Page 3 of Courting Elizabeth

“Name it.”

“You will not attempt to govern my thoughts. You may give me reasons to change my mind. You will not decide for me that I have.”

“I have never desired to govern your mind.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You have just told me with great certainty what I ought to think of my family and of Jane.”

“I wished you to understand the strength of my feelings.”

“I understood their violence.”

The word struck me strangely. Perhaps because it was true. Perhaps because I did not yet know whether it frightened her or merely troubled her.

I took a step, then stopped on the other side of the chair.

“And your answer?”

She inhaled slowly. Her chest rose beneath the light muslin of her dress, and I looked away with an effort that reminded me how fragile my self-control had become around her.

“My opinion of you is not fixed, Mr. Darcy.”

I did not respond.

“You wounded me by what you did to Jane,” she continued. “I may have judged you too hastily on other points, but I do not yet know what man lies behind the one you show the world. If I give you my consent, it will be with this truth between us.”

She was not refusing me.

My mind, carried away by hope, retained only that.

“I do not ask you to deny your grievances.”

“No. You ask me to marry you despite them.”

“Yes.”

“And you will accept my continuing to contradict you?”

“I doubt I could prevent you.”

A fleeting smile lit her face. I saw in it more tenderness than it perhaps contained.

“Then, subject to my father’s consent, I will be your wife.”

No man should be capable of feeling, in the same instant, such triumph and such disbelief.

“You accept?”

“I have just said so.”

I remained motionless.

I had imagined this answer in the silence of my nights. I had seen her blush, smile, perhaps lower her eyes. I had imagined taking her hand and telling her what modesty still forbade.

She did not blush. She no longer smiled. Yet she had said yes, and my happiness was commanding enough to banish all prudence.

I moved around the chair.