Chapter 23 #2
Her expression softened, but there was amusement in it too, because she was Elizabeth and could not let tenderness go entirely undefended. “I shall say it again, if repetition will assist your understanding.”
“It might.”
“I love you,” she said, more quietly this time. “With all my heart.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “And I love you. With everything that I am, always.”
When he opened them, she was watching him with an expression that made him wonder how he had ever mistaken her so thoroughly. There was warmth there, and intelligence, and something like wonder, though she would likely deny it if accused.
“I have made a study of being sensible,” she said. “A very poor study, apparently, because I seem to have fallen in love with a man I once believed I disliked.”
“I cannot claim to have done much better. I fell in love with a woman who made it very clear she found me proud, unpleasant, and occasionally ridiculous.”
“Only occasionally?”
“Often,” he admitted.
She smiled. “I did not know you were listening.”
“I was always listening.”
The words came out more plainly than he intended, but he did not regret them. Elizabeth looked away first, toward the roses, and he saw the colour rise faintly in her face.
That, too, was new. He had known her lively, teasing, indignant, thoughtful, brave. He had not yet seen her shy. The discovery did something to him that he had no intention of examining too closely in a garden when she was not yet his wife, and there were several unresolved disasters waiting.
He lifted her hand again, not quite to kiss it this time, only to hold it more securely.
“I should have spoken sooner,” he said.
“Perhaps. But if you had asked too soon, I might not have listened.”
“Would you not?”
“I do not know.” She leaned a little nearer, not enough to be improper if anyone came upon them, but enough that he felt the movement as a kind of trust. “I had a great many opinions to revise.”
“And have you revised them all?”
“No,” she said. “I am keeping a few, for balance.”
He laughed softly, and she looked pleased with herself.
The sound of the pianoforte drifted faintly from the house, one of Mary and Georgiana’s passages begun, abandoned, and begun again.
Life was going on exactly as it had before, which seemed impossible.
Somewhere inside, his sister was practicing music with Elizabeth’s sister, servants were moving through the house, luncheon would be remembered, and nothing in the world had outwardly altered.
Yet nothing was the same.
Then she sighed. He felt it more than heard it. She rested her head briefly against his shoulder.
“It is a shame to be separated,” she said. “Even for something this important. We have only just agreed to wed, and now you must go to London. I almost wish we were already married, so I could go with you.”
Darcy spoke without thought, only from the feeling that to be separated from her was impossible. “You could come with me,” he said.
She looked up at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“The search must begin in London, regardless. My solicitor is there, my man of business, the people I need to reach. I would need at least a week before there was anywhere else to go.” He paused.
“A common licence takes very little time to obtain. If you were willing to forgo a more formal wedding, you could be married from your uncle’s house without much delay at all. ”
Elizabeth stared at him. “You are proposing that we elope.”
“I am proposing that we marry quickly and without a great deal of ceremony,” he said, “which is not quite the same thing. There would be nothing secret about it. Your uncle and I would arrange the settlements beforehand, and he and your aunt would be present. It would simply be a wedding without months of preparation.”
She was quiet. He could see her working through it, the practicalities arranging themselves behind her eyes.
“Georgiana,” she said. “And Mary.”
“Would witness our marriage as well. Your sister could stay with your aunt and uncle, or in my townhouse with Georgiana and Mrs Annesley, as she prefers.”
“What will our sisters say?” Elizabeth mused.
Darcy smiled rather wryly. “Georgiana will almost certainly say she expected this. I do not think she would have been very happy with me if I had not got you as a new sister for her.”
“She is so dear,” Elizabeth said, a little tearily. Then she paused. “My mother will not be happy about a quiet wedding.”
“Your mother may have all the celebration she wishes when your father is home,” he said. “A dinner, a ball, whatever she likes. But I would rather have you with me now than leave you here waiting.”
Elizabeth was quiet for another moment. Then she looked up at him, and the expression on her face was the decided one, the one that meant she had finished thinking and had arrived at a position she would not move from.
“Yes,” she said. “We shall be married in London and go to find my father together.”
She said it with the same clarity she had brought to everything since the first time he had seen her, standing in a field with her boots muddy and her chin up.
Darcy thought wryly that he had been in love with her since approximately that moment, if he was being honest, though he had spent a great deal of the intervening months trying not to be.
He brought her hand to his lips again. “Come, love,” Darcy said. “Let us go and make my sister almost as happy as I am.”