“I see.”
“And a carriage! Can you buy me a painted carriage?”
“A toy?” Papa asked in a tone of some concern.
George giggled. “I’m too small to drive a carriage with a pony.”
“Notthatsmall. In another two or three years, I dare say you’ll be at quite the age for a little gig. A small wooden one? Ah, but not so small? I imagine that can be arranged.”
“Hurrah!”
Papa then looked between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy again. “I think, Lizzy, that matters are notquiteas I imagined them. Might I speak with you at some length, and in private?”
Elizabeth swallowed.
Something of her anxiety, her sense of not wanting to be exposed to her father, and her refusal to lethimstart making the choices for her, after she had already once thrown off his authority, returned.
She swallowed and nodded. “We might walk along the promenade, or go down the cliff to the beach.”
“Along the beach! The very thing. I have not been to a beach these ten years. Only the piers in London once or twice, and that is not the same thing at all.”
Then glancing at Mr. Darcy, and perhaps seeing something in his eyes, Papa approached him, shook the gentleman’s hand once more, and said, “Far more likely than not we shall become better acquainted soon.”
“I look forward to that,” Darcy said smoothly.
Then Mr. Bennet said, “I’ll go out, and send Coachman John off to the innyard.”
He bowed and stepped from the room.
Elizabeth suspected that he meant to give her a minute of privacy with Mr. Darcy before having his own period of privacy with her.
“He was angry,” Georgiana said to Elizabeth. “Why did he think that you meant to marry my brother for his money?”
“It is a reasonable supposition,” Elizabeth replied dryly, not at all sure that this wasnotthe reason she meant to marry him. “Especially on the basis of the letter I wrote him.”
“Given your difficulties in coming to the point of writing to your father at all,” Darcy said, “I am hardly surprised that whatever you put in that letter concerned him. I think the better of him for coming immediately.”
Elizabeth sat next to Darcy and took his hand. “He did not offend you?”
Darcy shook his head.
Then he squeezed Elizabeth’s hand hard.
Georgiana, with that sort of delicacy that she often had, said to George and Emily, “Let’s go over here. Let’s play with the soldiers here in the corner.”
They went to the far end of the room, distant enough that there was something like privacy.
“Please—” Darcy looked oddly grey, so much that for an instant Elizabeth wondered if he was ill. “Do not—do not change your mind.”
“Darcy, I—”
“Promise me.” He gripped her hands tightly. “Promise me.”
There was something like panic in his eyes. He desperately looked at her, as though he were willing her to say yes.
It was strange to see such a strong man begging her in such a way.
He could not feel so much. Why did he feel so much?
