Answer at the Altar
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
On the morning of her wedding, Elizabeth discovered a gentleman lurking in the shrubbery.
To be precise, she discovered her gentleman in her shrubbery—crouched behind the winter-bare hydrangeas in a coat that had no business being anywhere near frosted branches, attempting to attract her attention by throwing small pebbles at her window with the accuracy of a man who had clearly never been required to throw stones at anything in his aristocratic life except perhaps an occasional grouse.
“You are going to break the glass,” Elizabeth observed, leaning from the casement. “And then you will have to explain to my father why his daughter’s bedchamber is drafty on her wedding morning.”
Darcy looked up, his hair already tousled by the wind, his cravat bearing the marks of a hasty knot, and his expression that of a man who had risen at dawn with a matter so pressing it could not be trusted to the ordinary passage of hours.
“Come down,” he urged, his voice low. “Please. I must speak with you.”
“It is seven o’clock in the morning. I am in my dressing gown. My mother will have an apoplexy if she discovers you here, and Jane will be insufferably amused.”
“Then come quickly, before anyone discovers us.”
Elizabeth considered the propriety of the situation, but only as long as propriety deserved on a morning when she was to be married by noon. She reached for her pelisse.
The shrubbery was cold, the ground unyielding, and Elizabeth’s slippers entirely unequal to the task. Yet none of this signified when Darcy took her hands and regarded her as if she were the only fixed point in a world intent on spinning away.
“What is it?” she asked, a thread of concern winding through her. “Are your feet cold?”
“No.” He was, naturally, wearing immaculately polished boots, but his composure was entirely in shreds.
“Then, why are you here?”
“I wished to see you,” he said, “before the church. To say something.”
“You could not wait four hours?” she asked, though she was smiling. “We will be married by luncheon. Surely whatever you wish to say could be said then.”
“You will be surrounded by your mother, your sisters, half of Hertfordshire, and Mr. Bingley, who has been pacing the Netherfield breakfast room since five o’clock and may need to be physically restrained before the processional.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Is he quite nervous?”
“He has changed his cravat four times. Caroline offered to tie the fifth, and he told her if she touched his neckcloth, he would seat her behind a pillar.”
“Charles is ever direct.”
“He is also carrying the ring in his waistcoat pocket and checking it every three minutes, which I believe has already worn a hole through the lining.”
“And you? Are you equally deranged?”
The expression shifted on his face—a softening that he allowed because they were alone and the rest of the world was busy with flowers and hair and missing shoes. “I have been quite deranged since December,” he said. “I expect this morning will cure it.”
“So you are unwell?” She tilted her head, suddenly concerned. “Is that what you wish to tell me?”
“No. I mean, I am well, I just…” His voice turned rough. “It could not wait. I cannot walk into that church without telling you—”
“Telling me what?”
He stopped and took a breath, collected himself, although he was completely undone but needed to regain enough composure to be married.
“When I fell in love with you,” he said. “You deserve to know before we are married. Before we make vows that will bind us for life. You deserve to know exactly when I became yours, because you have wondered, and I have never told you properly.”
Elizabeth felt her heart turn over in her chest. “Fitzwilliam, when?”
“It was at the Netherfield ball when you accepted a dance with me.”
“I didn’t wish to.” Elizabeth blinked, her jaw dropping an inch. “I believe I was planning your execution throughout the entire figure. How on earth could that be the genesis of your passion?”
“You did dance with me and mocked me, my silence, and my inability to speak pleasantries. You suggested I was rude.”
“You fell in love with me because I insulted your manners in public?”
“No,” he said, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a terrifying sincerity. “But you looked at me closely, and you told me what you disliked. You did not attempt civility, and yet you studied my character—even if you arrived at the most appalling conclusions.”
“I am mortified.” Elizabeth felt the cold creeping into her slippers and flexed her toes to ward off a shiver. “I was horrible to you, accusing you of being eaten up with pride.”
“But you were honest. Every other woman in that room would have offered pleasantries, filled the silence with flattery. You were the first person in my life who cared enough to challenge me.”
“That is a most charitable interpretation,” she argued. “I believe I most thoroughly disliked you.”
“Because you refused to let me hide behind my name or my consequence. Because you saw me, Elizabeth, and I wanted—I needed—to become the man you might one day approve of.”
Elizabeth’s eyes stung. She blinked rapidly, determined not to weep before breakfast on her wedding day.
“That was not a poor answer,” she admitted. “Though I might have wished you had fallen in love with me when I was less combative.”
“I fell in love with all of you, but the combative parts are among my favorites.” He kissed her knuckles, one after the other. “Now, it is your turn to tell.”
“What exactly are you inquiring of me?”
“I wish to know the instant when you fell in love with me.” His eyes were warm, teasing, but beneath the lightness she could see the genuine question—the need to know that she had chosen him as deliberately as he had chosen her.
“Ah.” She withdrew her hand from his—slowly, deliberately.
“I think I shall make you guess. If you can identify the moment correctly, I shall own it. If you cannot—” She tilted her head, considering.
“If you cannot, you must walk into that church knowing you have failed the most important examination of your life.”
“That seems rather high stakes for a guessing game.”
“If you have to guess, then you do not deserve to know, Mr. Darcy.” She licked her lips. “Besides, marriage is rather high stakes. One might think you would have noticed by now.”
Heat kindled in his gaze, that spark of competitive intelligence she had first glimpsed across the card table at Lucas Lodge—the very look he wore when she bested him at Commerce, taking his pocket full of sixpences.
“The tenant walk,” he hazarded. “The afternoon I tumbled into the drainage ditch.”
“I experienced a profound, unchristian delight in your misfortune. That is not love, Fitzwilliam; that is simple human malice.”
“When I told you that you did not hate me? When you said you did, and I said—somewhat insufferably, I will admit—that you did not?”
“You were insufferably certain of yourself.” Elizabeth’s mouth curved. “And you winked. I wanted to slap you and kiss you in equal measure. That is attraction, sir. Not even close to love.”
“Perhaps when we rescued the rabbit?” he pressed. “You named him Henry and kept him in your bootroom.”
Elizabeth felt her eyes roll. “Kindness to small creatures is a virtue, Mr. Darcy, but not the sustenance of love.”
He absorbed this with a slight inclination of his chin. “The evening I kissed your hand. After you played the pianoforte, and you said I should ask you to play more often.”
She could feel her heart soften. He really looked so boyishly eager to know. “That evening I stopped pretending I was indifferent to you.” She met his eyes steadily. “It is not the same thing.”
“You are a formidable opponent.”
“You quite mistake the matter, sir,” Elizabeth murmured, her gaze dropping to his lapel before rising with a slow, wicked smile.
“I was never your opponent. I was merely the only person in the room who refused to let you be dull. Though I admit, I am remarkably daunting when I set my mind to making you lose your composure.”
Darcy’s brow furrowed, his composure clearly too lost to be found. But he would not retreat.
“The evening I offered to change the entail. When I gave you Longbourn without condition.”
Elizabeth felt her breath catch. This was the closest he had come—the answer that brushed the truth without quite touching it.
“That was the night I realized you were a good man,” she said softly. “But I had known good men before. My father is a good man. And goodness, Fitzwilliam, is a remarkably poor substitute for falling headlong into ruin.”
“Then when?” His voice was almost plaintive. “Elizabeth, I have interrogated every hour I can recall, every quarrel, every single time you looked as though you wished to murder me with a teaspoon—tell me before I freeze to this gravel!”
“Oh, no,” Elizabeth laughed, stepping backward. “If the master of Pemberley cannot solve a simple riddle before the church bells ring, I shall simply have to spend the rest of our marriage wondering if you ever truly understood me at all.”
“Lizzy!” Jane’s voice carried across the garden.
She appeared in front of them, resplendent in white muslin with a crown of winter jasmine in her hair.
“Lizzy, you are meant to be at the altar, not in the shrubbery! And Mr. Darcy, if Mamma discovers you here, she will have you married in your current state, and I do not think that cravat will survive the ceremony.”
Elizabeth giggled at Darcy’s moody look. “You will have to keep guessing, or you will be married to a mystery.”
She slipped from his side and followed Jane back into the house, choosing the servant’s entrance lest her mother decide to recite the vows herself in the scullery.
The Longbourn parish church was small, decidedly cold, and brimming with people—a bitter pill for Mrs. Bennet, who had wept three lace handkerchiefs over their inability to secure St. George’s in London before resigning herself to local infamy.