neglected tenants, rooms closed, farms in want of improvement, servants uncertain of their wages, and Georgiana—” His voice roughened, and he looked briefly toward the valley below them.
“Georgiana had her dowry, but the interest that should have supplied her comforts has more than once gone back into the estate at her own insistence.”
He sucked in air, trying to fill his tightening chest, but it did nothing to steady him.
“I thought marriage must be another such duty,” he continued, the words coming faster now, not gracefully but because they could not be contained.
“A necessary bargain. A prudent one. I would go to London next season, look over the young ladies with fortunes, choose one I could respect. Or tolerate. God forgive me, that was the word I used to myself. Tolerate. As though a woman were a horse to be purchased for soundness and income.”
There it was. The ugly, practical truth of him laid bare before her. He gave a humorless breath that was almost a laugh and not one at all.
“I needed fortune, or thought I did. Thirty thousand pounds, if I could manage it. Connections, too, perhaps. Not for vanity. At least I did not think it vanity. For Pemberley. For Georgiana. For the children I may one day have. For tenant children already there, who need roofs that do not leak and wages paid on time. I made it all sound very noble in my own mind. Duty always sounds noble when one is too cowardly to call it fear.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but the words were coming forth too quickly now for anything to stop him.
“Darcy—”
“Please.” The word escaped him too urgently. “Please let me finish, because if I do not say it now, I may lose the courage forever, and I cannot. Not after yesterday.”
Elizabeth’s lips parted slightly.
Darcy took a step nearer, then stopped again, hands clenched at his sides to keep from reaching for her.
“I did not merely fail to be kind. I chose distance. I looked away when you sought me. I let you believe yourself rejected because I had not the courage to admit that I was afraid. Afraid of loving you. Afraid of wanting you more than the future I had planned. Afraid that if I allowed myself one moment of honesty, I would never again be able to return to cold prudence.”
The word love had not yet passed his lips. Not directly. But it stood between them now, undeniable as sunrise.
“And then yesterday,” he said, his voice low and strained, “I saw you with that man.”
Her brows drew together faintly.
“Mr. Collins,” he added, though even the name tasted bitter.
“I saw his hand upon your arm. I heard him speak of Hunsford and domestic arrangements as though your future were a parish matter to be settled by his condescension. I heard him speak of my aunt, of Rosings, of Anne—of arrangements that do not exist and never shall—and then imply that you might soon be there. At Hunsford. With him.”
Darcy could not help the vehemence that entered his voice.
“I could not bear it. I left because if I had remained, I might have disgraced us both. I rode away like a fool, but the picture followed me. You at Rosings, forced to sit beneath my aunt’s lectures.
You in that parsonage, your wit constrained, your spirit diminished, your days spent beside a man who could not understand one sentence in ten that you spoke. You—”
He stopped, because the next thought was too intimate, too violent in its jealousy, too unfit to be spoken.
“He is not worthy of you,” Darcy said, then grimaced.
“That is not my right to say. Forgive me. But he is not. And yet last night I could not sleep for thinking that if you accepted him, I might one day see you at Rosings. Sitting across from me at dinner while my aunt corrected you. Standing in that parsonage, obliged to listen to him, obliged to smile, obliged to become smaller because everyone around you would prefer you easier to manage.”
His voice faltered. He forced it onward.
“I thought of that, and I knew then that all my grand arguments had failed. Money, prudence, connections, duty—none of it could make me endure the thought. I do not know when I began to love you. I should know; I am a man who likes dates and causes and sensible progressions. But I do not. Perhaps in the cellar. Perhaps in the library. Perhaps when you spoke of tenants’ wives and leaking roofs.
Perhaps when you looked at me across Bingley’s dinner table and tried not to laugh. ”
A faint color touched her cheeks, but her face remained unreadable.
“I only know that I do love you,” he said.
“And that I have been a fool. A proud, frightened fool. I thought I had to choose between you and my duty, but that was arrogance too, was it not? To think I understood everything. To think Pemberley needed only money, when perhaps it needs life. Warmth. Sense. A mistress who would know its people, not merely preside over its rooms. Georgiana would love you. I know she would. The tenants would trust you. My children—”
He stopped, startled by his own words, and for the first time something like embarrassment rose within him.
“I should not have said that.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened slightly.
“No, I should say it. I have already said everything else wrong. Why stop now?” He took one unsteady breath.
“My children, if I am ever blessed with them, would be blessed beyond measure to have you for their mother. There. It is said. Improperly, too soon, and no doubt with every deficiency of judgment, but it is true.”
The wind stirred between them. A strand of hair had loosened near her cheek. He wanted, with a longing so sharp it nearly unmade him, to touch it back into place.