“Do you?” She tossed the ball over her shoulder, not too far, but enough to dislodge Nettle from her ankles. “Tell me, when Lady Sophia proposed this trustee business, what did you think? Did you wish for this position or not?”
He took a breath, but she shook her head, warning him that she knew the answer.
“I did not,” he admitted, despite wishing he could say he craved it. “I did not believe you wished to see me ever again, and so, I handed you the papers and departed before your family could invite me for dinner. Lady Sophia remarked on it.”
“So, you agreed to an arrangement you did not wish. Why?”
He wanted to say that he loved her, but she didn’t believe in words. She needed to feel it from experience. She needed his honesty.
“Because I could not picture a world without you, Elizabeth Bennet, and I wished to stick to you like a burr, if only to be of use to you and to ensure myself that you are well.”
“And is that the reason you told your cousin that you had claimed me before I took a step into London? To protect me and ensure I was well?”
“Yes. No.” He saw the trap too late. “The claim is real, even if you refused it. You are under my protection.”
She bit her lips, her eyes misting. “No, I do not wish to be a duty for you or an obligation. I am grateful for everything you and Lady Sophia have given me… and for everything you and Lady Sophia are giving my sisters and me. But, this isn’t what I want, and I’m being honest. Not brutal.”
He ached to wrap her in his arms, not like dancing the waltz, but to soothe her fears. But Lady Sophia and Allegra were watching, and he could only offer words, however inadequate. Picking up Nettle, who had somehow managed to roll in the manure spread around the vegetable garden, he pressed her muzzle to his cheek, letting her lick him.
“I would play ball with her whether you paid me to or not,” he said, ignoring the smudge of garden soil now staining his lapel. “I would pull the burrs because her comfort matters to me. I would let her sleep in my bed, fleas and all. I find the house quieter without her. I love her torn ear and her breath, which—by all accounts—is wretched. Caring for her makes me happy, Elizabeth. Not because it is noble, and certainly not because it is expected.”
Elizabeth watched him, her chin trembling. “But she would not cost you a seat in Parliament. She would not isolate you from your relations or cause you to be shunned by the ton.”
“And I should not care,” he replied. He set the terrier back on the gravel and scratched behind her ragged ear. “Right, Nettle? We are not interested in the opinion of the House of Commons.”
He picked up the leather ball, his gaze locking onto Elizabeth’s. It was a look stripped of all trusteeship, all distance, and all pretense. “Show your mistress how you are loved,” he murmured, and he tossed the ball high over the rosebushes, sending the tiny dog off like a cannonball into the morning mist.
A single tear trailed from Elizabeth’s eye; she wiped it away with the back of her hand, the gesture impatient and raw. “I am not so easy to love, Mr. Darcy. My tongue is too sharp, and I was impertinent with your aunt. I was reckless. I stayed in that corridor when I should have fled. I seem to exist only to cause you pain—and my family, the ones in Hertfordshire, would give you no peace.”
“None of it matters as long as I have you, Elizabeth. You have to believe that.”
She raised her chin, her head tilted in that familiar, challenging manner of assessment.
“Yet, I do not want to be the one you chose despite my manners, my lack of breeding, my embarrassing family, my recklessness, my impertinence, and everything wrong with me.Because the lack will invite itself as an unwanted guest, and then it will grow and grow as the years go by, and everything you ignored when you chose me, the sharp tongue, the rolling eyes, the huffs, and the laughing with my mouth uncovered, the mud on my boots will needle you and bother you until after twenty-five years of marriage you will lock yourself into a library because you can no longer tolerate it no matter how many piles of wool you stuff in your ears and pairs of blinders you clip over your eyes, regretting the day you ever saw me.”
Darcy looked at this infuriating, fiercely vulnerable woman, and he laughed.
It was a deep, startled sound that seemed to surprise him as much as it did her. He stepped across the small patch of gravel, closing the distance until the roses were behind them both.
“You think I am so fragile, Elizabeth? That I am so desperate for a quiet life that I would fear a little mud or a sharp word? You have spent weeks worrying about whether you fit into my world, and you have completely failed to see that I have spent the same time trying to escape mine.”
He reached out, not to touch her, but to gesture at the garden, at the window above where Lady Sophia watched, at the soot-stained horizon of London.
“Do you know what I see when I look at those ledgers, those estates, and those Parliamentary benches? I see the silence. I see a life of perfectly scripted propriety where no one ever rolls their eyes, where no one ever laughs with their whole heart, and where everyone is so well-bred that they are essentially dead to the world. You think I chose you despite your recklessness? Elizabeth, I chose you because of it. I chose you because you are the only thing that has made me feel alive since the day I came of age.”
He leaned in, his voice dropping, intense and vibrantly real. “If you want to spend twenty-five years rolling your eyes at mypomposity and bringing mud into my library, then for the love of God, Elizabeth, marry me. I would take your sharp tongue over the silence of my father’s library for a thousand lifetimes.”
“Over all the Parliamentary debates you practiced in your head?” she asked, a spark of her old, defiant wit finally returning.
He offered a grim, lopsided smile. “With your arguing, Elizabeth? I have no need for the House of Commons. I believe I shall receive quite enough legislation here.”
“Then let me choose you in return.” Her eyes sparkled, smiling at the corners. “Not out of duty, or because Lady Sophia arranged it, or that the ton expects it because you have compromised yourself so spectacularly over a scribble on a dance card, but because you feel like… home, Fitzwilliam. You are giving me a home like I gave Nettle a home.”
“She bit me the first time she met me.” Darcy reached down to pet Nettle, who had returned with the ball and was looking up at them patiently.
“Yes, but look how she loves you now, better than she loves me.” Elizabeth wrinkled her nose.
Darcy opened his mouth to retort, but the garden door creaked open, and Mrs. Alford appeared.
