Page 72 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

"That was not marriage. You made the distinction very clear yourself."

"And what reason would you require now?"

Darcy's attention sharpened at once, hope and caution warring plainly across his face. "Elizabeth."

She had only meant to tease him. But the raw hope in his expression made the teasing feel cruel.

"Not today," she said, gentler now. "Jane's happiness ought to have a day entirely to itself."

"I agree."

He did not look disappointed at all. He looked, instead, like a man who had just been handed a date without a name attached to it yet, and found that enough to be going on with. They walked on toward the wilderness. A pale rime silvered the grass underfoot, and the south wind carried a thread of woodsmoke from Longbourn's chimneys, sharp and sweet in the cold air.

"Georgiana likes you," Darcy said.

"We conspired against an audience together. Friendship often begins in crime."

"She wrote to me from the next room last night, to tell me you had made the pianoforte less dreadful."

"She wrote to you while sharing a house?"

"Georgiana finds paper a good deal easier than doors."

"Then do not you dare mock her for it."

"I keep every note she has ever sent me."

Elizabeth looked at him properly then. "You love her a great deal."

"Yes."

"I am glad she came."

"I wanted the two people I love most in the world to know one another."

The words were not a declaration built for effect. They were an explanation, offered plainly, and something in Elizabeth's chest turned over at the plainness of it. She stopped beside the sundial. "Fitzwilliam."

He waited, very still.

"I am not ready to answer the question you have not asked me today."

"I know."

"But I no longer have any doubt that I want you to ask it."

Darcy closed his eyes for one brief moment, as though absorbing a blow he had been braced for and had not quite expected to feel this much anyway. When he opened them again, his composure had returned, but she could see exactly what it had cost him to gather it back up.

"Thank you."

"You have thanked me for permission to call, permission to court, and now permission to propose. You make affection sound like an application for a licence."

"I have learned to ask first. I may have overcorrected."

"Do not correct it yet."

They walked back to the house without touching, and the small space left between their hands felt deliberate rather than empty. A held breath, waiting to be released on purpose, at the right moment, by the right person.

Jane met Elizabeth near the door, happiness having made her considerably less discreet than usual.