Page 73 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

Her voice dropped low. "You told him."

"I told him enough."

Across the hall, Darcy spoke quietly to Bingley. Both men glanced toward the sisters at exactly the same moment, and looked quickly away. The sky stayed clear. No shawl had gone missing. Sarah and McKeever were miles distant at Netherfield, very probably selecting music neither of them had been asked to select.

The next choice belonged to no one but Darcy and Elizabeth. That, she thought, was precisely why she wanted it.

CHAPTER 16

Mr. Darcy

Mr. Bennet read the marriage settlement twice through, without hurrying. Darcy sat across from him in the Longbourn library and tried not to watch his face for a verdict. The papers lay between them, drawn up by Darcy's solicitor and reviewed by Mr. Bennet's attorney in Meryton. They settled Elizabeth's pin money to her own separate use, secured a jointure, and made provision for daughters as generously as for sons.

No engagement existed yet. Darcy would not ask Elizabeth to accept him before the material terms of it sat ready for her own inspection. Every line, every figure, hers to question before she ever answered him.

Mr. Bennet reached the final page. "You seem very certain of her answer."

"No."

"And yet you have brought terms."

"If she refuses me, the papers cost nothing but my solicitor's time and my own disappointment. If she accepts, she ought to know the material consequences of it before any announcement is made."

"You expect my daughter to examine a marriage settlement on the very day of a proposal?"

"I expect her to know that it exists. She may examine it whenever she pleases — today, next month, never, if she prefers."

Mr. Bennet set the pages down and looked at him properly. "You have learned caution somewhere."

"Elizabeth has been an expensive teacher, in that particular respect."

"Do not tell her I said so."

"I value my chances too highly for that."

The older man very nearly smiled. Darcy watched him fight it and half lose. Then he removed his spectacles and set them on the desk, and something in the room went quieter.

"She loves you."

Darcy's breath stopped.

"Has she told you so?"

"No. Lizzy has told me very little on the subject, which is precisely how I know the little she has told me matters." Mr. Bennet's eyes were kind, and shrewd, and entirely too perceptive for comfort. "She has never been a girl to waste her words on something that did not."

Darcy wanted the answer with a force that felt, for one unguarded second, almost humiliating. He kept both hands still on his knees, by an act of will he would not have admitted to a week ago.

"I love her," he said.

"That has been plain since roughly the moment you began enjoying my wife's conversation."

"I do not always enjoy it."

"Better. A dishonest son would exhaust me within the fortnight."

Mr. Bennet's gaze drifted to the open window. Elizabeth walked in the shrubbery below with Jane, their heads bent together, and Bingley stood near the gate, pretending not to be waiting for his own interview about a wedding date.

"You understand that Elizabeth's attachment to her family will not end the day she marries. Her mother will visit. Lydia, I imagine, may simply follow her home."