The boys exchanged a glance.
“Chiefly censure,” Toby said.
Darcy suppressed a grin. “Then I am prepared to receive it.”
Thomas planted his stick in the frozen ground like a general indicating troop positions. “Mr. Wilson nearly proposed.”
“I am aware.”
“And you permitted it.”
Darcy regarded him. “I possess no authority over Mr. Wilson’s conduct.”
“That is beside the point,” Toby said impatiently.
“The point,” Thomas continued, “is that you are proceeding far too slowly.”
Darcy had heard variations of this complaint before. Somehow, spoken beneath a gray winter sky by two eight-year-old strategists, it carried more force than any reprimand from his aunt.
“I had been given to understand,” he said dryly, “that marriage requires the lady’s consent.”
“Certainly it does,” Toby replied with the weary patience of a man explaining arithmetic to an especially dull pupil.
“We are not fools.”
Darcy bowed slightly. “My apologies.”
Thomas crossed his arms. “The difficulty is that if you continue thinking forever, Mr. Wilson may ask first.”
The bluntness of the observation carried weight.
Darcy had spent several days attempting to avoid precisely that image.
Toby stepped closer. “And Lizzy may accept him.”
The words were delivered without dramatic flourish, as calmly as one might comment upon approaching weather.
Darcy’s hand tightened around his gloves.
The boys studied him closely.
Thomas nodded once, apparently satisfied by the reaction.
“Exactly.”
Darcy exhaled slowly. “You appear remarkably invested in my future.”
“Not your future,” Toby corrected.
“Lizzy’s,” Thomas said, pointing his stick toward Longbourn, visible in the distance through the bare trees. “She deserves to be happy.”
The simplicity of the statement robbed Darcy of his prepared irony.
“I am in complete agreement.”
“Then why do you move so slowly?”
Darcy rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Because matters of consequence should be approached with care.”
