Chapter 2
“Miss Smith!”
“Mr Jones!”
That was how our eighth encounter began.
She laughed gaily, which lit her eyes as prettily as they had back in the summer, just before she saved my sister’s life.
The young lady had traded her muslins for a plain wool walking dress, and her fancy hairdo for something that looked like she could put it up herself, but she still took my breath away.
Whereas her hair in our earlier meetings seemed deliberately designed to be plain, that morning’s was simple, artless, and quite attractive.
I had travelled farther to get to the mount, so I rode my stallion, while she obviously made it on foot, with or without her parents’ permission.
She curtsied, and I gave her hand a kiss, though I paused a bit longer than an indifferent acquaintance really ought to. She blushed again, thus bringing my average up to one blush per two and a half years or so. I hoped to improve on that score.
“I am so happy to see you, Miss Smith,” I began emphatically. “I have been cursing the calendar and my failure to introduce ourselves properly last time.”
“I have been awaiting our next meeting anxiously as well, though a properly bred lady does not curse the calendar.”
She smiled and I guffawed, and all was right with the world.
“I suppose true introductions are a bit superfluous, as you must know I am Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, and you are Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
She curtsied and smiled. “Actually, I did not know your given name. Based on our past encounters, I believed you to be Mr Jack Darcy.”
I chuckled and bowed. “Might we keep our nom de plumes for a bit longer?”
“Of course, but it is time to stop messing about. Tell me about your sister.”
I had been half-anticipating and half-dreading the conversation but thought it good to get it over with.
“I do not exaggerate when I say you saved her life. She was planning to run off to Scotland with that bounder I told you about, my father’s godson, the very next day. Absent your intervention, I would have found the house empty, and my sister bound for life to a wastrel.”
For the first time in our acquaintance, I thought she looked faint, but resilient woman that she was, it did not last long. “Thank Heavens, you saved her.”
“I thank you, and I will deny any claim you may have for modesty. It was all because of you.”
She looked like her natural reticence might make her want to argue, but she gave in with good grace. “I am tremendously happy to be of service. How is she?”
“In need of your company. Separating the pair required certain very unappealing things to be said and heard. She is not taking it well. She understands she did wrong, and that it was his fault, but—”
“But nobody enjoys learning of their own stupidity.”
“I suspect she mostly feels she let me down—me, or the family legacy, or what have you. I have my aunt and a new companion trying to help her get over it, but—”
She understood. “—but your father did not see fit to make them her guardian in the first place, so their perspective may not be as useful as one might hope.”
“Correct. I have faith that you can help her, which is part of the reason I was so happy to see you.”
“And the other?” she asked with a grin.
“Because I will always be happy to see you, Miss Smith!”
That set her back a minute, but her smile showed she appreciated the sentiment.
“I shall always be happy to see you as well, Mr Jones,” she said with yet another becoming blush.
“How go the wars?” I asked, and with that, we were back in harmony, not worrying about the future. I had asked for her help with my sister, she had acted as if wild horses could not keep her away, and that subject was retired for the moment. It was not as if my sister’s predicament was urgent.
For the next hour, we just walked around Oakham Mount (well, hillock, but why quibble), sat on a bench, and just talked about anything and everything.
We had touched on any number of subjects such as our taste in literature and music in earlier discussions, but having the leisure to speak in depth was a real treat.
Time eventually came when she needed to return for breakfast, and I needed to keep Bingley’s sister from calling out a search party.
We stood facing each other, looking wistful, and she said, “I suppose you will have to accustom yourself to calling me Miss Bennet or Miss Elizabeth in company.”
I had been thinking about what to say to such a declaration for months, and thought that was the best opportunity I would ever have. I took both her hands in mine.
“This will sound precipitous, but I would vastly prefer to accustom myself to a different name.”
She looked slightly confused and breathless. “Which is?”
“I would much rather call you Mrs Darcy in company and Elizabeth in private.”
That got a gasp out of her, and her eyes got big as saucers (quite attractive, if I do say so myself).
She sputtered a bit, but finally settled for, “Say more.”
“Simply put, I admire and love you, and hope to be afforded the privilege of becoming your husband. I know it sounds sudden, but I have thought about it a great deal, and we have known each other for five years. Would you hear me out?”
“I shall insist on it.”
I tugged on her hands to pull her slightly closer, and she came willingly.
“When you were shy of fifteen, I liked you as a child. To be honest, you were a little spitfire, and I enjoyed your company. You were honest, clever, and brave to the point of foolhardiness, but you were not sitting at home whinging about your dismal situation like others might.”
“Others do!” she replied with a frown.
“Absolutely! At sixteen, you were still a child, but less of one. I began to respect and esteem you in a fraternal sort of way. You seemed like the daughter of a good friend, or a niece, or similar. I saw that you would be a woman of worth one day.”
“Do you stand by that?”
“Of course. I can safely assert I have earned all the boasting rights in the world for my prescience. I hit the mark dead centre.”
She laughed gaily and seemed a bit less nervous.
“By the time you were nineteen, there was no longer any dispute that you were a woman—a lady—and quite a beautiful one at that. I liked you quite a lot by then but was not yet aware of something.”
“Which was?”
“I shall come to that. By the time you were twenty, I was nearly desperate to think some lucky man would snatch you away from the best hour of my year.”
“You were more optimistic about my prospects than I was.”
“Perhaps that was why I did not quite realise until after Georgiana’s rescue that I was in love with you, I had been for some time, and if I was very-very good, I might be that lucky man.
I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation.
It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. "
“You are in love with me?” she whispered softly.
“I am, and it is not the work of a moment. I liked you even as a fifteen-year-old hellion. I respected you as the sixteen or seventeen-year-old young lady working tirelessly to rescue her family from her parents’ indolence and foolishness.
I admired you as an eighteen-year-old beauty who would be breaking hearts if she grew up just a bit more and could be placed in better company.
There was even a time I considered helping make that happen. ”
“What happened to those thoughts?” she asked nervously, as if it was still something worth considering.
“I got greedy. Oh, you can be assured that if you cannot come to love me as I love you that I will arrange it, but I have been a selfish being all my life, and on this most important task, I must give it my best effort.”
She seemed stunned, so I let her think about it a minute before continuing, “You deserve a love match, Elizabeth. If you can love me, I will gladly offer you that; if not, I will help you find one. You deserve the world.”
By that time, I was as nervous as Mrs Bennet was reputed to be.
“I know this is very abrupt, even by our standards, and I am happy to give you a proper courtship for as long as it takes for you to come to know me well enough to decide rationally. We have always been honest with each other and now would be the wrong time to prevaricate. That is why I act now, as precipitous as it may seem. To have the ambition and remain silent would be dishonest.”
She nodded, and I could tell she was thinking furiously; none could blame her.
She finally looked me full in the eye. “Can I give you an answer in the form of a history.”
“Of course.”
“When I was fifteen, I thought you a proud and arrogant man, but wealthy and useful for my purposes. I was, as you so accurately portrayed, a bit of a hellion then.”
“Your assessment was not wrong. You have helped smooth out my rougher edges. I suspect that without your influence, you would call me a proud and arrogant man today! I honestly believe I would be looking for the kind of society lady my parents taught me to seek. Stepping out of my life for a few hours a year, plus taking advantage of your excellent advice on at least two occasions, taught me to see the world differently. It expanded my horizons. I am not the man I was—I am more.”
She smiled, accepting the point. “When I was sixteen, after a year of thinking about how you had helped me, even when there was no real profit after you obtained your grandfather’s pistols, I thought of you as my idealisation of the elder brother I never had.
From sixteen to eighteen, I suppose I looked up to you in a fraternal way, the only unrelated man in my life I could count on. ”
“It was an honour and privilege to be such.”
“When I was nineteen,” she began, then took a ragged breath; “I firmly and unambiguously did not fall in love with you, and at twenty, I was still trying my best to not love you, as that path could only lead to heartache. I knew you must be too far above my station to have any serious designs, and I hoped I could protect my heart until you married and left my life entirely.”
I was just staring at her, and finally asked, “Can you say that without all the negatives.”
“I am in love with you. I never dreamed anything could come of it, but you are everything I ever wanted in a husband. Like you, it has not been the work of a moment. It has been years in the making, and it began as all good loves should—with respect… admiration… friendship.”
“Are you convinced of that without knowing any more about me than the few conversations we have had?”
“English courtships are absurd. Couples seldom have real conversations before marriage. Propriety compliant conversations are more of a hindrance than a help. I believe we know each other better than the vast majority of couples when they take their vows. I know my own heart, and your character. I need nothing more.”
I was thoroughly enchanted by how well the expression of heartfelt delight, diffused over her face, became her. I had never seen anyone or anything so beautiful, and I simply pulled her toward me.
Our first embrace lasted for quite some time, just holding each other, smelling each other’s scents mixed with the smell of oncoming rain, feeling how well our bodies fit together.
Our first kiss was magical, and sweet, and powerful, and the sign of things to come.
It had the hint of banked passion that could have easily overwhelmed us, the feeling of safety like coming home to a warm fire from a driving rain, the feeling of contentment at finally being in exactly the right place at the right time.
Eventually it ended, as all kisses must, though in our case, it might have ended just slightly sooner as it was starting to sprinkle.
She laughed, and we spent a few minutes discussing how to go forward.
“May I speak to your father?”
She thought about it a minute. “He may resist, but delay will help nothing. Even if we courted for a month, he would still be tetchy. I must go to breakfast now; come at calling hours. Bring Mr Bingley to distract my mother and sisters.”
I laughed gaily, walked her down to get my horse, then walked her to the gates of Longbourn before returning to Netherfield for my own breakfast.