Chapter 17
Elizabeth
Georgiana received me the day after the assembly in a small drawing room at Netherfield, the curtains still half-drawn.
She rose as soon as I entered, then seemed uncertain whether to offer me her hand, curtsy, or apologize for existing. I resolved the difficulty by embracing her.
Her body stiffened for a moment before relaxing against me.
“I'm sorry,” she murmured.
“You've done nothing wrong.”
“My brother had to leave the ball because of me.”
“Your brother would have crossed England in the middle of the night if you needed him. That doesn't make you guilty of causing it.”
She lowered her eyes.
“I thought I was stronger.”
“Strength isn't about feeling nothing when you face the person who hurt you.”
I led her to the sofa. Mrs. Annesley had left us alone after casting me a grateful look.
“He looked exactly the same,” Georgiana continued. “For a moment, I was fifteen again. I remembered everything he had promised me, and the shame when Fitzwilliam found us.”
She spoke her brother's name with quiet tenderness. I took her hand.
“The shame isn't yours to carry.”
“I know that when my brother tells me. I forget it sometimes when I'm alone.”
“Then more people will have to keep telling you.”
She looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“Will you stay?”
The question wasn't only about this morning.
I couldn't answer her without thinking of Darcy, of Pemberley, of the place I might occupy beside them. A week earlier, this prospect would have seemed a magnificent and terrifying obligation. Now, I wanted it.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe I will stay.”
Georgiana squeezed my fingers.
Darcy stood in the corridor when I left the drawing room. He had probably waited close enough to intervene if his sister needed him, yet far enough to give her freedom to speak.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Better. She's resting.”
“Thank you.”
“She doesn't need my pity.”
“I would never have asked you to offer it.”
“She needs to know the fault wasn't hers.”
An old pain darkened his gaze.
“I've been telling her that for years.”
“She believes you. She just needs to hear it from other voices.”
He inclined his head.
“Yours already means a great deal to her.”
We descended together. Netherfield's silence stood in stark contrast to the previous evening's commotion. Caroline and the Hursts had left early that morning, officially for an engagement in London. I suspected the coming announcement of our engagement had hastened their departure.
Darcy led me to the library.
“Does your father know you're here?”
“Jane came with me. She's in the breakfast room with Mr. Bingley, where they're examining once again the crucial question of the wedding date.”
“They'll change it again tomorrow.”
“My mother has already fixed her opinion in her mind. I fear it will be harder to correct than an invitation.”
He smiled, then grew serious again.
“You told Georgiana you would stay.”
I stopped.
“You were listening?”
“No. She told me when I went in after you left. She looked happy.”
“And you?”
He didn't answer immediately.
“I don't know what you meant.”
I approached the window. In the park, the trees were deepening into richer green. I thought of the young woman I had been at Hunsford, sitting across from a man she thought she knew, considering marrying him for five thousand pounds. She had no idea of the path that would lead her here.
“I no longer want our engagement to remain in suspense,” I said.
Darcy became perfectly still.
“You wish to end it.”
“No.”
The word hung between us, simple and complete.
He took a step, then stopped, holding to that discipline he had imposed upon his desire.
“Elizabeth, do not answer me because Georgiana moved you or because Wickham challenged you to defend me.”
“You are making this remarkably difficult to declare.”
“I want to be certain.”
“You never will be if you refuse to believe me.”
He fell silent.
I came to stand before him.
“At Hunsford, I accepted because I was afraid for my family. I had misjudged you, and you had misjudged Jane. We were both too proud to acknowledge the extent of our errors. Since then, you have repaired what could be repaired. You helped my father without demanding me as payment. You endured my mother, listened to Mary, comforted Kitty, and restored to Bingley the freedom you had taken from him. You asked before kissing me when I wished you would stop talking.”
Color rose to his face.
“Does that last truly deserve a place among my virtues?”
“It mattered a great deal.”
I took his hand.
“I am not choosing you because you are wealthy. I am not choosing you because I owe you something. I am not even choosing you because you love me, though I am vain enough to take pleasure in it. I am choosing you because I respect you, because I desire you, and because the thought of watching you leave has become more painful than all the difficulties our marriage might cause.”
His fingers closed around mine.
“Is that a yes?”
“You have not asked me a question.”
He looked at me with almost comical incredulity.
“You require a second proposal?”
“The first was very bad.”
A laugh escaped him, brief and deep. Then he knelt before me.
My heart began to beat so hard I had to hold my breath.
“Elizabeth Bennet,” he said, “I will not ask you to forget the faults I have committed nor to believe me incapable of committing others. I ask only that you allow me to continue learning from you, without expecting you to always be patient and without demanding that you cease contradicting me. I love you for your intelligence, your courage, your loyalty, your laughter, and even for the severe opinion you held of me, since it obliged me to become a man more worthy of yours. Will you share my life, Pemberley, my duties, my faults, and all that I possess, without ever believing that your freedom belongs to me?”
My eyes filled with tears.
“Yes.”
He brought my hand to his lips.
“Free of all necessity?”
“Free of all necessity.”
“And certain?”
“If you ask me a third time, I might take offense.”
He rose and drew me against him.
His embrace was different from our kisses in the pavilion. It did not seek desire first. He buried his face in my hair and held me with a contained strength, as if he had been holding back this gesture since Hunsford.
I wrapped my arms around his waist.
“You’re trembling,” I murmured.
“It’s your fault.”
“You’ll forgive me.”
“Never.”
I laughed against his shoulder.
When he raised his head, he did not ask permission to kiss me. He read it in my gaze.
His mouth settled on mine with a tenderness that gradually deepened. I had believed desire was born of the forbidden. I discovered it could be more powerful still when nothing threatened to separate us. His hands slid down my back, drawing me closer. Mine rose to his neck.
He pulled himself from my lips with difficulty.
“We must rejoin the others.”
“We are engaged.”
“Which does not make a deserted library any less dangerous.”
“You lack a spirit of adventure.”
“I possess too much imagination to lack one.”
I blushed at what his voice suggested.
“What are you thinking?”
He rested his forehead against mine.
“About our wedding.”
“Only the wedding?”
His gaze darkened.
“About the night that follows.”
Heat spread beneath my skin.
He kissed me one last time, more briefly, then put a proper distance between us.
“Come,” he said. “Before Bingley comes looking for us and discovers I'm less honorable than he believes.”
“I don't believe Mr. Bingley would presume to judge a man who lingers in the library to kiss his fiancée.”
“That's precisely what worries me. He might ask for advice.”
We found Jane and Bingley in the small parlor. They were sitting much too close for people supposedly still choosing a date.
I looked at my sister. She understood immediately.
“Oh, Lizzy.”
She rose and embraced me.
Bingley seized Darcy's hand with enthusiasm.
“At last! I was beginning to think you'd marry after our grandchildren did.”
Darcy rolled his eyes.
I had never been so happy to hear him laugh.