“Would you like refreshments, sir?”
***
“Did you see the snippet in the paper, Aunt Eleanor?” Elizabeth confided over tea and scones. “I fear William will see it and come to retrieve me.”
“I rather think you have been fortunate to have escaped detection this long, Elizabeth,” the Countess replied. “And Darcy will certainly have something to say to me about not having informed him of your presence here.”
“What will you do, Lizzy?” Mary asked.
“How can I return to a man who wishes he had married – of all people! – Anne de Bourgh?”
“My dear, I continue to believe that there is more to the story than meets the eye,” the Countess insisted. “And Richard agrees completely!”
***
“The master is home,” Thompson informed her the moment she walked in the front door.
“William! Here?” she gasped in horror, and then began to run up to her room. Recollecting that he was quite likely in the master’s suite awaiting her, she then turned and ran back down, hoping to avoid him. But no – it was more likely that he was in the drawing room! Back up the stairs she went.
“Lizzy!” It was Mary’s voice.
Elizabeth turned and looked down to see Mary looking up at her from the foot of the stairs. And standing beside her was Mr. Darcy.
Chapter Seventy
Elizabeth!” He hoped his voice showed her how glad he was to see her; in truth, he was in such a muddle of different emotions that he hardly knew how he felt.
Gathering her wits, Elizabeth descended the staircase, head high, avoiding his gaze. “I trust you had a pleasant journey?” she said, astonished at the calmness of her voice.
He stared at her in disbelief. “A pleasantjourney?! I have been worried sick! For weeks! I have not had so much as a pleasanthour, let alone a pleasant three days on the road!” His worry had turned into anger, and that anger was evident in his voice.
“May I suggest that the two of you take this elsewhere?” practical Mary suggested.
Mr. Darcy turned to her and said, politely, “I am sorry to have been rude by not acknowledging you, Miss Bennet. I trust you are well?”
“Mr. Darcy, this is unnecessary courtesy under the circumstances. Please go and make your peace with my sister.”
Elizabeth glared at Mary, but quickly turned and went back upstairs. Mr. Darcy took the stairs two at a time and caught up with his wife. He took her arm, though he felt her resisting him, and steered her into her bedroom. Closing the door behind him, Mr. Darcy stopped and simply drank in the sight of his wife.
“I do not like you staring at me, Mr. Darcy,” she rapped out.
“Mr. Darcy? Mr. Darcy! Why do you call me so? Have I not been William,yourWilliam, these many months!”
“I call you Mr. Darcy simply because I choose to. I have had little enough choice in my life, heaven knows!”
“Elizabeth! I do not know what you are talking about!” He thrust his hands into his hair and pulled hard, as if to rip it out by the roots.
“Do you not?” Her voice was steel.
“No!”
“Well, then, let me tell you!” Her voice was near to hysteria. “You all but forced me to marry you –“
“I forced you? No, that was Caroline Bingley’s doing! And you agreed, you said we would have reached that point in any case!”
“Nonetheless, I was pushed into a marriage before I was ready!”
“As was I, though I do not complain of it!”
