Chapter Fourteen The Prophecy #2
Miss Elizabeth absorbed this without the alarm he expected.
Around them, the ball continued its determined pretence of normality.
Slippers patted the polished floor, bows travelled from one partner to another, and Mrs Bennet’s voice rose briefly above the violins as she informed Lady Lucas that expensive glass generally shattered more musically than common glass.
Fletcher held a glowing prophetic bowl against his coat while Miss Bingley guarded him from curious neighbours.
It was, Darcy reflected, an exceptionally crowded setting in which to discover the exact terms of one’s possible salvation.
“There would also be a human marriage,” he continued.
“I would not use an ancient rite to claim a wife while denying her the protection of her own laws, her family, or the Church. This is not a symbolic rescue, Miss Elizabeth. It would mean a shared home, shared duties, and every obligation carried by marriage. You would not give one drop of blood and walk away from the consequence.”
“I understand the consequence.”
“I do not believe you can understand it while standing beside shattered glass at midnight.”
“Does marriage alter its nature according to the cleanness of floors nearby?”
“No, but astonishment may alter judgement,” he countered.
“Then it is fortunate that I am not astonished.” Miss Elizabeth tapped the closed fan once against her palm and studied him so calmly that his deadened heart attempted an unfamiliar thump inside his chest. “I have spent several weeks discovering that you are more than three centuries old, drink blood, cast no reflection, travel in daylight under a secret ointment and employ a sentient punch bowl which carries knives. The discovery that marriage remains marriage is almost restful.”
Darcy could find no safe response.
She glanced at the ancient words, whose glow had begun to fade now that their meaning had been spoken.
When her gaze returned to him, there was no pity in it and no horror.
There was calculation, resolution, and something warmer which he dared not name while the whole future of his existence hung between them.
“If the rite requires a marriage,” she murmured, “then you had better propose, Mr Darcy, and ask for my father’s blessing.”
Every sound in the ballroom seemed to recede.
Darcy saw the life her offer placed before him: daylight without pain, food, and warmth, age, children, sleep without hunger, and her at the centre of all of it.
Desire rose so fiercely that for one terrible instant he could have accepted before honour recovered enough strength to restrain him.
He stepped back.
“No, Miss Elizabeth.” The words injured him more than Wickham’s death had done. “I will not ask you to marry me.”
She received his refusal without moving.
The last traces of light faded from the inscription, leaving Fletcher holding an almost ordinary vessel while Miss Bingley stood at his side, silent for perhaps the first time since Darcy had known her.
The dancers continued behind them, the music concealed their voices, and servants collected the last fragments from the carpet while pretending that five people had not formed a conspiratorial wall around the punch bowl.
“That is a quite decisive response.” Miss Elizabeth opened her fan again, though the measured movement suggested that she needed occupation for her hands rather than relief from the heat. “Particularly after you devoted such an effort to explain the permanence and dignity of the arrangement.”
“Those are the reasons for my refusal.”
“I had understood them as reasons for marriage.”
“They are reasons why marriage cannot be proposed without certainty.”
“And whose certainty is in doubt?”
“Yours.”
Her fan stopped halfway through its arc. “How fortunate that you are able to judge it without troubling me.”
Darcy endured the rebuke because he had earned it, though honour became more difficult to maintain when she regarded him in that manner.
“You have learned that a single act may restore everything I lost. You know what humanity means to me, and you are generous enough to offer it before you have considered what you would surrender.”
“I would surrender one drop of blood, Mr Darcy.”
“You would surrender your freedom, Miss Elizabeth.”
“To marriage, not to vampirism.”
“To marriage with me.” Darcy lowered his voice as a pair of dancers passed within hearing radius.
The gentleman glanced curiously at Fletcher, but Miss Bingley stepped forward smiling so pleasantly that he abandoned whatever question had begun to form.
“You would bind the whole of your life to mine because you have discovered that I desire humanity. I will not permit gratitude, compassion, or pity to persuade you into a union you would not otherwise choose.”
Miss Bingley’s shoulders stiffened. She had endured the revelation of the prophecy, Miss Elizabeth’s suggestion, and Darcy’s refusal without intruding, but this offence against reason exceeded even her discipline.
“Mr Darcy, if you mean to reject the only solution which preserves both your humanity and hers, perhaps you might do so less loudly.” She shifted closer to Fletcher, further shielding the conversation from the room. “I have spent years cultivating the impression that our party has judgement.”
The bowl gave a small movement in Fletcher’s hands.
Miss Bingley’s gaze descended to it. “You are in no position to criticise. Half the county danced around your victims.”
“Miss Bingley is correct in one respect,” Miss Elizabeth murmured. “You are rejecting a solution before establishing whether the woman involved wishes to be rescued from it.”
“I am preventing you from mistaking sympathy for affection.”
“And I am discovering that three centuries have not taught you the difference between honour and presumption.”
Darcy’s control faltered. “You cannot know what life with me would require.”
“Then explain it. I have found direct information unexpectedly useful this evening.”
“You would leave Longbourn and your family. You would become mistress of Pemberley, responsible for an estate and all who depend on it. My past would not disappear because I became human. The elders would recognise our binding, and those among our kind who resented my authority might regard my mortality as an invitation to settle ancient grievances. There would be danger, obligation, and the daily society of a man who has been accustomed to command for longer than our country has had its present constitution.”
Miss Elizabeth considered this formidable catalogue. “Would you also expect me to endure your silences?”
“Most certainly.”
“Your tendency to decide what I think before I have spoken?” she pushed further.
Darcy inclined his head. “I would endeavour to correct it.”
“And your punch bowl?”
The vessel peeked at them from Fletcher’s coat.
“That appears unavoidable.”
“Then I am grateful that all material disadvantages have been disclosed.” Miss Elizabeth closed her fan. “Now let us remove the prophecy from the equation.”
Darcy studied her, uncertain whether hope or dread had made her voice so calm. “That is impossible.”
“It is perfectly possible. Imagine that the inscription remains incomplete. Imagine that I have no blood beyond the common variety, that the bowl has never stalked me carrying a knife, and that you will remain exactly as you are. Put aside humanity, immortality, Mr Wickham, binding rituals, and every ancient law which has made the past month unnecessarily eventful.”
He could not imagine her ordinary. Even without prophecy, her presence had disturbed every discipline he ever had.
She had invaded his thoughts, challenged him before she understood his nature and made him desire her company when desire itself had become a sensation he associated chiefly with hunger.
Miss Elizabeth watched him attempt the impossible exercise. “There is only you and me, Mr Darcy. Do you hold any regard for me?”
The question entered him more cleanly than Collins’s sharpened stick had entered Wickham.
Fletcher turned his face to the ballroom.
His expression was sombre, although the rigid set of his shoulders revealed that he had discovered an urgent professional interest in the musicians.
Miss Bingley did not withdraw. She gazed at Darcy with an understanding which stripped the ambition from her features and left only the pain of a woman who had finally received an answer to a question she had never permitted herself to speak.
Darcy could have offered Miss Elizabeth a cautious phrase. He might have confessed esteem, admiration, or attachment, each respectable word concealing the force of the truth. Such concealment had already endangered her, and he had promised that it would end.
“Yes.” His voice emerged rougher than he intended. “I hold more regard for you than I believed myself capable of feeling.”
Her fingers tightened around her fan, but she did not turn away.
“You are the most remarkable woman I have ever encountered. I have lived three hundred and seventeen vampire years, and another twenty-eight in human time, Miss Elizabeth. In all that time I have known no one who has challenged me, amused me, infuriated me, and understood me in equal measure. You entered Netherfield for your sister’s sake and confronted everything within it for the sake of others.
You learned what I was and demanded honesty rather than protection.
You faced Wickham when men who knew his nature had failed to stop him for fifty years, and now, after witnessing death and discovering a prophecy, you stand here debating my future as calmly as another woman might discuss the supper. ”
Her lips curved, though her eyes had grown bright. “I have not inspected the supper.”