He blinked.“Everything?”
“Not tidily, not with grace, and not to make him see reason. Just truth. I told him—again—what I had seen in the House of Commons that day in May, and why the Prince ordered me to be hidden so suddenly. The fire that was supposed to kill me. What it was to run for my life. To fear every hoofbeat on the road behind me. To be pulled from a house in the middle of the night and thrown into a world where my name—my title—meant nothing. To be placed in your care—you, whom I never saw before that night. And how it was not only my life you saved, but my spirit.”
She smiled faintly, almost bitterly. “And then I told him what it meant to be with the Bennets. To see a father who dotes on his daughters. Who laughs at them. Who listens to them. And who stays. And I told him that if you had been a lesser man—if you had given in to what everyone would have expected of you—I would be ruined now, and likely still have given you my hand willingly. But you did not. And so, I claimed yours, instead.”
Darcy’s throat worked hard. “And how did all that fall on his ears?”
“He said very little at first. Just sat there with his glass and stared at the fire. Then he asked what happened—how it ended.” Her voice caught, just slightly. “I showed him the scars on my arms and legs, and told him the ones you bore were far worse. I told him what you risked for me. How you never asked for anything in return. And then, he… he wept.”
Darcy stared at her. “He what?”
“Tears,” she said simply. “Quiet, ungraceful, furious tears. He called himself a fool. And he said that perhaps lovecanbe the fulfillment of one’s duty.”
“I… I do not understand.”
Elizabeth blinked back a few tears of her own and laid her head on his chest. “He said that if he and my mother had tried harder to repair what had been broken, they might have managed another child—a true heir, as he was always meant to have, but they quit trying when I was five. Mother was still young, but…” She drew in a shaky breath and sighed against his shirt. “He said he had spent so long treating me like a political piece on a chessboard that he forgot I was someone with a heart.”
Darcy exhaled, his own heart clenching.
She lifted her head and smiled up at him. “He will never be Mr. Bennet. But he said he hoped I would have the kind of marriage I wanted. And he even said he would support us publicly.”
“He did! And… forgive me for asking, but you said this long explanation was to do with your dowry?”
She grinned. “He is amending the terms. Already in process.”
Darcy let out a shaken breath. Then his arms wrapped around her, crushing her close. He kissed her forehead once, and then pulled back just far enough to find her lips again.
“Elizabeth,” he murmured against her mouth.
She kissed him back, laughing softly. “Well? Do I keep you in some comforts?”
“Fifty thousand pounds,” he said, drawing her tighter. “I believe we can find one or two ways to make use of it.”
She leaned back just enough to raise one brow. “Is that all I am to you now? A woman with a handsome dowry?”
He feigned solemnity. “And the very best criminal sketch artist in London. Let us not forget that.”
“I suppose I ought to charge you for the portrait,” she said, tilting her head toward the drawing still propped on her easel.
“You may frame it instead,” he replied. “And hang it somewhere I can be reminded—daily—that your affections have always been somewhat fixated on my mouth.”
Her cheeks flushed. “You noticed that?”
“I notice everything.”
She shook her head, laughing as she nudged him lightly in the ribs. “You are the most pompous, ridiculous, prideful man in all England.”
“And yet, here you are,” he said, grinning. “Engaged to a man who once offered you a mattress stuffed with hay.”
She tipped her chin up, pride and affection mingling in her gaze. “Yes. But only because he also gave me his coat. And his name. And his heart.”
That quieted him.
For a long moment, he only looked at her—his Elizabeth. Alive with wit and fire and courage. A woman who had saved his soul just as surely as he had once saved her life.
He touched her cheek. “I have loved you in every corner of England. In forests and fields. In a stranger’s attic and the back of a stolen carriage. But this—” he drew her close again, resting his forehead lightly against hers, “—this is the dream I dared not keep.”
Her smile was luminous. “Then let us build it together.”
