Page 88 of Courting Elizabeth

“Your attention touched me. Your method would have wounded me if it had manufactured the moments I believed sincere.”

“I know.”

“Then stop observing me as a problem to be solved. Ask me.”

She was right. She had always been right, and it had taken me weeks to find that restful.

“Say it again,” I asked.

Elizabeth came to me.

“I love you.”

The words struck me with a force I had not imagined, even during all the nights I had hoped for them.

“Since when?”

“I do not know the exact moment. I realized it the morning Lydia’s letter arrived, before you left to find her.”

“Before I gave you a new reason to be grateful to me.”

“Yes.”

I lowered my eyes.

“And yesterday, I decided that your gratitude would speak in your place before I even listened to you.”

“You were afraid.”

“Fear does not make my pride more reasonable.”

I took her hand.

“I made my proposal poorly the first time.”

I knelt.

Elizabeth drew a surprised breath. The ring I had given her already gleamed on her finger.

I reached into my waistcoat pocket.

“I have kept this since the library.”

I held out the pin to her. The metal was tarnished from being touched too often.

“You ordered me to keep it to remind myself that my experience had not been entirely mastered.”

“You had it on you. All this time.”

“Every day. Including the one when I refused to hear you.”

She closed her hand around it hard enough that her knuckles whitened.

“I cannot offer you a new name or another house. Only the man you now know: proud, often silent, jealous more than he admits, and difficult to bear before breakfast.”

A trembling laugh escaped her.

“Only before breakfast?”