CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They walked back toward Longbourn together, slower than either strictly needed, unwilling to surrender the private stretch of morning before the whole household descended upon them with questions.
"Your aunt will not receive this news kindly," Elizabeth said.
"My aunt received the mere rumor of your document poorly.
I imagine the actual marriage will require a considerably longer recovery.
" He glanced at her, something lighter than she had seen in him for months settling into his face.
"She will come around, in time, or she will not, and I find I mind considerably less than I would have a year ago. "
"And Mr. Wickham? He knows the document exists still, and I do not imagine his discretion has improved."
"Wickham's discretion will improve considerably the moment he understands that his continued good fortune depends entirely upon it, and I intend to make that understanding very plain to him before the week is out.
" Darcy's jaw set, briefly, the old hardness returning for just a moment before easing again.
"I will not threaten him the way I threatened him before, out of fear of what he might do.
I will simply make certain he understands that the document's existence no longer troubles me, because I have already answered for its contents, in full, to the only person entitled to an answer.
A secret only has power over a man who is still ashamed of it. "
Elizabeth considered that, turning it over. "You are not ashamed any longer."
"I am ashamed of having said it in the first place.
I am no longer ashamed of the fact that you kept a record of it, or that the record exists, or that anyone might one day learn of it.
Let them learn. I would rather be known as a man who once spoke cruelly and then spent a year proving himself capable of better, than as a man who hid his failures so carefully no one ever had the chance to watch him correct them. "
They reached the edge of the Longbourn garden, and Elizabeth stopped before the house came fully into view, unwilling yet to surrender the moment to her mother's inevitable raptures.
"I want to tell you something," she said, "and I want you to hear it plainly, the way you asked me to hear you this morning."
"I am listening."
"I did not keep the list only to hold you to account.
I told myself that, for a long time, because it was easier than admitting the truth.
" She looked up at him. "I kept it because some part of me, even at Hunsford, even furious as I was, did not entirely believe you incapable of answering it eventually.
I think I was waiting, without knowing I was waiting, to see whether you would try. "
His expression softened into something she had rarely seen him wear, unguarded and slightly disbelieving of his own good fortune. "And if I had never tried?"
"Then I would have kept the list as proof I had not imagined the wound, and told myself I was glad to be free of a man who could not answer for it. I am considerably gladder, as it happens, that I did not have to settle for that particular consolation."
He reached for her hand again, right there at the garden's edge where anyone might see, and did not seem to care in the slightest.
"I will spend a great many years," he said, "proving to you that the trying was not a single morning's effort, spent to close an account and be done with it.
I do not know how to promise you I will never count anything again.
I am not entirely certain that would be honest. But I can promise you this: whatever I count from now on, I will show you the sum, plainly, as it happens, and let you decide for yourself what it is worth, rather than deciding for you and calling it kindness. "
"That," Elizabeth said, "is the first promise you have ever made me that did not sound like an apology."
"Good," he said, and kissed her hand, slowly, deliberately, his eyes on hers the entire time. "I find I am finished apologizing. I would rather simply begin."
They walked the rest of the way to the house together, hand in hand, and if Mrs. Bennet's shriek of delight upon seeing them through the parlor window could be heard clear across two fields, neither of them minded in the least, both of them already occupied with the considerably more pressing business of a future neither intended to spend calculating, only living.