~~~~~
Lord Appleby returned the following day, much to Mary’s surprise. Even more to her surprise was the fact that he requested to speak with her alone.
Her mother gave her a knowing, encouraging little smile, but Mary felt her stomach sink. There was no way Lord Appleby would be proposing, and her mother was certain to be disappointed. He must be here to consult with her about some other lady he had fallen in love with, a continuation of their conversation from yesterday.
She led him to the blue salon, where they were far enough away from the busyness of the rest of the house that she was certain they would not be overheard, even by servants.
Once they were both in the room, she turned to him and said, “How can I help you, Lord Appleby?”
“Mary, your description of love yesterday sent me into a great deal of deep contemplation, and I have thought of nothing else for the last twenty-four hours. If the beginning of love isfundamentally a desire for connection, and the ideal end goal of love is complete unity, then I must be very much in love with you.”
Mary had steeled herself to hear him speak of someone else. The beginning of his little speech only strengthened that belief. As such, his conclusion caught her completely off-guard.
“Y-you…you love me?” she managed to ask.
He smiled, and there was even more warmth in his expression than there had been yesterday. “Yes, I do,” he said. “It has grown steadily since the day we met, though it took me until only a few days ago to recognize how I felt. Even then, despite knowing that I desperately longed to kiss you senseless and despite feeling like my time spent in your presence was always when I felt most alive, I was not certain it was love. Not until you explained it to me.”
“But…I don’t know anything about love or romance or anything like that,” she said.
“I think you know more about it than most ladies who have actually experienced it,” he said. “Tell me, Mary. Do you love me in return?” The warmth in his gaze was dimmed slightly as uncertainty made a brief appearance there.
“I do,” she said firmly. “Of course, I do. How could I not? You are the only man to ever see me as a woman. Do you know…can you comprehend…what that means to someone like me?”
Tears gathered in her eyes and one single drop began to make its way down her cheek. “I think I do,” he said gently. He placed his hand on the side of her face and wiped the tear away with his thumb.
“Is this real?” said Mary. “This can’t be real, can it? I must be dreaming.”
Then Lord Appleby did something that couldn’t possibly have been a dream. He kissed her. And the experience was very, very real.
When they separated, he pulled both her hands into his and said, “Lady Mary Bennet, will you bestow the greatest happiness a man can know upon me by agreeing to be my wife?”
So many of the walls Mary had built up around her heart crumbled at once that Mary could not stop or even stifle the sob that burst out of her as more tears began to fall. Even so, she smiled more brightly than she ever imagined she could. “Yes,” she said. “Absolutely, yes.”
Lord Appleby gathered her in his arms and held her as she sobbed into his shoulder.
Chapter 20
The night before Elizabeth’s wedding, she gathered two of her sisters, Jane and Mary, into her room. Each of them sat cross-legged on her bed in their nightgowns.
“I wish to confess something,” she said. “I can only hope that you two will be able to sympathize or at the very least tell me I am not insane.”
Mary simply stared at her while Jane looked at her questioningly.
“I am terrified,” she said. “I am so very scared of tomorrow.”
It was Mary’s turn to appear curious while Jane said, “I know exactly what you mean.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mary. “You are both marrying men you love with all your heart. They are both men who would sooner cut off their own arm than hurt you in any way. Why are you scared?”
“You aren’t scared?” asked Elizabeth. When Mary shook her head, Elizabeth said, “Perhaps it is because your wedding is still a month away. Up until a few days ago, I wasn’t particularly frightened either.”
“It is the same with me,” said Jane.
“Then what are you afraid of?” asked Mary.
“The unknown,” said Elizabeth and Jane nodded. “I will be leaving my family and going to live in another house forever. I know Fitzwilliam, and I very much look forward to spending every day with him, but I don’t know his house, his servants, or anything about the pattern of his life other than what he has told me. Even though I am certain I will be happy, I don’t know what form that happiness will take. It is utterly terrifying.”
“It is the same for me,” said Jane, “except I am also terrified of failure. I worry that I will let Richard down or that I will fail in my responsibility to my tenants. There are a million different things that can go wrong, and I am sure that at some point I will fall flat on my face, either figuratively or literally. I am so nervous, I expect I truly will trip on my way to the altar tomorrow.”
