Chapter 15 #2
"I was getting to it. Would you — will you marry me?"
"Yes."
"I had a great deal more to say."
"You may say it to me for the next fifty years."
Something in Bingley's whole body changed around that word.
It loosened, lit up, went entirely unguarded.
He reached for her hands, remembered the open library window at the last second, and settled instead for standing very still while happiness overtook every other instinct he had.
Elizabeth turned from the rosemary. She had not needed to hear the answer at all to know what it would be.
They came back to the house hand in hand, and Mrs. Bennet's shriek of delight sent birds scattering from the kitchen garden hedge.
"Two daughters! Two great houses!" Lydia demanded, on the spot, a double wedding.
Mary observed that marriage necessarily altered the direction of one's moral duty.
Kitty burst into tears simply because Jane had.
Mr. Bennet kissed Jane's forehead. "You are a good girl. Bingley is a fortunate man, and may discover it eventually."
"I have already discovered it," Bingley said.
"Then there is hope for you yet."
Darcy arrived in the middle of the celebration. Bingley met him in the hall and blurted the news before the poor servant had even managed to take his coat.
Darcy embraced him.
The gesture startled everyone in the hall, Darcy included. Bingley laughed against his shoulder, and when they finally separated, Darcy's eyes were suspiciously bright. He crossed to Jane. "You have made my friend very happy."
"He has made me happy too."
"Then I congratulate you both, with my whole heart."
Mrs. Bennet had begun explaining, at volume, that one daughter settled at Netherfield and one at Pemberley would be a blessing beyond anything she had ever dared imagine, even in her most ambitious moments.
Elizabeth escaped through the garden door.
Darcy followed after a decent interval, which fooled absolutely no one.
"You have not asked me," she said, when he reached the shrubbery.
He stopped short. "I promised not to ask without reason to believe the answer would be welcome."
"You asked to court me."
"That was not marriage. You made the distinction very clear yourself."
"And what reason would you require now?"
Darcy's attention sharpened at once, hope and caution warring plainly across his face. "Elizabeth."
She had only meant to tease him. But the raw hope in his expression made the teasing feel cruel.
"Not today," she said, gentler now. "Jane's happiness ought to have a day entirely to itself."
"I agree."
He did not look disappointed at all. He looked, instead, like a man who had just been handed a date without a name attached to it yet, and found that enough to be going on with.
They walked on toward the wilderness. A pale rime silvered the grass underfoot, and the south wind carried a thread of woodsmoke from Longbourn's chimneys, sharp and sweet in the cold air.
"Georgiana likes you," Darcy said.
"We conspired against an audience together. Friendship often begins in crime."
"She wrote to me from the next room last night, to tell me you had made the pianoforte less dreadful."
"She wrote to you while sharing a house?"
"Georgiana finds paper a good deal easier than doors."
"Then do not you dare mock her for it."
"I keep every note she has ever sent me."
Elizabeth looked at him properly then. "You love her a great deal."
"Yes."
"I am glad she came."
"I wanted the two people I love most in the world to know one another."
The words were not a declaration built for effect. They were an explanation, offered plainly, and something in Elizabeth's chest turned over at the plainness of it. She stopped beside the sundial. "Fitzwilliam."
He waited, very still.
"I am not ready to answer the question you have not asked me today."
"I know."
"But I no longer have any doubt that I want you to ask it."
Darcy closed his eyes for one brief moment, as though absorbing a blow he had been braced for and had not quite expected to feel this much anyway. When he opened them again, his composure had returned, but she could see exactly what it had cost him to gather it back up.
"Thank you."
"You have thanked me for permission to call, permission to court, and now permission to propose. You make affection sound like an application for a licence."
"I have learned to ask first. I may have overcorrected."
"Do not correct it yet."
They walked back to the house without touching, and the small space left between their hands felt deliberate rather than empty. A held breath, waiting to be released on purpose, at the right moment, by the right person.
Jane met Elizabeth near the door, happiness having made her considerably less discreet than usual.
Her voice dropped low. "You told him."
"I told him enough."
Across the hall, Darcy spoke quietly to Bingley.
Both men glanced toward the sisters at exactly the same moment, and looked quickly away.
The sky stayed clear. No shawl had gone missing.
Sarah and McKeever were miles distant at Netherfield, very probably selecting music neither of them had been asked to select.
The next choice belonged to no one but Darcy and Elizabeth. That, she thought, was precisely why she wanted it.