Elizabeth looked at him, willing her pulses to slow. Yes, let us get past this, she thought. I would have rather waited until I had fewer reservations, but since I have no choice in the matter, we may as well have done with it. And there is no reason for him to know that I have doubts; certainly it was only a matter of time until I was ready to accept him, and he deserves the happiness of believing that I accept him with no qualms. “What did you have in mind, sir?” she asked with a knowing smile.
With a feeling of exultation, he took both of her hands in his. He pressed the lightest of kisses inside of her wrist first on one hand, then the other, leaving Elizabeth feeling barely able to think, much less to be coherent. “Miss Bennet, will you do me the infinite honor of agreeing to be my wife?”
She took a deep breath. “The honor would be mine, sir.”
There was a moment of stillness, then he said, “Say that again.”
She smiled at him impishly. “Yes. Yes, I will marry you. Yes, I will be your wife. Yes, I will spend my life with you. Yes, I will be the mother of your children. Yes.”
“Please feel free to continue, Miss Bennet. I could listen to this for a long time.”
“Such vanity! No, sir, I believe that it is your turn to speak; I have upheld my end of the conversation.”
His eyes, lit by heartfelt delight, locked with hers. “There are no words for how I feel at this moment, my love.” He brought out of his pocket a small box, from which he removed a sapphire ring that he slipped onto her finger.
“It is beautiful,” she said quietly.
“I am glad to finally have it where it belongs,” he said. Their eyes met, and the sheer joy in his melted any last bits of resistance she might have had. “Kiss me, Elizabeth,” he whispered.
With a raised eyebrow and a mischievous smile, she freed her hands from his and wound them around his neck. Allowing her body to touch his lightly, she pulled his head down to hers and deliberately put into practice everything she had learned from his kisses. She ran her fingers into his unruly curls, delighting in the manner in which her action clearly aroused Darcy. Enjoying this sense of power, she tested it further by trailing her fingers down his neck along the edge of his cravat, and was rewarded by a clear increase in his response.
“Dear God, life with you is not going to be dull,” he said feelingly when she finally released him.
“I should hope not!” she said with a sparkle in her voice. She felt inordinately pleased with herself.
“I must speak to your father now, and then we will tell the rest of your family.”
“Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth said a bit sharply. “Did we not have a recent discussion on the subject of consulting me on decisions?”
He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Ahh… yes, we did. My apologies, my dearest. I can see I will require some retraining.”
“Your apology is accepted.”
“How shall we inform people of our engagement, then?” He stole a quick kiss out of sheer pleasure over being able to say those words.
“With all the present fuss, I would almost prefer to wait.”
He opened his mouth to tell her that was impossible, and then thought better of it. “I would have some concerns about leaving your family to deal with these rumors in our absence without knowledge of our engagement to present in response.”
“Your point is well taken. Very well, we can tell them now. Would you be willing to consider, however, delaying announcing the news at Pemberley? I would feel more comfortable coming there first as a guest, without all the expectations that would accompany me if I were to be known as the future mistress.”
“I would prefer not to delay it long, but I see no harm in a few weeks,” he conceded.
“Thank you.” They smiled at one another in accord. “While you are speaking with my father, perhaps I will join the rest of the family, which should allow my mother to get through the worst of her effusions before you arrive.”
“I had thought that we would tell your family together.”
She laughed. “Do you think that once you walk out of this room and into the library that there will be anything left to tell? But that is only fair; I shall await you here.”
“I will return as soon as I may,” he said, but found that he had to give her one more lingering kiss before he could face the brief separation.
* * *
“Mr. Bennet, I am certain that you have little doubt as to why I am here this evening,” Darcy began.
“On the contrary, young man, I have a great number of questions as to why you are here this evening,” said Mr. Bennet.
“You do?” asked Darcy in surprise, then recalled himself. “Pardon me; I meant to say that I would be happy to answer any questions you may have, sir.”
“Good, good, I am glad to hear it. Then perhaps you can explain to me how it has come to pass that you and my daughter have been caught in clandestine assignations when, the last any of us had heard, you found her not handsome enough to tempt you, and she had a healthy dislike of you. I have heard Lizzy’s version of the story; now I would like to hear yours.”
Darcy winced. Was that ill-fated remark at the Meryton Assembly to haunt him for the rest of his life? “Sir, I can understand that your opinion of me may have suffered owing to recent talk; I have no doubt that I would feel the same were I in your place. However, I assure you that my intentions toward your daughter have always been strictly honorable.”
“Indeed.” Mr. Bennet’s voice was sharp. “Mr. Darcy, I do not claim to understand the situation. I know that Lizzy is unhappy and angry, I know that she has expressed in the past some reason to distrust you, and I know that for reasons that are unclear, she has been choosing to spend time with you and apparently to accept your attentions. Under the circumstances, I have no choice but to give you my permission to marry her, just as I told her that I had no choice but to insist that she marry you, but I do not feel under any obligation to be happy about it.”
Taken aback by this unexpected burst of anger, Darcy hardly knew where to begin. He had not expected hostility, and while his initial thought was not to discuss this further until he had a better chance to understand Mr. Bennet’s position, he considered how important her father’s opinion was to Elizabeth, and determined to swallow his pride and persist. “Sir, I believe you are under some misapprehension. Certainly Miss Bennet and I have had misunderstandings in the past, but after I, that is, after we furthered our acquaintance in Kent, we were able to clear up a great deal of confusion, including the truth behind the lies she had been told. We have been on more cordial terms since then. I would encourage you to speak further to her, sir. I do not believe that she is unhappy about anything except the circumstances of our engagement, and it is my goal, sir, to make her happy in everything.”
Mr. Bennet sat back in his chair. “So you feel that it was the time you spent together in Kent that made a difference, then.”
“In a way, yes,” Darcy said cautiously.
“What time that you spent together in Kent?” Mr. Bennet said, his voice like a whip.
Wondering if this was some sort of trick, Darcy said, “In April, when Miss Bennet was visiting her friend Mrs. Collins, and I was visiting my aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.”
Mr. Bennet looked suddenly tired. “Lizzy has never seen fit to mention seeing you there.”
“You did not know, then?” Darcy said in surprise. “So you have not heard about…” He trailed off, realizing that Elizabeth must not have wanted her father to know about their interactions in Kent. “Or about Wickham, either?” He had rarely felt so completely inarticulate.
“Sit down, Mr. Darcy. This is clearly going to take some time. Perhaps you can tell me now about all the things I have not heard,” said Mr. Bennet icily.
“Perhaps we should ask Miss Bennet to join us to give her point of view.”
“Perhaps not. Now, you were about to tell me about Kent, I believe.”
Feeling like a schoolboy c
alled onto the carpet, Darcy summarized the events of April in a clipped voice, omitting only the venom of their disagreement the night he proposed, and briefly reviewed his history with Mr. Wickham. “When I returned to Netherfield last month, Miss Bennet, no longer being under a misapprehension regarding my feelings towards her, was kind enough to allow me to begin to court her anew.”
“Odd, I had thought it traditional to ask the permission of the father of the young lady involved, Mr. Darcy, but perhaps I was mistaken.”
Darcy had not been Master of Pemberley for five years to accept this sort of insult lightly, even from the father of his beloved. “Perhaps you misunderstand my position, Mr. Bennet. In the interest of future understanding, let me make myself clear: given a choice between protecting your daughter and pleasing you, I will always choose your daughter.”
“Do you believe that she needs protection from me, then?” Mr. Bennet said silkily.
Darcy fixed a steady stare on him, a tactic that worked well on recalcitrant tenants. “That is not what I said, as you are well aware, sir. But if it satisfies you to be angry with me because your daughter has chosen for her own reasons to keep certain facts from you, please feel free to do so. It does not disturb me.”
The corners of Mr. Bennet’s mouth twitched. “I am glad to hear it. If you plan to marry Lizzy, it will be to your benefit to be imperturbable.”
“I am going to marry her, Mr. Bennet, and for her sake, I hope that we can be on better terms in the future.” Darcy laid his challenge out smoothly.
“Treat her well, Mr. Darcy, and we will have no problems.”
“Sir, you need have no concerns in that regard.” Darcy stood and bowed formally. “I believe she is waiting for me, so I shall take my leave.”
Mr. Bennet waved his hand in dismissal, thinking that Lizzy might not have done so badly for herself after all.
* * *
Elizabeth had assumed that the interview with her father was a formality, given his words to her earlier, but was beginning to worry as time went on. When at last Darcy rejoined her, she said, “I had begun to wonder if you had forgotten me.”
“Hardly, my sweet. But your father had a number of questions. I am sorry to say that he does not seem to look favorably upon me,” he said, sitting next to her. “I made an important discovery, though, which is that if my flaw is to tell everyone else what to do, yours is to tell them nothing at all. I had not realized that you had left your father completely in the dark about everything that has happened between us.”
“It… has been very confusing; for some time I have hardly known what to say, and I am afraid that when I spoke with him earlier today I was rather… distressed,” she admitted.
“He did not seem to think me a welcome suitor,” said Darcy, looking at her thoughtfully. He had always assumed that Elizabeth’s tendency to keep her thoughts private reflected a certain lack of confidence in him, and having made the startling discovery that she had not even told her beloved father of his interest in her was causing him to rethink this conclusion. Could it be that she was so reticent about her personal affairs even with those to whom she was closest? She was certainly skilled at turning aside serious discussion with witty repartee in such a way that one hardly noticed her failure to respond. He wondered how much she told Jane of her private affairs.
Of course, Georgiana would probably make the same accusation of slyness about him, and he recalled what it had taken for him to confess his situation to Colonel Fitzwilliam in London. But he had never, once he determined that his interest in her to be a lasting one, tried to keep his feelings secret from Elizabeth. Although she had not understood his interest in the past, it was not because he failed to try to express it in his own way. He did not want to keep her at a distance, as he had so many other people, and more than anything he wanted her to feel that she could share anything with him. Perhaps he would have to take the lead in this regard until she felt more able to trust him with her feelings.
“I will tell him that is not the case,” Elizabeth said softly. “I would not want him to think you unwelcome.” She held out her hand to him. “Shall we go to my family?”
Taking her hand, he pulled her gently toward him, and she slipped into his arms as if she had been made expressly for that purpose. “Perhaps first you could show me that I am not unwelcome,” he said with a slight smile.
Elizabeth, experiencing that pleasurable sensation of coming home that the familiarity of a lover’s embrace can bring, raised her lips to his without a second thought. As their mouths met, she surrendered to the blissful sensations that only he could arouse in her. Experiencing the heady delight of accepting the pleasure he could give her without the feelings of guilt that had haunted her in the past, she moaned softly as he deepened the kiss and she felt the full force of her passion answering his.
When he lifted his head just enough to be able to gaze into her eyes, she said, “Do you feel welcome yet, sir?”
“I feel so welcome that I may never let you go,” he responded fervently, proceeding to feather kisses along the side of her face and down her neck, deeply gratified by his ability to give her pleasure. That his Elizabeth could be so amazingly and delightfully responsive to him gave him a satisfaction he could not deny, and he reveled in his sensation of ecstatic pleasure as he felt her surrendering control to him. Deeply aroused, he kissed her with a thoroughness that left her breathless and longing for more. Beyond the ability to restrain himself, and somehow knowing that she would not find the will to object, he slid the edge of her gown just off her shoulder. Pressing passionate kisses along the newly exposed flesh, he heard her gasps of pleasure and felt her arching against him with a thrill that only aroused him further. If only we were truly alone, he thought, desperate for more of her.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind when he heard footsteps outside. He released her abruptly and straightened her gown, but there was nothing he could do about the half-drugged look of passion in her eyes, and he suspected that his appearance was at least as obvious.
Mr. Bennet appeared in the doorway, a look of amusement on his face. “There you are, Lizzy. I believe we have an announcement to make, if the two of you can spare a moment for the rest of us.”
“Yes, we were just saying that we should join the others,” Elizabeth managed to say.
Mr. Bennet, whose first approach to the room had been quiet enough to remain unnoticed under the circumstances, raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Any dismay he might have felt about the behavior he had witnessed was outweighed by his relief in realizing that his Lizzy was clearly not as opposed to this match as he had feared. “Shall we, then?”
* * *
The bustle of departing travellers filled Longbourn early the following morning as trunks were loaded and reloaded, the Gardiner children taking the opportunity again and again to bid their parents farewell, and Mrs. Bennet instructing Elizabeth repeatedly how she should behave while at Pemberley in order to continue to please Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth herself was bemusedly recalling how, just a few weeks before, she had been eagerly anticipating this journey as an escape from Darcy’s attentions, whereas now the idea of missing him was of much greater concern. A feeling of delight filled her as she spotted the object of her thoughts himself riding toward her. She had not expected to see him; they had said their farewells the previous night.
He dismounted and came straight to her, his warm gaze upon her. As he kissed her hand, she was conscious of having a special smile for him as well. “Good morning, my love,” he said quietly, for her hearing only.
“Good morning, sir,” she replied with a slight blush, aware from his look that he would rather have been kissing her lips than her hand. “It is an unexpected pleasure to see you this morning.”
“You overestimate my ability to stay away from you. It looks as if your departure is imminent; I am glad that I arrived in time.”
“Yes, I believe we will be off shortly.”
“May I beg a moment t
o speak with you separately first?”
“Of course.” She led him away to a distance that would not allow easy eavesdropping.
“Since we have but little time, I will refrain from remarking on how you look lovelier every day and how much I missed you last night, and limit myself to mentioning how passionately I adore and admire you—and how much I hate it when you wear gloves,” he said, touching the offending article.
Elizabeth colored, suddenly cognizant that their engagement would open the way for a new kind of courting that could be as demanding as his kisses. “Well, sir, my mother has instructed me to please you in all matters, so I will risk shocking my family,” she said with a smile, and removed her gloves.
He immediately took her hand and raised it to his lips again. “Much better,” he murmured, his eyes dropping to her mouth. “You are a delightful and charming temptation, Elizabeth, and you are distracting me from what I came to say.”
She raised an eyebrow, impressed with his ability to make her name sound like an intimate endearment. “And what, pray tell, is that?” she asked, her lips tingling as if he had in fact kissed them.
He drew a letter from his pocket and held it out to her. “I wrote this for you to take with you, hoping that you might find time to read it tonight.”
She smiled at him warmly. “Thank you. I am glad that I may safely take it this time!”
“There are advantages to being engaged. Many advantages.”
“When we have more time, sir, I shall make you enumerate them all for me,” she said playfully. She was beginning to consider the possibility that she was destined to spend their entire engagement blushing.
“It will be my pleasure to do so, my love. But I would not wish to make a poor impression on Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner this early in our acquaintance by delaying them simply so that I can enjoy a few moments more in your presence, so perhaps I should return you to them.”
“Perhaps so.” As they were walking back to rejoin the others, she said, surprising even herself, “I shall miss you.”
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