Their eyes held.
She kissed him, full on the lips on the open city street.
When they separated, as other pedestrians passed them with disapproving looks, Elizabeth said, “I trust your word, and I will marry you.”
“Trust a rake’s word?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Youstillhope to be seen as rakish?”
Darcy kissed her again. There was an exaltation and a release of tension, as though he’d nearly been run over by a careening carriage. “Youenjoyed being called dangerous.”
“My rakish lover. I am incapable of resisting your charm. But I insist we start the banns anew and are married by a clergyman whose characterIknow — I have heard too many stories of fictitious clergymen used by rakes to seduce honorable maidens into mortal sin.”
“Ahhh! I am so rakish that you cannot trust that I will not give a false license and clergyman?” Darcy grinned at her happily.
“Is your nametrulyDarcy?” She frowned, but her eyes smiled. “Several persons of undoubted reputation must attest to it.”
“Bingley and my cousin are present.”
“No! No! I must hear from your aunt, Lady Catherine — she is not one of your male cronies.”
Darcy’s expression was aghast.
“Will she attend our wedding?”
“Faith, I hope not.”
Their walk had carried them through the center of London and out to the river. They stood next to the famed white-walled Tower of London and looked out at the river which flowed through the greatest city in the world.
“I am not the only one.” Elizabeth smirked at him. “You must gain my father’s blessing again.”
Darcy’s stomach swooped with a new anxiety. But he then shook his head and laughed. “I can convince him that we shall be happy — you shall see.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mr. Bennet considered it passing odd when the wheels of a heavy carriage rolled up to Longbourn several hours before noon the day after Georgiana Darcy’s wedding in London. The hour was too early for social calls.
The window of Mr. Bennet’s study faced the garden, not the carriageway. Mr. Bennet preferred it this way, because he liked seeing the hedges and trees, especially when they bloomed in spring. Today his view consisted of the brown bare branches of winter, as his plants waited the end of the frosts and that message of warmth telling them to burst into beautiful vibrant bloom. The old oak tree in the center of the window had lived here for as long as Bennets had been at Longbourn.
Mr. Bennet shrugged. He returned his attention to a large volume detailing the excavations of the Roman site at Pompeii, with many finely done engravings and descriptions of the location. He had subscribed several pounds, he had forgotten how many in the interval, to the project which produced this volume seventeen years before. This was a better outcome than many such subscriptions, where the money disappeared, but the scholar died or absconded to foreign climes, and the promised production of science never emerged.
If this early visitor required his attention rather than Mrs. Bennet’s, such need would be revealed soon enough.
So it was while Mr. Bennet studied the fascinating paintings found on the walls of houses in Pompeii that his daughter Elizabeth burst into the room.
Mr. Bennet blinked at her and stood, smiling. “I am surprised to see you. I had believed I would not see you for several days more. Why so early? Nothing ill happened to Gardiner or Jane?”
“No nothing. Nothing ofthatsort.” Lizzy chewed her lip, nervously.
“Well what brought you so early? Sit; let me show you this book. We have waited for this volume since before the year eighteen hundred. The parcel arrived yesterday.”
“Papa, I—” Lizzy swallowed, glanced around the room, and ran her hand through her hair.
“My dear daughter.” Mr. Bennet stepped up to Lizzy and took her hand. “Whatever is the matter?”
“I do not know how you shall take it — this must surprise you — but I am to marry Mr. Darcy.”
“Again?” Mr. Bennet tilted his head and widened his eyes, as though surprised, though he was not. “You gave me to understand you mistook a mistake when you entered yourpreviousengagement to that young gentleman.”
