Darcy sat up higher, and he studied her. “You fear his judgement. Why? Surely he could not object to me as a suitor?”
That tight thing twisted in her stomach.
She stared at the geometric patterns on the rug as she walked back and forth. Red and blue patterns, circles and squares within squares within squares. A set of ovals. Fine deep piling.
“Elizabeth, what is wrong?”
She looked at Darcy.
His face was anxious.
She shrugged. “I think…I simply…youknowhow difficult I found it to even write to him. I do not know. I don’t know. The last time he advised me, I was confident that I was right, and yet he was. But at the same time—whyhave I always been so determined to ask for nothing. I received nothing from my mother’s fortune, and I would have sooner stuck my hand in a fire than have voluntarily mentioned that to him.Why? His income is great enough.Hecould save. He could make my mother save. I know that—yet I would not ever ask him for anything.”
She sat next to Darcy. For some reason she wanted to be nearer to him. His presence made her feel better.
Darcy put his arm around her shoulders, and she carefully leaned her head against his side. “It does not hurt?”
“Not much.”
She listened to his breathing.
After a while Darcy said, “He is important to you.”
She nodded. “Very. But I can’t…I won’t…I don’t wish to know what he thinks.”
“You believe he would disapprove,” Darcy said.
His tone indicated surprise.
“I think he would believe that I am being impulsive and that I will regret my marriage to you, for wholly different reasons than why I regretted my marriage to Mr. Wickham, and he would attempt to convince me to give it up, simply because—oh, I do not know.”
“But would he not think that the practical advantages are sufficient? Especially if he worries about the well-being of your sisters, and—”
“Does he? The only time this ever was spoken of was when I wished to marry Mr. Wickham. I don’t believe it. Or maybe I do. I do not wish to talk about my father. And what I remember of him is so old. I hardly even know.”
Elizabeth picked the China cup up again and spun the blue piece around in her fingers. They were both quiet.
The curtains flapped in the sea breezes. She smelled the salt air. For the rest of her life, even if she lived to eighty, she was sure that she would think about this month every time she smelled the sea.
Darcy rubbed his hand absentmindedly on the part of his shirt near where his bandage stood.
“Stop that,” Elizabeth said. And she took his hand away from his chest.
He looked at her with that boyish grin. “But it itches.”
Elizabeth replied with her best ‘nurse’ glare.
He grinned sunnily back.
“What were you thinking about?” Eliabeth asked.
“My own father, and how much I loved him, how he loved me; but also how I think he often was too harsh with me, and the ways that he paid little attention to Georgiana, and all of the wrong attention to Wickham.”
Elizabeth squeezed his hand.
Darcy added calmly and seriously, “Elizabeth, you must inform your father that you plan to marry. From the contents of his letter to you,heholds you in a great affection, and I will not marry in secret.”
“You insist,” Elizabeth said, smiling and still holding his hand. “Not yet married, and you already are the brutish husband who continuously commands his wife.”
