Chapter Twenty Three
They walked on in a silence that felt, this time, less like restraint and more like two people gathering courage for the same unspoken thing.
"I have thought a great deal," Darcy said, at last, "about the assembly, since Kent."
"So have I. Too much, perhaps."
"I do not think it was too much. I think I owed you far more thought on the subject than a single careless evening ever deserved, and I gave it far too little, for far too long.
" He paused, choosing his words with a care she had rarely seen him spend on anything.
"I have wondered, since your aunt's letter must surely have reached you by now, whether you have forgiven me the whole of it.
Not merely Lydia. The beginning of it. The thing you carried alone for so long before either of us said a true word about it to the other. "
"I do not know that forgiveness is quite the right word for what I feel now," she said, slowly, working it out as she spoke. "I think I have simply stopped needing you to have been perfect from the first moment, and started, instead, to see the whole of what you have been since."
Something moved across his face, quick and unguarded, hope arriving before he had decided whether to let it show. "And what have I been, since?"
"Honest, when honesty cost you a great deal to give.
Generous, when you asked for nothing in return, not even the knowledge that I would ever learn of it.
" She stopped walking entirely now, turning to face him fully.
"I think, Mr. Darcy, that I have been rather a fool, to let one sentence, however cruelly spoken, stand so long as the whole measure of a man capable of everything you have since shown me. "
"You were not a fool. I gave you that sentence to carry, and gave you nothing to set against it for far too long. Whatever fault lies in how heavily it weighed, the fault is mine, not yours."
She almost smiled at that, the particular stubbornness of it, a man determined to claim every fault for himself rather than allow her any share of it. "You are still arguing with me."
"I find I cannot help it. It has become rather a habit, where you are concerned."
This time she did smile, and something in his face eased at the sight of it, the careful tension he had carried through the whole conversation finally beginning to loosen.
"I do not know," she said, "whether I am ready to say everything I feel. It has been such a long road, from that assembly to this path, and I find myself needing to walk the last of it slowly, rather than all at once."
"Then I will walk it slowly with you," he said, "for as long as you require."
They continued on, the rest of the walk passing in a conversation gentler and more halting than either of them was accustomed to, small things offered and received with a care that felt, to Elizabeth, like the careful rebuilding of something that had once been broken and was now, piece by piece, being set right.
Bingley proposed to Jane four days later, in the small sitting room at Longbourn, and the whole household knew of it within the hour, Mrs. Bennet's joy loud enough to be heard, Elizabeth suspected, halfway to Meryton.
Jane's happiness was quiet and complete in the way all her happiness had always been, and Elizabeth held her sister close that evening and felt, beneath her own joy for Jane, a private ache of longing for something she was not yet certain would be offered to her again.
She did not have long to wait.