Chapter Twenty Four
Darcy called the following morning, alone, and found her walking the lane behind Longbourn with a restlessness she had not been able to shake since Bingley's proposal the night before.
"I hope I do not intrude," he said.
"You never intrude, Mr. Darcy. I have begun to think you arrive, always, precisely when I most need you to."
Something in his expression shifted at that, hope arriving fully now, unguarded. "I have come to ask you something, and I find I am considerably more nervous asking it a second time than I was the first, though I did not think that possible."
"Then ask it plainly, and let us both be spared the suspense."
He took her hand, there on the open lane, with no care at all for who might see them, and the warmth of it went through her entire body like a struck match.
"I love you," he said, "not the version of me that spoke carelessly at an assembly and thought nothing of the cost, but the man I have become since, the man you have made me want to be.
I am asking you again to be my wife, and this time I ask it knowing every true thing about myself and about you, with nothing left concealed between us. "
"And if I said the assembly still stung a little, even now?"
"Then I would tell you it ought to sting, a little, always, so that I never again forget the weight of a careless word.
" His thumb moved over her knuckles, a small, unconscious motion that undid her far more thoroughly than any grand declaration could have.
"But I would also tell you that I have spent every day since Rosings trying to become a man worthy of your forgetting it entirely, and I will go on trying, for the whole of my life, if you will let me. "
"Yes," she said, before he had even finished, the word arriving with a certainty that surprised her by how simple it felt after so many months of complication. "Yes, Fitzwilliam. I will."
He kissed her hand first, and then, when she did not step back, kissed her properly, there on the open lane where anyone might see, and Elizabeth Bennet, who had once stood frozen at an assembly while a careless sentence lodged itself beneath her ribs, felt that old wound finally, entirely close over, replaced by something considerably warmer in its place.
The wedding took place at Longbourn church six weeks later, a double ceremony, Jane and Bingley, Elizabeth and Darcy, the whole neighborhood turned out to witness what Mrs. Bennet declared, with perfect sincerity, the finest day of her entire life.
It was Darcy, some months into their marriage, who suggested the visit to Meryton's assembly rooms, on an evening when a small local dance had been arranged for the officers' replacements and half the neighborhood besides.
"You do not have to," Elizabeth said, though she understood, watching his face, exactly why he wished to.
"I want to." He held out his hand, the same careful, deliberate gesture he had offered her at the Netherfield ball, a lifetime ago. "I have owed this room a dance for two years, Mrs. Darcy. I should like, at last, to pay the debt properly."
She took his hand, and let him lead her onto the very floor where he had once, carelessly, called her not handsome enough to tempt him, and found, as the music began and his hand settled warm against her waist, that the room held no wound left in it at all, only the two of them, and the whole bright length of everything still to come.