Chapter 20
DARCY
I had never understood why men knelt to propose marriage.
At Hunsford, I had remained standing. I had offered my love as an argument to which Elizabeth must yield.
After Lady Catherine’s departure, I finally understood that one knelt because love placed a man at the mercy of an answer.
The drawing room still smelled of my aunt—an overpowering lavender water that lingered in the draperies for hours after her departure. A chair had been pushed back. Her cane had left four marks in the carpet, four points pressed in a semicircle, at the exact spot where she had held her ground.
Elizabeth had not left the fireplace.
Her hands were trembling. She had clasped them to stop it, which only made the trembling more visible.
I crossed the room.
I had prepared phrases during the entire journey from London. I had prepared others during the night. None seemed usable now, standing before a woman who had just called our house her home in front of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
“You are cold.”
“No.”
“Your hands.”
“It is not the cold.”
I took her fingers between mine. They were frozen. I held them until they stopped trembling, and the silence lasted long enough for me to hear the fire crackling behind me.
It was that silence which decided me.
“I must tell you something before you repeat what you just said.”
She raised her head.
“You refuse to hear it?”
“I cannot receive those words before you know everything.”
I drew the small key to the secretary from my pocket.
“I had a duplicate made. I never used it, but I kept it because I could not bear for a lock in this house to escape my control.”
She considered the metal, then closed her fingers around it when I held it out to her.
“Is that what you wished to confess to me?”
“No. That is not the worst of it.”
I had to catch my breath before continuing.
“On our wedding day, at Longbourn, I followed you into the corridor. The door to your former room was ajar. I heard Jane ask you if your heart had changed.”
Elizabeth paled.
“You were there?”
“Yes.”
“You have known since that day.”
“I knew that you esteemed me, that you desired me, and that you feared losing me. I also knew that you did not yet love me and that the security offered to your family had weighed in your decision.”
She brought a hand to her lips, as if she suddenly recalled every word spoken with Jane.
“And you said nothing.”
“I did not wish to use what I had learned to obtain an affection from you dictated by shame or guilt. If I had confronted you that day, every smile, every gesture, and every night spent near me might have become a response to my hurt.”
“Yet you let me believe you knew nothing.”
“Yes. Once more, I decided alone what should protect us.”
She moved away a few steps. I did not attempt to hold her back.
“I let you marry a certainty I knew to be false,” she murmured. “I should have spoken before the ceremony.”
“You had tried to show me your doubts. Then you lacked courage when you understood what I believed. I was hurt by your silence, but my pride had built half the misunderstanding.”
She turned back toward me.
“How deeply did I hurt you?”
“Enough that I had to lock myself away alone before returning to offer you my hand before your family. Not enough to regret having married you.”
Her eyes shone.
“And that night, you gave me a door I could lock.”
“I wanted the first entirely free choice of our marriage to be yours.”
The silence that followed did not separate us. It only forced us to look together at what we had made of our fears.
“I wish I had known sooner,” she said at last. “I am ashamed that you bore this alone. I am also angry that you chose alone how to bear it.”
“You are right on both counts.”
“Why tell me now?”
“Because I cannot accept your love while keeping the secret that has guided everything I have done to win it.”
I walked to the table and gripped the back of a chair, unable to remain still.
“After we left London, I started a journal and wrote down what I feared forgetting: how you take your tea too strong, your walks, the books you mistreat, the people you care about. I wanted to create chances to know you better. Too often, I confused attention with method.”
“Nothing that grew between us was sincere, then?”
“My intentions were. Your responses surprised me every time. I only wanted to leave nothing to chance—until I forgot that your heart could never be the result of a plan.”
I heard myself laugh, very briefly, without any joy.
“And yesterday, when you wanted to speak to me, I once again decided for you what you were going to say. No observation, no page, and no sacrifice could teach me to listen if I refused to hear.”
The fire crackled.
“There. Now you know what you speak of when you speak of loving me.”
She remained motionless so long that I thought I had destroyed everything.
When she spoke, her expression remained grave.
“Fitzwilliam.”
“Yes.”
“You confess to taking notes because you were afraid of forgetting what mattered to me, then making the mistake of believing those notes could replace me.”
“I wanted to master what could not be mastered.”
“And you never will.”
She took a step.
“Your attention touched me. Your method would have wounded me if it had manufactured the moments I believed sincere.”
“I know.”
“Then stop observing me as a problem to be solved. Ask me.”
She was right. She had always been right, and it had taken me weeks to find that restful.
“Say it again,” I asked.
Elizabeth came to me.
“I love you.”
The words struck me with a force I had not imagined, even during all the nights I had hoped for them.
“Since when?”
“I do not know the exact moment. I realized it the morning Lydia’s letter arrived, before you left to find her.”
“Before I gave you a new reason to be grateful to me.”
“Yes.”
I lowered my eyes.
“And yesterday, I decided that your gratitude would speak in your place before I even listened to you.”
“You were afraid.”
“Fear does not make my pride more reasonable.”
I took her hand.
“I made my proposal poorly the first time.”
I knelt.
Elizabeth drew a surprised breath. The ring I had given her already gleamed on her finger.
I reached into my waistcoat pocket.
“I have kept this since the library.”
I held out the pin to her. The metal was tarnished from being touched too often.
“You ordered me to keep it to remind myself that my experience had not been entirely mastered.”
“You had it on you. All this time.”
“Every day. Including the one when I refused to hear you.”
She closed her hand around it hard enough that her knuckles whitened.
“I cannot offer you a new name or another house. Only the man you now know: proud, often silent, jealous more than he admits, and difficult to bear before breakfast.”
A trembling laugh escaped her.
“Only before breakfast?”
“I prefer not to weaken my proposal with an excess of accuracy.”
I pressed her hand between mine.
“Knowing all of him, would you choose him still?”
A tear slid down her cheek.
“Yes.”
“Out of love?”
“Out of love.”
I raised her fingers to my lips. They smelled of ink and Pemberley soap.
“Stand up,” she murmured. “I do not like seeing you so far from me.”
I rose. She immediately put her arms around my neck.
Our kiss contained Hunsford, the silences of our engagement, the patience of Pemberley, and all the words we had held back.
I kissed her again, unable to get enough of the sweetness of her words.
“You're becoming demanding.”
“Terribly so.”
“I love you, Fitzwilliam.”
I rested my forehead against hers.
“I thought I would never know whether to believe you.”
“And now?”
“I will likely never be certain I deserve what you give me. But I can choose to believe you.”
Her gaze softened.
“Then do so. And when you doubt, ask me instead of deciding my answer for me.”
“I promise.”
“Even if it displeases you?”
“Especially then.”
She placed my hand over her heart.
“This belongs to you because I give it to you.”
I felt her heartbeat beneath my palm.
“And mine belonged to you before I had the wisdom to ask you to accept it.”
“We were remarkably ill-prepared for happiness.”
“And yet very determined to marry.”
I thought of the register left open in my study.
None of its pages explained what had just occurred.
I decided to burn the last one and keep the others, which concerned roofing.
She smiled and slid her hand across my chest.
“Must we remain in this drawing room?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She took my hand and led me toward the stairs.
This time, I sought no other meaning in her gesture.
She walked ahead of me.
She was choosing me.