Chapter 23
Fitzwilliam Darcy
Elizabeth had not appeared for luncheon, which was not like her.
Georgiana had mentioned it first, glancing toward the door with a small frown. Mary had said that Elizabeth had gone to the kitchen garden after breakfast with her letters and had not come back in. Darcy had not said anything. He had set down his napkin, excused himself, and gone to find her.
He had seen her through the arch of the pergola from some distance away. She was sitting on the bench with letters in her hands and the stillness of someone who has received a blow and has not yet decided how to respond to it.
With a sick feeling, Darcy suspected that he knew that stillness. He had seen it in her once before, at Rosings, when she had told him about her father in the morning lane with the flatness of someone carrying something heavy and long accustomed to carrying it alone.
He called her name. She did not look up. He called it again, differently, and she heard him that time. She looked up, and what was in her face confirmed his worst fears.
He came into the pergola and sat down beside her on the bench.
“What has happened?” he said.
Elizabeth looked at the letters in her hands for a moment. He waited.
“I had two letters this morning,” she said. “And an express just now.” She paused. “From Jane.”
“Tell me.”
Elizabeth told him everything in the plain way she had of telling difficult things: without requesting any particular response, only laying the facts out as they were.
The letter from Jane. Wickham, Lydia, the reticule, the gambling debts, and the near disaster of it.
Mrs Collins’s letter. Mr Collins and the solicitor, and the seven years he had no intention of waiting for.
And then the express, Jane’s handwriting, the hurried lines, Mr Collins already at Longbourn with papers in his hand, her mother in hysterics and Jane Bennet alone trying to manage it.
When she finished, he was quiet for a moment, thinking through what he had heard.
“He moved quickly,” Darcy said. If he was not much mistaken, he saw Lady Catherine’s hand in that.
The toadying man he had met at Netherfield and again in Kent would not have had the guts for that.
It would have been like his aunt to bully the man into acting.
“I am almost forced to admire his strategy in striking when we were all away from the house.” Her voice was even, but he could hear the effort behind it.
“Charlotte warned me this morning, in her letter, that she thought it would happen soon. He must have left for Longbourn almost the same day she wrote the letter.” She looked down at the pages in her lap.
“I keep thinking that if I could find my father, none of the rest of it would matter. Mr Collins has no claim if my father is alive and comes home. But I do not know where he is. I have been trying to find him for months and I have got nowhere.”
Elizabeth looked down at the letters again.
“I was thinking I should write to my uncle.” Her laugh was small and tired. “Though that seems to be my answer to everything these days.” She looked back at him. “What would you do? If you were me, Mr Darcy, what would you do now?”
She stopped short at that. “I am sorry,” Elizabeth said hoarsely. “It is an impossible question. I should not have asked it.”
“I am honoured that you did,” Darcy said.
She smiled a little, even as she gulped back tears. “Thank you. As I — as I said, perhaps I should write to my uncle.”
“Your uncle has already tried,” he said gently.
“He traced him as far as London and no further. His connections only go so far.” She paused, looking down at the letters again. “And even if I write to him now, what can I tell him that would help? That Mr Collins is trying to take our home? That Jane is frightened? That I am frightened?”
The last words seemed to hurt her. “We have urgency,” Elizabeth said wearily. “But we have no new trail.”
“You have something new,” Darcy said. “You know Mr Collins has already acted. You know it is urgent. And —” He stopped and made a decision. “You must allow me to act in this. Not your uncle.”
She looked at him, confused.
“My connections are broader.” He said it without emphasis, simply as a relevant fact.
“I have a solicitor who can address the legal question of Mr Collins directly and make clear what the actual law says about presumption of death. I have other people, men whose work it is to find things that have been lost or hidden, who can follow your father’s trail further than it has been followed before.
Your uncle is a capable, intelligent man, but he is not equipped for what this requires. ”
“You would do all of that,” she said.
“Yes.”
“For us.”
Darcy swallowed hard. “I would do it for a friend. Freely and without condition, and I mean that. But I cannot tell you that friendship is all this is. That would be a lie, and I cannot lie to you.”
He paused. “I love you. I have loved you since Kent, or perhaps before that, and I can no longer bear to keep silent. But Elizabeth, you must allow me to help you, even if you do not love me as I love you. I have repressed my feelings, knowing what it would mean if you received an unwelcome proposal from your host, but I cannot hold back the truth now. Whether you would have me as a husband or only as a friend, let me help you.”
The garden was very quiet.
Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment. He could not read her expression, which was unusual. He had learned to read most of her expressions over the course of the summer. This one was new.
Then she said, “I have been telling myself all summer that I was content to be your friend. That it was enough, and that I should be sensible about what was realistic, and that I should not allow myself to imagine anything more.” She looked at their hands, which were very close together on the bench. “I was not being honest with myself.”
She gave a small, breathless laugh, as though the admission had surprised her by coming aloud. “I told myself I admired you first. That was safe enough. A lady may admire a gentleman’s character without making a fool of herself.”
Darcy held his breath, feeling as though he could not bear to wait for her next words.
“Then I told myself I valued your friendship. That was also very sensible. You had been kind to me. You are a wonderful brother to Georgiana. You listened when I spoke of my father and did not try to make the matter smaller than it was.”
She looked down at their hands. “But then you would walk into a room, and all my sensible explanations became much less useful.”
“No?” he said.
“No.” She met his eyes. “I love you. I have for some time. I think I knew it in Kent and told myself I was confused.” The corner of her mouth moved. “I am not always quick to admit things, even the obvious ones.”
Something loosened in his chest that had been tightly held for a very long time. He reached for her hand, and she gave it to him without hesitation, and he held it for a moment before he spoke. “Well, Elizabeth, it seems as though I love you, and you love me.”
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “So it does.”
“Then there is one thing left for me to ask,” Darcy said. “Elizabeth Bennet, light of my life and joy of my heart, will you marry me?”
The smile that crossed her face was open and vulnerable, not the composed version she wore in company, not even the amused one he had been collecting almost since their first meeting. Something simpler and better than either.
“Yes,” she said. Then she laughed, because happiness seemed to have arrived too suddenly to contain any other way. “Yes, of course I will. There is nothing in this world I should like more than to be your wife.”
He leaned forward and kissed her, gently, and she kissed him back with the same directness she brought to everything. When they broke apart, they were both smiling. Neither of them moved very far.
Elizabeth rested her forehead briefly against his shoulder and laughed softly. “This is considerably better than being sensible.”
His arm settled around her. “I entirely agree.”
For a few moments neither of them said anything at all.
They stayed close together on the bench for a little while, her hand still in his, the summer garden around them, the roses rustling faintly overhead.
He was aware of the letters still in her other hand, and of the problems that required addressing, and found that none of it diminished the moment in the slightest.
For once in his life, Darcy did not immediately know what ought to be done next.
There were a dozen practical matters waiting.
Letters to write. Horses to order. A solicitor to instruct.
Mr Collins to restrain by whatever legal means were necessary.
Mr Bennet to find, if Mr Bennet could be found.
The whole machinery of consequence and responsibility stood waiting beyond the roses, and Darcy knew he would attend to it soon. He would arrange it all.
But not quite yet.
For this one small interval, there was only Elizabeth beside him, her hand in his, and the astonishing fact that she would be his wife.
He looked down at their joined hands. Hers was smaller than his, warm and steady despite everything that had happened.
It struck him with sudden force that he had imagined this badly.
In all the weeks he had thought of speaking to her, he had imagined fear, refusal, surprise, awkwardness, even anger.
He had imagined himself explaining too much or too little.
He had imagined every possible way of losing her.
He had not imagined this quiet happiness.
Elizabeth glanced at him. “You are very solemn for a man who has just been accepted.”
“I am trying to believe it.”
“That I accepted you?”
“That I could possibly be so fortunate as to have you love me.”