CHAPTER 38 #2
She came to stand before him, near enough that he could see the rise and fall of her breath, the fine disorder of one curl near her cheek, the colour still bright in her face.
Near enough that all his careful distance of months seemed suddenly absurd, and yet every inch of it had been necessary to bring him here without dishonour.
“I love you,” she said simply. “Very much indeed. I believe I have done so for some time, though you have taken a great deal of trouble to make it inconvenient.”
His eyes closed.
He had not meant them to.
The relief was too great; and beneath relief, joy; and beneath joy, disbelief so violent it bordered upon pain.
“And if you ask whether I can accept you as you are,” she continued, “the answer is that I seem already to have done so. I dismissed my companion, threatened your enemy, ordered you tea, and waited while you refused to drink it. It would be awkward now to refuse you.”
He opened his eyes.
She was smiling.
Not brightly. Not with perfect composure.
Her own feeling had shaken her, though she stood before him as if she would deny it to any court in England.
Her lips were parted a little; her eyes too clear; her hand, when it lifted, did not quite know where to go and settled at last against the fold of her gown.
Accepted.
The word did not seem large enough.
His life had been divided into before and after so many times by violence: before accusation, after accusation; before Pemberley, after Pemberley; before his father believed him, after he did not; before Georgiana was kept from him, after.
This division came quietly.
Before Elizabeth.
After Elizabeth.
Her name left him before he had asked permission to speak it.
“Elizabeth.”
She did not correct him.
That was the end of his command.
He moved toward her with a haste he checked only at the last instant, because even happiness, after so long forbidden, required one final appeal to honour before it could be believed.
His hands lifted, stopped, then found her — one at her waist, the other at the side of her face — and the first touch struck through him.
Warm. Real. Willing.
He had thought desire a thing one governed by distance, silence, and duty. He had not understood what would become of it when distance vanished and duty no longer forbade him.
He kissed her.
Not with confidence. Not with the assurance of a man claiming a right. With wonder too fierce to remain still.
For a moment there was nothing in him but restraint breaking: the softness of her mouth, the warmth of her beneath his hand, the slight, startled pressure of her fingers catching in his coat, the answering movement that went through her and destroyed whatever last argument his conscience had prepared.
He drew her nearer before he had fully meant to.
A sound escaped him — low, helpless, not quite shame and not quite joy — and she did not retreat.
She did not retreat.
He would have stopped then, perhaps. He meant to stop. Some remnant of his old discipline reached for command and found none available.
Elizabeth’s hand tightened in his coat.
He kissed her again.
This time there was less astonishment and more hunger. It frightened him, how quickly permission became need. Months of silence, restraint, careful distance, every unsaid word and unclaimed look, seemed to rise in him at once and press toward her through one impossible point of contact.
He wanted to be careful.
He was trying to be careful.
He was not careful enough to keep from wanting more.
At last he drew back only far enough to see her face, because some part of him, trained past endurance, still required proof that he had not damaged what he most wished to cherish.
For one dreadful instant he thought he had frightened her.
Elizabeth stood before him flushed and breathless, one hand still caught in the front of his coat. A curl had slipped further from its pin; her eyes were wide and dark with astonishment.
But she did not look frightened.
She looked at him as if she had discovered an entirely new species of gentleman and had not yet decided whether it was to be classified, encouraged, or fed.
Darcy, who had been prepared for reproach, found himself wholly unprepared for scientific interest.
“Forgive me,” he said, because apology was the only remnant of sense still available to him.
She did not release his coat.
Her gaze dropped, quite disastrously, to his mouth.
“For what?”
It was not a fair question.
It was not a safe question.
It was very possibly the happiest question he had ever been asked.
“For losing command of myself.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth.
She considered him with an attention that made retreat impossible.
“If that was the loss of command, Mr. Darcy, I begin to understand why you have guarded it so severely.”
He ought to have answered.
He ought, perhaps, to have released her.
Instead he looked at her mouth.
Elizabeth saw it.
Of course she saw it. Elizabeth Bennet missed very little, and nothing, it seemed, that might endanger his remaining sense.
“You may kiss me again,” she said, with a generosity that nearly finished him, “if you believe it will assist your recovery.”
“I do not believe recovery is the consequence most likely to follow.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then we must call it research.”
There was no defence against that.
He kissed her again.
This one began almost with laughter and did not remain there.
It deepened too quickly; or perhaps not too quickly, only with all the speed of things that had been delayed beyond endurance.
Her hand slid from his coat to his shoulder.
His own hand, still at her waist, held her as if the whole world had narrowed to the impossible fact of her nearness.
Elizabeth.
His.
No — not his possession. Never that.
His chosen life, if she would let him spend himself in deserving it.
A sound came at the door.
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened once against his shoulder before she released him.
Darcy stepped back then — not far, but far enough that a respectable companion might enter without requiring immediate burial. He had no confidence whatever in the state of his cravat. Elizabeth’s colour was no advertisement for innocence, though her chin lifted with admirable courage.
Mrs. Doddridge entered with the same expression she might have worn upon discovering a misplaced umbrella.
Her eyes passed from Miss Bennet’s flushed face to Darcy’s disorder, to the untouched tea.
Darcy bowed. It was perhaps the least convincing bow of his adult life.
Elizabeth, with admirable steadiness, said, “Mrs. Doddridge, Mr. Darcy and I are to be married. You may congratulate us.”
Mrs. Doddridge paused only long enough to make the occasion respectable.
“Congratulations, miss.”
A second pause.
“Mr. Darcy.”
“Thank you,” he said, and was privately grateful that the words came out in the correct order.
“Shall I have fresh tea sent up, miss?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “And perhaps more bread and butter.”
“Very good, miss.”
Mrs. Doddridge withdrew.
The door closed.
Neither of them moved at once.
Then Elizabeth looked at him.
Darcy looked back.
The silence was no longer the one that had held him before. It was warmer, more dangerous, filled with all the things a room could contain once two people had ceased pretending the little table was sufficient protection.
“You still have not drunk your tea,” she said.
He looked at the cup.
It was certainly cold now.
“No.”
“You see what comes of disobedience.”
“I had not understood the consequences would be so severe.”
“Or so agreeable?”
His mouth moved before he could prevent it.
“Or so agreeable.”
Elizabeth’s smile deepened. The sight of it struck him with such unreasonable force that he nearly reached for her again.
He did not.
But only because Mrs. Doddridge might reasonably return with witnesses, bread and butter, or both.
Elizabeth seemed to read the effort.
“Mr. Darcy.”
“Yes?”
“You may sit down.”
He obeyed.
There are moments in a man’s life when obedience is the highest available form of happiness.
Elizabeth sat opposite him, though not, he noticed, as far away as before. The little table remained between them, but it had lost much of its former authority.
She poured out the cold tea, considered it, and set the cup aside.
“We shall wait for fresh.”
“As you command.”
“That is a promising beginning.”
He looked at her — at the face flushed still from his kisses, at the eyes bright with feeling and mischief, at the woman who had heard his worst history and accepted not a safer version of him, but himself.
Outside that room, everything remained.
Wickham remained. Pemberley remained. His father’s disbelief remained. Georgiana’s silence remained. The world would have its claims, its questions, its consequences.
But Elizabeth Bennet sat across from him in Portman Square, arranging cold tea as if engagement were a household fact to be managed before dinner, and he understood, with a force almost too great for thought, that the centre of his life had not only received him.
She had chosen him.
Fresh tea came presently.
This time, when Elizabeth handed him the cup, Darcy drank.