He stepped forward and took both of her hands in his, heartened when she did not pull away. "Elizabeth, my dearest heart, he will never trouble you again. He has been deployed to Canada, far, far away."
Elizabeth stared at him, struggling to comprehend what he was telling her. "Canada?" she repeated faintly.
Darcy squeezed her hands. "Colonel Fitzwilliam was able to discover his regiment. Henderson found himself rather suddenly in receipt of orders which leave him very little choice but to make himself useful on the other side of the Atlantic. It is not, perhaps, the destination he would have chosen for himself."
For one bewildered moment Elizabeth just looked at him. "You... you did that?"
"We did what the army permitted us to do." A shadow crossed his face. "Had the decision rested entirely with me, I fear Henderson's punishment would have been considerably less civilised."
She searched his expression, trying to reconcile it with everything she had believed during the past week. Every lonely hour in Gracechurch Street she had imagined him forgetting her, regretting her, wishing only that the strange intimacy forced upon them by the storm had never occurred. All the while he had been pursuing the very man whose actions had driven her from him.
"Why?" she whispered.
The question seemed to astonish him.
"Why?" he repeated, his thumbs tracing circles over the back of her hands.
She nodded, her voice trembling now. "Why would you do all that... for me?"
Darcy looked at her with an expression so full of bewildered affection that she thought he had misunderstood the question entirely.
"Elizabeth," he said quietly, "because he hurt you."
She felt tears prick behind her eyes. "But after what happened..." she managed. "After you found me so changed... I thought you would wish only to forget me."
Darcy's hands tightened gently about hers. "Forget you?" he said. "My dear Elizabeth, there has not been a single hour since we parted in which you have been absent from my thoughts."
She bowed her head, unable to withstand the tenderness in his voice. "I thought..." she whispered brokenly. "I thought you would despise me."
At those words Darcy's expression altered completely. The sorrow that had been there gave way to pain. "Despise you?" he repeated softly. "Good God, Elizabeth... is that truly what you have believed?"
He gathered her against him with extraordinary care, one hand settling lightly between her shoulders, the other cradling the back of her head as though she were something infinitely precious. There was no urgency in the embrace, just the gentlest expression of love.
Elizabeth felt herself trembling.
"There now," he murmured, his cheek resting lightly against her hair. "You need not be afraid of anything whilst I have breath."
She had not realised how desperately she had wanted someone simply to hold her. The tears came without warning. They soaked silently into the lapel of his coat whilst he said nothing further, only stroked her hair with slow, absent tenderness as though he had all the time in the world.
At length she drew a shaking breath. "I thought you would never wish to touch me again."
Darcy leaned back just far enough to look at her. "Elizabeth," he said quietly, "I have wanted nothing else since the moment Burke told me what had happened."
She searched his face for any hint of pity and found none. There was sorrow, certainly, and anger simmering beneath remarkable self-command, but there was no revulsion. Only love and the deepest care.
He brushed away a tear with his thumb. "I should like nothing better than to ask you to become my wife this very minute."
Elizabeth stared at him.
"Indeed," he continued, a faint smile touching his mouth for the first time, "I have rehearsed the proposal often enough that I believe I could manage it tolerably well."
A watery laugh escaped her before she could prevent it.
"But I shall not do it. Not because I do not love you." His voice was firm now. "Nor because I have the smallest doubt of my ownhappiness should you accept me. I shall not ask because I refuse to allow Captain Henderson to steal even that from us."
His hand found hers again.
"You deserve to be courted openly, honourably and without haste. You deserve flowers sent to Gracechurch Street, walks in the park with your aunt's permission, evenings in company and every opportunity to discover whether you can truly tolerate me when we are not stranded together by floods."
