Page 75 of The Longbourn Bloodline

“Miss Elizabeth, your father has given me his blessing.”

The words were like sunlight breaking through the winter clouds. Elizabeth was aware of Jane stepping back, and then her mother and sisters creeping from the garden door, tugging on cloaks and gloves. She swallowed, prepared for the flourish and the drop to the frozen gravel, or perhaps he would bow and take her hand, and…

But Darcy stood still before her, as if waiting for a response to a question he had not asked.

“I believe, Mr. Darcy, that this is when you are allowed to make an inquiry?”

“Do you now understand my character, Miss Elizabeth?” He offered his arm, and she took it to mean he would not be dropping to his knees and offering that bumbling proposal Bingley had upon exiting her father’s study, practically bouncing onto the floor with all the enthusiasm of a spaniel.

She took his arm, slipping her gloved hand into the crook of his elbow. “Yes, I believe I have made a thorough evaluation of your character, and it had mystified me completely. But when you returned from Pemberley with your sister in tow, and I had stopped studying you, tore up the ledger in my mind, then I found I had no reasons to like or dislike you, or tally up whether you gave me cream or let me have the seat by the fire, or any number of things Cleo might evaluate, which she doesn’t—because she simply jumps in your lap and purrs.”

“You are evaluating my character as a cat would?” Darcy raised an eyebrow as he led her toward the far end of the garden, where she supposed they might have a modicum of privacy.

“I am answering your question, Mr. Darcy, and I hope I haven’t exhausted you.”

“No, but I shall like to show you Longbourn.”

“You wish to show me my own home?” Elizabeth was not sure why the notion delighted her. “Very well, then, my boots are sturdy enough, but yours perhaps are such fine riding boots, they may not survive our frosty muck.”

“Then it is a good thing I asked the grooms to saddle Jane’s Molly for you, for we are riding to the northern boundary. I believe you shall need to see the fallen tree before you can fully make your decision.”

“Mr. Darcy, you hold me in such suspense, as you have not yet asked my opinion, whether it is good or bad, I do not know.”

“I do not require more than a nod from you, dearest,” he whispered as they approached the stable yard, and Elizabeth was all too aware of his warm breath on the shell of her ear.

“Insufferable man,” she muttered, turning toward the horses. Darcy’s bay stallion stood ready beside Molly, who bore a side saddle. Elizabeth had never been a proficient rider, and she possessed neither a riding habit nor the inclination to acquire one. Yet Darcy’s eagerness was infectious, and she found herself quite determined to see the fallen tree obstructing the stream. “I trust you will not challenge me to a race.”

“I promise. Sedate walking, as befitting the lady of Longbourn.” He cupped his hands for her to mount.

“Molly and your horse are a well-matched pair.” Elizabeth gathered her skirts and attempted a graceful ascent, all too conscious of her rather determined grip on Darcy’s shoulders. The height proved greater than anticipated, and she shifted her hold from him to the pommel with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Molly is gentle. She will carry you at a walk, and I shall be beside you.” Darcy swung onto his stallion with the easy competence of a man who had been riding since childhood.

“I am unaccustomed to riding.” Elizabeth arranged her skirts, feeling the mare shift beneath her. “I walk everywhere—it is swifter, and I am spared the necessity of negotiating with a creature who holds strong opinions about puddles.”

“Molly is very sensible about puddles.”

“So Jane assures me. She also claims Molly has a penchant for abrupt halts whenever she encounters particularly interesting grass, so I shall prepare myself for an impromptu luncheon.”

“No grass or any greenery in January to tempt her.” Darcy took Molly’s lead rope and nickered for the mare to walk alongside. Together, they walked out of the stable yard and onto the Longbourn lane.

Longbourn looked different from horseback. The stable yard, the kitchen garden wall, the bare branches of the pear tree by the scullery window—everything she knew was still there, still exactly where it had always been, but from Molly’s back it all sat at a different angle, as though someone had lifted the lid on a house she had lived in all her life and shown her the rooms from above.

Elizabeth had not anticipated this transformation, nor prepared herself for the way the familiar landscape reordered itself from above. The hedgerows she had pressed through a thousand times now displayed their patterns, their careful interlacing, the handiwork of generations of Bennets shaping boundaries and windbreaks. The tenant cottages, once so close and self-contained, appeared now as neat little boxes against the winter fields, their chimneys sending up slender columns of smoke.

“You are quiet,” Darcy said.

“I am looking at my home in a way I have never seen.” She kept her eyes on the horizon, where the bare trees of the copse stood silver-grey against the pale sky. “I have lived here my entire life. I have walked these paths since before I could properly walk at all—my father used to carry me on his shoulders, pointing out the birds and the wildflowers and the places where the hedgehogs liked to sleep. And yet I have never seen it like this.”

“Like what?”

“It is hard to say.” Elizabeth felt her eyes welling as she blinked at the meadows unfolding before her, the patchwork of winter fields, the interlocking hedges, and the stone walls that crossed the terrain. “On foot, I know every inch of it. The streams, walls, gates, and the paths that cut through thickets, around ponds, and over hills—an endless maze of trails, shortcutting to the orchard, skipping over stiles to the tenant farms, along the stream to the mill, the smithy, and winding back through the home farm.”

“And?” The horses passed the great, stubborn oak, the ancient one Mr. Bennet claimed predated the house and the family, possibly the county.

“I have no words,” she admitted. “The possibility of never walking this way again…”

“You will come home, Elizabeth.” Darcy drew his stallion so close that his leg brushed against her skirts. “I promise you visits as often as you like.”