Page 55 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

"I am also grateful. Which is thoroughly inconvenient of me."

"I have found gratitude a dangerous thing myself, ever since the pavilion." A small, rueful admission, offered without ornament.

She turned back to him. "Did you go into the room?"

"No. Bingley and I stayed together the whole time. The door stood open. McKeever waited in the corridor."

"And the two ladies Mrs. Hurst brought along?"

"They saw only Bingley and myself, standing at the door. Bingley sent them straight back."

"Then there is no public scandal in it."

"None."

Elizabeth's shoulders came down at that, some tension she had been carrying letting go at last. Darcy had watched her carry fear without complaint before, in the pavilion, in the rain. He understood now, watching her, that relief needed someone to witness it too. A person should not have to feel that particular unclenching alone.

"I am sorry your name was used in it," he said. "And sorrier still that I let others decide what you had a right to know."

"You have apologised twice in one fortnight, sir."

"I hope not to establish a schedule of it."

Her laugh came quiet and unguarded. It did not absolve him. It invited him to stay all the same, and Darcy found he wanted nothing else half so much.

He took the risk he had been putting off since the storm.

"Elizabeth. I love you."

Her Christian name left him before he had asked permission for it. He stopped himself too late. "Forgive me."

She only stared at him, colour rising up her throat and into her face. "You need not apologise for the name."

Somewhere behind them, through the open doors, the orchestra began again. A few uncertain notes finding their way into a tune.

"I love you," he said again, and this time let himself mean it plainly, without the careful edges he usually kept round every sentence. "I loved you before I ever offered marriage. I hid it behind duty, because duty could be refused with far less consequence than affection could. You refused both, in the end, and I had earned every bit of it. I ask for neither an answer nor a promise from you tonight. I ask only whether I might court you openly — with your father's knowledge, and your consent."

Elizabeth glanced towards Jane and Bingley, still visible in the doorway. Near enough for propriety, and far enough for honesty.

"You may court me," she said. Her voice came out steady, though her fingers had found the seam of her glove and were worrying at it without her noticing. Darcy's hand tightened at his side, a fist closing around nothing. He did not deserve the steadiness in her voice, not yet. He meant to earn it, one call at a time, if that was what it took.

"That is not an acceptance of marriage," Elizabeth said, rather firmly.

"I understand."

"Nor a declaration."

"I understand that too."

"You look remarkably pleased, sir, for a man who has received so very little."

"You have given me exactly what I asked for," Darcy said, and could not, for the life of him, keep the smile from breaking through.

He offered his arm. She took it. This time, he thought, she took it because she wanted to, and not because propriety demanded it.

As they passed the retiring room, Sarah stood waiting at the door with the blue shawl folded over both hands, as though it were something considerably more precious than a length of wool. She held it out to Elizabeth.

"I am sorry, miss," Sarah said again.