The wind stirred between them. A strand of hair had loosened near her cheek. He wanted, with a longing so sharp it nearly unmade him, to touch it back into place.
“My children would have the mother I would choose for them above every fortune in England,” he said quietly. “And I would have the woman who has occupied my thoughts from the moment she rose before me in a cellar with mud upon her face and a Roman coin in her hand.”
He did not move.
“I know I do not deserve your trust,” he said. “I know I hurt you. I know I looked away when you had every right to expect better of me. But I am asking—no, begging, if that is what honesty requires—that you do not judge me only by the worst week of my acquaintance with you. Judge me by what I am willing to do now. By what I will spend the rest of my life trying to prove, if you will let me.”
Elizabeth’s eyes shone, though whether from anger, tears, or morning cold, he could not tell.
Darcy’s heart beat so hard it seemed impossible she could not hear it.
He stepped forward then, because he could not remain where he was and speak what came next across so much distance.
“Elizabeth,” he said, and her name trembled despite all his efforts to steady it, “put me out of my suffering. Say I have not ruined myself with you beyond repair. Say there is some hope that I may prove myself worthier than I have been. Say you will let me love you for the rest of your life. Say—”
His control broke at last.
“Say you will be my wife.”
Darcy felt the enormity of what he had done only after the words were gone. He had not asked as he intended. He had not been measured, or patient, or deserving. He had poured his heart at her feet in a disorderly heap and now could do nothing but stand there like a man awaiting sentence.
But there was only silence.
No sound but the wind in the bare branches and the far-off cry of some bird lifting from the fields below. Elizabeth did not speak. She did not move. Her face, which had always been so alive to him, so full of intelligence and feeling, was suddenly unreadable.
Darcy could do nothing but wait.
And in that waiting, every folly of the past week rose before him: every avoided glance, every wounded look, every cold silence, every moment he had mistaken fear for wisdom. His breath came shallowly. His hands were damp inside his gloves. He had faced creditors with less dread, militia ballots with less unease, his father’s ruined accounts with less naked terror.
The woman in front of him held his future in her hands.
∞∞∞
Elizabeth could hardly breathe.
Darcy’s words came too quickly for her to catch them all in proper order. He began with apology, then duty, then Pemberley, then fortune, then fear, then the assembly, then Mr. Collins, then Anne de Bourgh, then his children—his children—and every sentence seemed to overturn the one before it until Elizabeth felt as if she had been caught in a storm and asked to count the raindrops.
She tried twice to speak.
The first time, he said, “Please,” in such a desperate voice that the word died upon her lips.
The second, he had already gone on to Mr. Collins, and Elizabeth’s own embarrassment rose so swiftly at the memory of Meryton that she could only stand frozen while he spoke of Hunsford and Rosings and everything she herself had feared since Mr. Collins first took her arm.
Her heart could not decide what it wished to feel.
Joy came first, bright and impossible. Darcy loved her. Darcy, who had looked away, who had gone cold, who had seemed to withdraw every particle of warmth from her life, loved her. He had missed her, wanted her, wrestled with himself over her. The knowledge flashed through her like sunlight breaking over a dark field.
Then hurt followed close behind it.
He had known enough to understand he wounded her, and still he had done it. He had seen her seeking his eye, seen her uncertainty, seen her pain, and chosen silence because he was afraid. Elizabeth understood fear. She understood duty. She even understood the terrible arithmetic that made a man weigh affection against the needs of an estate and a sister. But understanding did not erase what those days had felt like.
Then came tenderness, because he spoke of Georgiana with such aching loyalty, and of Pemberley with the helpless devotion of a man who would cut pieces from his own heart to mend its walls. Then alarm, because he seemed ready now to throw aside every practical consideration in the very passion of having restrained himself too long. Then disbelief, because this was Darcy, proud, careful Darcy, rambling before her in the cold morning like a man who had outridden his own reason.
And beneath all of it, low and insistent and perilously sweet, her heart whisperedyes.
Yes. Accept him. Take his hand. Let the hurt fall away. Let him love you. Let him carry some part of the burden.
Then her mind, far less romantic and far more awake, reminded her of the drawing room at Netherfield, of the letter at the desk, of every avoided glance.
