Chapter 27
Two days passed before Darcy could ask the question properly.
He would have asked the very next morning had the weather not turned against him with all the malice of November.
Rain fell in gray, relentless sheets, drumming upon Netherfield’s windows, flooding the lanes, and reducing even Bingley’s eagerness to call at Longbourn into a reluctant admission that Miss Bennet would hardly thank him for bringing half the weather into her mother’s drawing room.
Darcy bore the delay badly.
He wrote three versions of what he meant to say, rejected all of them, and spent half an hour staring at a fourth until Richard came into the library, took one look at him, and asked whether he was composing a declaration of love or a peace treaty between hostile nations.
“Both, perhaps,” Darcy said.
Richard laughed, but Georgiana, who sat near the fire with her embroidery, looked up with anxious sympathy. “You need not make it perfect, Brother. Miss Elizabeth already knows your heart.”
“That is precisely why it must be perfect,” Darcy replied.
“No,” Georgiana said softly, surprising him. “That is why it need only be sincere.”
Darcy looked at her for a long moment, then smiled. “You have grown very wise in your old age.”
“I am sixteen now,” she said, with dignity.
“Ancient,” Richard agreed. “Practically a dowager.”
Georgiana smiled into her work, and Darcy returned to his paper with less confidence in the elegance of his words, but more peace concerning their purpose.
The rain continued through the night and well into the next day, keeping every road glistening and every carriage wheel mired.
By the second morning, however, the clouds broke.
Sunlight came weak but golden over the wet fields, the air washed clean, and every bare branch seemed edged in silver.
Darcy looked out once and determined that no man in England could reasonably be expected to endure another delay.
Fortunately, Bingley was more than willing to assist.
“Of course,” he said, nearly before Darcy had finished explaining.
“Anything. I shall speak with Miss Bennet. Or not speak with her. Or speak with Mrs. Bennet. Or distract Mrs. Bennet. Though I confess I am less certain of success there. She is a formidable lady when matrimonial hopes are involved.”
“Then do not act alone,” Richard said. “I shall engage the younger girls. Miss Lydia already believes me a source of military intelligence, which is a grave mistake but a useful one.”
“And I can sit with Miss Mary,” Georgiana said. “She asked yesterday whether I practice sacred music. I think I can keep her in conversation for a little while.”
Richard looked at her with mock solemnity. “That, my dear cousin, may be the bravest service any Fitzwilliam has rendered this year.”
Georgiana blushed and laughed.
With such allies secured, Darcy rode to Longbourn in a state of agitation that made every hoofbeat feel too slow.
Mrs. Bennet received them with a fluttering joy she barely attempted to conceal.
Jane’s smile trembled between amusement and happiness when Bingley immediately contrived to sit beside her.
Georgiana, shy but determined, approached Mary with a question about music.
Richard made Lydia and Kitty shriek with laughter within five minutes, though Darcy chose not to listen closely enough to learn why.
Mr. Bennet observed the deployment of forces from behind a book, his eyes glinting above the page as though he saw everything and intended to help no one.
Elizabeth understood at once.
Darcy could see it in the slight lift of her brows when Bingley began asking Jane’s opinion of a new path at Netherfield, in the suppressed smile when Richard drew Lydia and Kitty toward the far window to demonstrate, with a walking stick, how not to hold a sword, and in the knowing glance she sent him when Georgiana gently asked Mary whether Fordyce’s sermons had any passages on music’s proper moral use.
“You have made careful arrangements, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth said quietly when he came to her side.
“I have attempted to.”
“Should I be alarmed?”
“I hope not.”
“That is not a denial.”
“No. It is a request for courage on my behalf.”
Her expression softened at that, and the teasing left her eyes without vanishing entirely. “Then perhaps we should walk before your allies exhaust themselves.”
Darcy offered his arm. “Miss Elizabeth, would you do me the honor?”
“I would.”
Mrs. Bennet watched them leave the room with a hand pressed to her chest and an expression of such transport that Elizabeth’s lips twitched. Darcy, for his part, was too grateful for escape to mind even Mrs. Bennet’s evident certainty that she would soon be mother to half of Derbyshire.
The garden was damp but passable, the paths darkened by rain and bordered by late autumn shrubs that had given up nearly all pretense of bloom.
The sun lay low over the wet lawn, catching in small drops upon the hedges and making the whole world look newly made.
Elizabeth walked beside him in silence for several moments, her hand light upon his arm, her pace unhurried.
“You have chosen better weather than Oakham Mount,” she said at last.
“I had little control over the weather.”
“Yet you look as though you would have negotiated with it if necessary.”
“I considered it.”
“And did the weather prove reasonable?”
“Eventually.”
She laughed softly, and Darcy felt the sound with something like awe. This was what he had nearly lost. Not merely beauty, not merely wit, but this ease that came when she was near him, as though even his solemnity knew how to breathe.
They reached the far turn of the garden, where an old yew and a clipped hedge concealed them from the house without taking them beyond propriety. Darcy stopped there. Elizabeth’s hand slipped from his arm, and she turned to face him, all amusement now quieted by expectation.
For one moment, Darcy forgot every word he had planned.
Then he remembered Georgiana’s counsel.
Sincere.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, “two days ago, you told me that if I still wished for your answer, I must ask my question properly.”
“I did.”
“I have thought of little else since.”
“That seems a very great burden to lay upon one small sentence.”
“It was not the sentence that burdened me.” He took a breath, steadying himself. “It was the hope attached to it.”
Her gaze softened, but she said nothing.
“The first time I asked you to marry me, I did so badly. Not because the feelings were false, but because I had allowed fear to bring me to the edge of losing you before I had the courage to speak. I poured out too much, too quickly, and asked you to answer not only my love, but all the confusion that had led me there. You deserved better.”
“Mr. Darcy—”
“You have already forgiven me,” he said gently. “I know. But I would still begin there, because forgiveness does not excuse me from doing better now.”
She folded her hands before her, watching him with that clear attention that had undone him from the beginning.
“I love you,” Darcy said.
The words were simpler than all his planned speeches and truer than any of them.
Elizabeth’s breath caught, just slightly.
“I love your courage,” he continued. “I love your wit, your intelligence, your compassion, and the way you see what others overlook. I love that you argue with books, challenge gentlemen, tend your sister, understand tenants, and can make even a mortifying moment in a breakfast room feel as though the world has not ended but merely become more absurd. I love the strength that carries you through burdens you ought not to have borne alone, and I love the tenderness beneath it.”
Her eyes glistened now, though her smile trembled at the edges.
Darcy stepped a little nearer.
“I cannot promise you a life without difficulty. I wish I could. Pemberley has known enough of difficulty that I would spare you all of it if such a thing lay in my power. But I can promise that I will not meet hardship by turning from you. I will speak when I am afraid. I will listen when you are hurt. I will honor your judgment, protect your heart as far as any imperfect man may, and count your happiness not as separate from my duty, but part of it.”
Elizabeth looked down, and he saw one tear fall before she could hide it.
He longed to take her hand, but waited.
“You once told me that marriage is a lifetime,” he said.
“You were right. So I do not ask in haste now, nor from jealousy, nor from fear of another man. I ask because I have seen enough of you to know that my life would be richer, wiser, and happier with you in it. I ask because I want you at Pemberley, not as an ornament to my name, but as my partner, my equal, my dearest friend. I ask because I cannot imagine children of mine more blessed than to have you for their mother. And I ask because, though I hardly deserve the answer I hope for, I shall spend my life trying to be worthy of it.”
He drew in one last breath, then bowed before her with all the reverence of a man placing his whole future in her keeping.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet, will you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”
The garden seemed to still around them.
A drop of rainwater fell from the yew onto the path. Somewhere nearer the house, Lydia laughed, then Richard’s voice rose in mock protest. Inside, no doubt, Mrs. Bennet was watching whatever window might give her the best advantage, and Mr. Bennet was pretending not to.
Darcy heard none of it clearly.
Elizabeth stood before him, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, lips parted as though the answer had risen to them and needed only breath to become real.
He waited, hardly daring to move, hardly daring to hope, while the whole of his heart hung upon her reply.
∞∞∞
Elizabeth had thought herself prepared.