Page 84 of Courting Elizabeth

“He asked me to marry him.”

“And you recognized the opportunity.”

Her words struck at the very fear I had seen in Fitzwilliam’s refusal to hear me the day before.

I stood.

“I misjudged him when I accepted his proposal. I believed his love could be enough at the start of a marriage where mine was absent.”

Lady Catherine remained motionless.

I had spoken the truth to the last person I would have wished to confide in. Yet a strange freedom filled me.

“So you admit you accepted a man you did not love because his advantages outweighed your scruples,” she declared with satisfaction.

“I admit I accepted a man I barely knew too quickly. I never considered him merely as an income.”

“The distinction does you little credit. Darcy has been exploited by a family who knew perfectly well what they stood to gain.”

“He never asked me to deny who I was or to despise my own family. He is not blind to my faults.”

My voice trembled, not with fear, but with the force of what I was finally about to say.

“He knows my faults, my pride, my prejudices, and my family. He knows I misjudged him and that my affection did not follow his with the same swiftness. Yet he has never humiliated me or forced me to offer what he hoped for. He gave me freedom in a marriage where he could have demanded obedience. He protected my sister, not to purchase my gratitude, but because he cannot bear to see me suffer. And if you have come to tell me that my birth makes me unworthy of his love, you have come to the wrong house.”

Lady Catherine gave a cold smile.

“At last, a reasonable word.”

“But you will not make me believe I should give him up for that reason.”

“Give him up? You are married. The damage is done.”

“Then there is nothing for you to gain here.”

She drew herself up.

“I can make you understand that a woman of your birth will never be his equal.”

“His fortune and his rank exceed mine. They do not determine our worth.”

She looked surprised.

“Fitzwilliam is more constant than I am and more courageous when he loves. I remind him, for my part, that certainty is not always reason. We each have much to learn from the other. That is the equality that matters in our marriage.”

A movement near the door caught my attention.

Fitzwilliam stood in the doorway. He had heard enough to understand what I was defending, but not yet the words I had never managed to give him.

His face remained impassive. His eyes, however, asked me to choose.

Lady Catherine followed my gaze.

“Darcy. You arrive in time to witness the consequences of your folly.”

I did not take my eyes from my husband.

“I am his wife,” I said.