Chapter 10
TEN
All Elizabeth could promise her father was that she would think on what he had revealed. She quietly excused herself, and when she emerged from the library, looked neither to the right nor to the left, but instead walked directly out of the manor to stare out into the darkness.
It was not long before she heard the door opening and shutting; Darcy, for it could be no other, came close up behind her, setting his warm hands upon her shoulders.
“It is too cold out here without your coat,” he said. She glanced up, but his face was in shadow. She looked away.
“All my life, I have looked over this view, and never once did I think, ‘This is not ours. This should never have been ours.’ Tell me, do you hate us very much?”
“No,” he said. There was a long pause. “I did—your father, at least. For what he said to mine. I never believed his daughters anything except innocent.”
“You could not have looked forward to marrying one of us. Even less so than I thought.”
His breath exhaled in a nearly soundless whoosh. “I was unprepared for one particular daughter, that is certain. I did not realise that love, when it came, would burn through generations of ill will, and set me afire with need and hunger.” Gently, he turned her to face him.
She wanted, almost desperately, to wrap her arms around him, but she had to know the truth—all of it. “Will you be longing for my father’s death? Is that the only thing that can make all this ugliness…right?”
His hands gently clasped her cheeks, urging her to look up at him.
“Oh, my darling,” he said. “I told you, when we sold the land, it gave us a fresh start. That was, perhaps, only partly true. In all honesty, my father was never the same. But for me—it was the start of everything I wanted. I wanted the education, you see. I wanted the opportunity to choose my own career, one I knew I would find rewarding. No longer was I chained to our past—my father set me free. And though I could not like the circumstances, and have felt a great guilt that my freedom cost my father his dreams, I am happy as the vicar of Hunsford. Probably that guilt encouraged more blame towards your father than was fair, and I am sorry for it. I pray your father lives a good, long life—so that by the time I return as master of Longbourn, I am ready for a new journey. I have barely begun this one, however, and I hope—oh, Elizabeth, you cannot know how I yearn—that you will journey with me. Will you, Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “Yes, I will.”
Their lips met and sealed in a vow, in anticipation of a future of meaningful work and sweet intimacy, with a love that ever after made every day a hopeful new beginning.