“If you wish to come with us,” he said, “I would not—”
“No, no, no!” Georgiana exclaimed. “Besides, you shall flirt and domarried things. Like I know you did all evening.” She went very red. “I’ll have enough of Lizzy once you have been back for a few days.”
Despite Georgiana’s assent, once Elizabeth had donned her coat, she quickly hurried to Georgiana’s room. She found the girl engrossed in a novel, but she put it down when Elizabeth entered the room.
“You truly do not mind that I will walk with your brother this morning?”
Georgiana waved her away and picked up the book again. “I am near the best part — oh, I could read it a thousand times, and my heart would still pound each time. You go, we’ll take a walk this afternoon before dinner, if the weather holds.”
A large bank of clouds sat out in the distance, visible through Georgiana’s big window. They would be well for another hour or two, but not likely after that.
Elizabeth smiled. “And we’ll walk the galleries till the floors must be replaced if it snows again!”
With a laugh and wave of the book in her hand Georgiana acknowledged Elizabeth’s plan.
Elizabeth hurried down, her heart light and eager to see Darcy again. It was a feeling that she liked having.
He waited for her, dressed in his greatcoat, and he lookedso handsome when he smiled at her that it made it hard to breathe.
When they stepped out, Darcy studied the snow covered fields. While today and yesterday were bright, the snow had fallen heavily over the weekend. And the distant bank of clouds promised yet more snow. “You do not mind the cold.”
“Invigorating. Besides, I like the look of heavy coats. Their style is fetching on me.”
“Everything is fetching on you.”
Elizabeth blushed again.
She took his offered arm, and the two of them strolled out. “I never imagined that you were so funny.”
Darcy started. “I do believe you are the first person to ever saythatabout me.”
“Well shouldn't a wife know her husband’s virtues the best?” Elizabeth replied primly.
Darcy laughed. “I shall make no argument with you. All my defects are to be in your keeping, to be claimed as virtues, while I shall keep your virtues, which will be an even more difficult task, as the plain truth will be seen as lies by everyone.”
Elizabeth pushed his shoulder, grinning, “Flattery.”
“No… well maybe I shall need to exaggerate alittleif I wish to convince everyone I am engaged in pretense when I describe your perfections. But not—” Their eyes met again, and both of them paused for what seemed to Elizabeth a terribly long time, her heart beating in her throat. Darcy breathed out again, and he said fervently, “I would not need to exaggerate much.”
If he’d spoken like thatbeforehe’d gone off, she wouldn’t have been so angry… honestly, she had no notion of how she would have responded to Darcy’s affection then.
“What is your favorite way?” Darcy asked as they came up to a splitting in the path, one way leading in a circle around the manor house, and the other towards the woods along the troutstream. “I dare say by now you must half know the footpaths as well as I do.”
“No, no, I cannot,” Elizabeth replied feelingly. “One can never really know a place until they have seen it in all four seasons.”
“I love spring the most. Though autumn is beautiful, and summer is almost always the most pleasant,” Darcy replied. “The shoots pushing their way up through the ground. The little buds of the leaves first opening, the flowers blooming, the birds pursuing each other full of love and lust, the scents of growth.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I love autumn most because the leaves are pretty.”
They walked around hedges and down past the stream, which Elizabeth had been told flowed fast enough that it almost never froze, and even then, only at parts of the surface, so that the fish could survive.
“My father died in the middle of winter — around this time of year. I know that this sounds like a thing from a poem — even a bad poem — but I swear, it was only when I saw the leaves budding, and the grasses pushing up through the ground that I truly accepted that he was gone, and that I could mourn him and remember him.”
“What was he like?”
“Tall, handsome, quiet. He almost never laughed, especially after Mama died. He did not tend to drink, nor to gambling. He was always generous when someone had a misfortune beyond their control, but he also always expected the rents to be paid as due. He supported the Tories, while I am of a more Whiggish mindset — but do not tell my uncle that.”
Elizabeth pinched her lips together with a finger. She then decided to add after a moment, “Papa and I tend towards Whiggery as well.”
