Chapter 34 #2
The east passage was dim and still, the household noise muffled to a distant murmur below.
Her own heartbeat was considerably louder.
She had tried convincing herself that friendship was enough, that gratitude explained what she felt, that a woman in her position could not afford the luxury of wanting more.
All of it was pretense, and she was too tired to maintain it.
She did not plan what she would say, only that she must know whether she was standing alone or not.
She could not continue indefinitely on hope and inference, on the memories of glorious conversations and looks across crowded rooms. She needed to know—even if knowing cost her everything.
She stopped outside Robbie’s door, raised her hand, and knocked.
Footsteps crossed the floor within. The latch lifted, the door swung open, and there he was—dark eyes, bearded jaw, his shirtsleeves still rolled from the afternoon’s work, his expression shifting from surprise to something considerably more careful the moment he saw her.
The question that had burned in her chest for over a week burst from her lips. “Why have you been avoiding me?”
Darcy gripped the edge of the door. As confident as he was in Elizabeth’s character, he had braced himself for the worst—Wickham’s triumph—for the sound of celebration drifting up from the drawing room below, for the long miserable hours of the evening during which he would have to sit across from her at dinner and say nothing.
He had not expected her to come to him. To find Elizabeth at his door, color high, eyes bright with the particular luminosity that meant she had either been crying or was working very hard not to, asking him the one question he was least equipped to answer honestly.
“You refused his offer,” he said. It was not a question.
“I cannot accept any offer until I am certain I am free to do so.” She held his gaze steadily. “You have not answered my question.”
He had not. He leaned against the door and looked at her, at the determined set of her chin, the slight tremor of her hands, and he thought about two more days.
About the will, and about Wrayburn, and about the carefully constructed, sensible order of revelation he had planned.
“There is so much I wish to tell you,” he said at last.
“Then tell me,” she pleaded. “You can tell me anything. I trust you, Robbie.” Darcy winced. I trust you. Her gaze dropped. “You do not trust me. Is that it?”
“I trust you more than anyone.” The words came out with more force than he intended, rough after weeks of restraint.
She looked up. Her eyes glistened, and the sight of her did something to his chest that no amount of reasonable planning could remedy. “Then what is it?” Her voice was quieter now, cautious. “I thought we were… friends.”
“We are. We are still.” He exhaled. He did not feel like a very good friend at the moment. “I hope we are.”
Her chin lifted, the careful quietness gone.
“Then why?” Her voice cracked on the question, the words tumbling over each other.
“Why have you avoided me since that dreadful article? Do not—” She held up one hand as he opened his mouth.
“Do not insult my intelligence by denying it. You have taken the long path around the garden every morning. You have refused to dine with us for three nights. You had an urgent letter to write when I brought you tea. So urgent that you could not lift your eyes from the page to acknowledge my presence in the room.” Her chest heaved and her eyes were fury-bright.
She was the most extraordinary person he had ever stood before in his life. “For God’s sake—why? Just tell me.”
He reached for her, the need to touch her, to console her, too overwhelming to resist. She stepped forward, her forehead resting against his chest so that the most natural thing was to gently close his hands around her shoulders. “Because,” he said, “I love you.”
The hallway went perfectly still. There was only him and Elizabeth. She looked up at him, her eyes searching. Whatever she sought, she found in his expression, because she rose to her toes and closed the distance between them. Her lips were warm and certain against his.
The first coherent thought Darcy managed was that he was a blasted fool.
Thought ceded to sensation: the soft tug of her fingers in his hair, the slight exhale of her breath against his mouth, the way she fit against him as though the space had been designed for her, and now that he knew it, he could not bear to part with her.
He had stood on the deck of a merchant vessel in the Aegean at midsummer and watched the sun sink into the sea in a blaze of copper and gold.
He had seen the lantern festival over the harbor at Smyrna, a thousand lights rising into a velvet sky.
He had witnessed spectacles that men traveled continents to find, events they described in letters that failed to do them justice.
None of it had prepared him for this. For the quiet, devastating completeness of Elizabeth Bennet choosing him over Pemberley, security, and convenience.
Simply him. In a dim hallway with the household noise rising from below and two more days separating him and the truth, she had knocked on his door and chosen him.
He drew her closer, and she pulled him tighter, her hands caressing his beard.
For one suspended, luminous moment the will, the name, the secret that plagued him, fell entirely away.
“Ah!” A female outcry crashed over them.
They broke apart.
Miss Bennet stood at the top of the staircase, one hand gripping the newel post. If looks could kill, Darcy would be a pile of smoldering ashes on the floor. He stepped to the side, instinctively drawing Elizabeth behind him. Not that it mattered after what her sister had seen.
“Papa!” Jane Bennet turned toward the staircase below, her voice carrying the full length of the house with remarkable efficiency. “Papa, come quickly!”