“Miss Elizabeth,” Darcy continued, looking around as if he wanted to find support in the beauty of his home, “My tone was wrong, the manner in which I expressed myself, and, naturally, many of the things I said.”
“Mr Darcy, if you were to speak so of my family today, I should react differently. I would still be angry, but reflecton what you had said, and in the end, defending my family would mean helping you know them, not allowing you to leave, persuaded that you were right.”
“That is very true,” said Darcy, astonished by such a transformation in her thinking. He looked at her with growing admiration and an infinite compassion he kept carefully hidden.
“It is remarkable that tragedy led you towards wisdom. It carried me towards despair and destruction. After my mother died, I remained angry for years.”
“I am older than you were back then,” she murmured, smiling.
“Not much, I was eighteen.”
“Almost three years are essential.”
“Perhaps you are right. I tended to remember only her death, forgetting her marvellous life, the mother she was…”
“I agree,” she replied firmly. “It is a mistake to remember only the unpleasant things connected with Kent.”
“Were there pleasant ones?”
Elizabeth blushed slightly, though the parasol concealed it this time. Standing beside him, she felt, for the first time, that with the passage of time, the core of what had happened in the Parsonage could be viewed with tranquillity, set apart from the rest of the conversation, until only what it truly had been remained: an awkward proposal of marriage yet sprung from true feelings.
Then suddenly she lowered her parasol, indifferent to any lingering colour in her cheeks, and met his gaze directly. Her intention was clear. She wished him to see her eyes.
“Yes, without doubt, things did not happen in Kent as they ought to have done—”
“Through my fault,” he interrupted at once.
“I do not dispute that. At first, through your fault, but afterwards through my own, because instead of reflecting, asmy father always advised me to do, and extracting the essential intention from an unfortunate conversation, I chose to see only what wounded me and allowed anger to guide me.”
“Would you change anything?”
“I have changed,” she answered, yet not to his question, but he did not care as long as they spoke in that calm manner. “Certainly, my father’s death compelled it, but not only because of its outward consequences. I wish now to become the person he hoped I might be, more thoughtful, more responsible.”
“I have changed as well, though without any cause so dramatic.”
“As I said, my inward change is not because of his death. It is because that was what he asked of me while he lived.”
“Have we made our peace with Kent?” asked Darcy, seeking her eyes again, and Elizabeth, as though she understood, lowered her parasol once more so that he might find them.
“Entirely. It is all I have wished for since I came here.”
She paused, however, for the declaration might sound strange, as though Pemberley itself had persuaded her to alter her opinion of him, and he might easily misunderstand her. She therefore resolved to be honest.
“Not merely because of the wealth of this place, but because I have discovered Pemberley to be a house where good people live and have lived…a family very much as we once were at Longbourn. That is my revelation, that all families are much the same…with both good and bad things.”
He took her hand and raised it to his lips, wishing to convey how deeply he regretted that she had lost not only her father but also the place where they had been a family. And this time, neither of them made any effort to conceal the feelings that lingered between them.
∞∞∞
“You seem rather fond of Mrs Cooper,” said Darcy with warm amusement when they were finally alone, the two of them enjoying a glass of sherry.
“Yes,” said the colonel without hesitation, surprising Darcy. Though he himself had become more willing to speak openly, particularly since Georgiana’s dreadful ordeal the previous summer, the colonel had always been reluctant to reveal his more private thoughts.
“I like her more than I expected to like any lady. Though how am I to know what attraction truly feels like, considering I have spent my life avoiding it?”
He needed not say more. Darcy knew perfectly well the reason for such caution. As a second son, the colonel would inherit only a modest fortune, insufficient to support the manner of life to which he had been accustomed. He needed to marry a wealthy heiress, and that necessity had always placed affection in a secondary position.
“What would Lady Matlock say about your interest?” asked Darcy quite mischievously.
