Page 222 of What Change Entails

“You poor man.”

“She is determined to be related to me.”

“She said that?”

“More than once.”

Elizabeth pressed her lips together, but laughter slipped through anyway. “That is Lydia.”

“It no longer alarms me as much as it should.”

They reached a place where the hill sloped gently down toward a stand of trees. Longbourn’s roof could be glimpsed through the leaves below. Elizabeth stopped.

Darcy stopped with her.

For a moment they stood in silence, though it was not empty. The breeze moved through the grass. A bird called from the hedge.

Elizabeth turned to Darcy.

“What happens now?”

The question came out smaller than she intended.

His face sobered, but not with doubt.

“Now I call upon your father.”

Her fingers tightened on his arm.

“And then?”

“If he permits me, I ask you a question I have been wishing to ask properly since Derbyshire.”

She swallowed.

“Here?”

“If you wish it.”

“Not yet.”

He searched her face.

She touched his sleeve. “Soon. I only—” She stopped and laughed once at herself. “Good heavens, I do not know why I say not yet when I have been waiting a week.”

“Because you are human.”

“That is generous. I was going to say foolish.”

“Both may be true.”

She swatted his arm.

He caught her hand.

The motion was swift. Gentle enough for propriety, if viewed from a distance. Intimate enough to make her forget every field and hedgerow in Hertfordshire.

“I have not kissed you since Derbyshire,” he said. “I have no right to presume upon what has passed between us.”