Chapter Nine The Parsonage Offensive #2
She placed her gloved hand in the crook of his arm, the warmth of her touch burning through the broadcloth of his coat. They stepped outside and followed the others at a very slow pace.
Darcy’s mind was racing. He needed a topic. He needed to be charming.
“Your bonnet,” Darcy blurted out.
Miss Elizabeth paused mid-step. “My bonnet, sir?”
“It is... very well-made. Erm... the material is sturdy.” Darcy mentally screamed at himself.
The material? You sound like an engineer assessing a bridge, you idiot.
“The straw appears tightly woven. It provides excellent protection from the sun without compromising the aesthetic integrity of the ribbon.”
Miss Elizabeth stopped walking and turned her head to look at him.
Darcy braced himself for the impact, for the reprimand, the mocking laugh, the declaration that he was the most tedious man in the British Isles.
Instead, Miss Elizabeth’s eyes crinkled at the corners, her lips twitching. And then, a peal of laughter escaped her.
But it was not a laugh of mockery. It was a laugh of endearing delight.
“Good material,” she repeated, her shoulders shaking with mirth. “Mr Darcy, you are perhaps the only man in England who would compliment a lady’s millinery by praising its engineering.”
The panic that had gripped Darcy’s chest loosened its claws. He looked down at her radiant, smiling face, and the corners of his own mouth twitched upward—not a forced gargoyle grimace, but a real, self-deprecating smile.
“I am a man of practical observations, Miss Elizabeth,” he admitted, his voice dropping into a low, comfortable rumble. “And I am realising that my attempts at casual flattery are spectacularly inept.”
“I would not say inept,” Miss Elizabeth countered gently, resuming their walk.
She did not remove her hand from his arm; in fact, she seemed to lean into him a fraction of an inch more.
“I would say they are uniquely your own. I find I rather prefer it to the empty, rehearsed poetry most gentlemen deploy.”
Darcy nearly tripped over a pebble. She prefers it. The ground was shifting beneath his feet. He needed to change his address from Pemberley to ‘Seventh Cloud on the Left’. The woman he loved was walking beside him, holding his arm, and speaking to him with a kindness he had only dared to dream of.
“I confess, I was tutored before we arrived.” Darcy threw Robert’s tutelage to the wind. Honesty, even embarrassing honesty, was safer than pretending to be someone he was not.
Miss Elizabeth tilted her head, her eyes sparkling. “Tutored? From whom?”
“From my cousin. Robert.” Darcy sighed. “He held a training session in the library. He insisted I needed to learn how to banter. He forbade me from discussing the weather, agriculture, or the structural integrity of buildings.”
She let out another trill of laughter. “And yet, you managed to analyse my bonnet within three minutes. Viscount Keathley must be disappointed in you.”
“He usually is.” Darcy felt a buoyant lightness in his chest. “Robert possesses an effortless charm. He enters a room, and people gravitate to him. I enter a room, and I repel people.”
Miss Elizabeth’s expression softened into something tender. “Perhaps they do not look closely enough, Mr Darcy. A loud charm is easy to see, but a solid character takes time to understand.”
Darcy’s heart skipped a beat. He stopped walking altogether. He turned to face her on the dirt lane, ignoring the fact that Mr Collins was explaining root systems to Anne fifty feet ahead.
“Elizabeth,” he whispered, the name slipping out unbidden.
She did not correct him, nor did she pull back. She stood there in the dappled sunlight, staring up at him with a smile that made him want to drop to his knees in the dirt and beg for her hand all over again.
“You are very kind to me today,” he said finally. “I do not know what I have done to earn it, especially after... after my previous misconduct. But I am grateful.”
“You have nothing to be grateful for, Mr Darcy,” she replied. “I am opening my eyes. We have both, perhaps, been guilty of forming judgments too quickly. Prejudice is not easy to shed.”
Darcy was floating. He wanted to pull her into his arms. He wanted to shout his relief to the Kentish sky. He wanted to ask her to change her residence to the Seventh Cloud on the Left.
But he remembered Robert’s warnings. Do not rush her. Do not overwhelm her. You are a recovering lunatic; proceed with caution.
“Then I shall endeavour to ensure that your new judgment of me is a favourable one.” He bowed his head slightly, his eyes never leaving hers.
“You are making excellent progress, sir.” She smiled briefly. “Though I suggest we continue walking, before Mr Collins notices we have stopped and decides to return and lecture us on the impropriety of stationary conversing.”
Darcy barked a laugh, his eyes full of delight. “Heaven forbid,” he agreed, offering his arm once more.
They walked on, but he had to address THE letter eventually. It might be his only chance.
“Miss Elizabeth.”
“Yes, Mr Darcy?”
“I must apologise for the contents of the missive I handed you after... after that evening. It was the ramblings of a wounded soul, though it contained truths.”
The grip on his arm tightened imperceptibly.
“Mr Darcy, I completely understand. You need not say more. The confidences about your sister will never be shared elsewhere. You have my promise. As for the rest, I apologise for causing you such turmoil, however justified my rebukes might have been. I regret speaking to you with such rudeness.”
“Oh, no,” he cut her off. “You had every right. My behaviour was abhorrent.”
She studied his face for a moment. “Then we should agree that neither of us behaved to our credit that evening. Why not try to be friends? What say you, Mr Darcy? It would be unprecedented, but I find it intriguing.”
“Friends, Miss Elizabeth?” He leaned to the right, snapping a red bloom from a rose bush and offering it to her. She accepted it and leaned to smell it.
She shrugged. “Why not? Stranger things have happened.”
“Very well. Friends.” He cupped her hand on his sleeve with his other hand and squeezed briefly. “This should be interesting. I wonder how long it can last,” he muttered, wishing with all his heart it would last forever.
Up ahead, Viscount Keathley glanced over his shoulder. He saw Darcy and Elizabeth walking close together, deep in conversation, and his cousin smiling.
The viscount turned back to Mrs Collins and grinned. “Mrs Collins,” he said. “I believe the rock formation can wait. I suddenly feel as though the world is proceeding exactly as it should.”