“Like you said that you would not marry another, the same is true for me. You are the only man for me. All of that is a long winded way of replying to your proposal. Yes. Yes, Liam, I will marry you and only you.”
Darcy was up on his two feet in the blink of an eye. It was then he remembered something. “I have a ring to give you; it is the same one Darcy men have gifted their betrotheds for several generations. My mother charged me to give it to the woman who captured my heart when she made me promise I would seek a love match just as she and my father did.”
“Liam, as long as I have you as my fiancé, I am well contented. I am grateful you have a ring for me, but I would be just as happy without it,” Elizabeth assured him. Then she put her hands on his shoulders, and while she pulled his head towards her, she got up on her tiptoes. She only stopped when their lips met.
Knowing Elizabeth, Darcy was not overly surprised that she was the one to initiate their first kiss. He was not at all put out that she did, in fact, quite the opposite. He found his passion rising to meet her own. He had always suspected Elizabeth was a passionate woman, and he was more than pleased to be proved correct. Rather than allow her to withdraw, Darcy snaked his arms around her back and pulled her towards himself so that there was no daylight between them.
The kisses deepened as their pent-up desire for one another was allowed a measure of freedom. When Elizabeth felt his tongue on her lips, she instinctively opened her mouth, and soon their tongues were locked in a dance of love.
It is said that all good things come to an end, and so too did the romantic interlude between the newly engaged couple when John Biggs knocked rather loudly on the door. They jumped apart so that when he pushed the door open after a minute, there was an acceptable distance between them, although their swollen lips told the tale of what they had been doing prior to the interruption.
“We need to go and speak to my parents,” Elizabeth said as soon as she was sure she would be able to utter a coherent sentence. Her heart was still racing, but her breath was not so ragged any longer.
“Uhm, I may need a minute or two before I am presentable,” Darcy said as he tried to hide the prominent bulge in his pants from his fiancée’s eyes.
‘So that was what I felt against my belly,’ Elizabeth realised silently. Besides having grown up on a working farm, Elizabeth had two younger brothers who, when they were much younger, had been known to escape their baths and run around in a state of undress. Hence, she was fully aware of what the bulge was. She did not stare at it because the last thing she wanted was to further embarrass her Liam. “If I go and request that Mama and Papa join us here, and I take my time to give you, say five minutes, would that be enough for you to be seen?”
The fact she knew it was not a time to tease him but rather was aiding him so he would not be embarrassed only made Darcy love Elizabeth more. “Thank you, my love; that would be more than enough time,” he responded gratefully. Darcy knew all he had to do was think of Caroline Bingley, and his problem would shrink rapidly.
Elizabeth rose onto her tiptoes and gifted Liam a kiss on his cheek before she sailed out of the family library, floating on the winds of love.
“It was almost fifteen minutes when I knocked,” Biggs said without looking directly at Miss Lizzy; the tips of his ears were decidedly pink.
“Thank you, John,” Elizabeth sang as she made her way, slowly, towards the family sitting room. She stopped and looked at some of the portraits in the hall to make sure that Liam would have as much time as he needed to bring himself back under regulation. It was almost five minutes from the time she left Liam until she walked into the family sitting room.
There were many questioning looks when Elizabeth returned alone. The younger girls could not understand what the possible reason was, but the parents and older people, on seeing Lizzy’s lips, had a fairly good idea why she was alone.
“Mama, Papa, would you come with me to the family library?” Elizabeth requested without looking directly at her parents. She was sure everyone could tell what she and Liam had been doing. She reminded herself that her courage always rose when she felt intimidated, so she lifted her head and looked directly at Mama and Papa.
Bennet was about to make a comment which would have made Elizabeth blush to her roots, but one look at Becca and it died in his throat. “Your mother and I will accompany you back to that room,” he said instead.
In the hallway, Bennet slowed a little so that Lizzy was a few steps ahead of him and Becca. “You stopped me making sport of Lizzy,” he whispered.
“Indeed, I did,” Becca owned insotto voce. “There is a time and place for everything; that was neither the time nor the place. Do I need to remind you how many times you and I kissed before we were married?”
“That was different.” Bennet effected a fake pout. Becca raised her nose in the air in an imitation of Miss Bingley.
When she walked into the family library, Elizabeth was pleased to see that Liam was facing the door and had no reason to hide anything. Her parents followed her in. Elizabeth led Liam to a settee while her mother and father sat on one opposite across a low table.
“I assume Liam proposed,” Bennet began. The engaged couple nodded.
“And Elizabeth accepted me,” Darcy stated proudly. “We ask for your consent and blessing.”
Becca and Bennet looked at one another briefly. “I assume you love one another,” Becca asked. There were two emphatic nods. “In that case Thomas and I give our permissionand hearty blessings. We can only hope you two will be as happy with each other as we are with one another. Now, have you discussed a possible date for the wedding?”
“We have not,” Elizabeth replied. She turned to her betrothed. “Liam, what would you say if we asked Mary and Richard if they would share a double wedding with us?”
“In principle, I would not object. My only hesitation is that their wedding date is in March, and I was hoping we would be married in December, or after Twelfth Night at the latest,” Darcy replied. “That being said, if you want to marry in the same ceremony with Mary and Richard, I will wait.”
“I too would prefer not to wait so many months,” Elizabeth responded thoughtfully. She turned towards her parents with her eyebrow arched. “Would you truly object to them marrying sooner?”
Like they were wont to do, Becca and Bennet communicated silently. He cocked his head in question, and she gave a quick nod. “If Mary and Richard do not object to advancing the date of the wedding, your mother and I are not averse to it.” Bennet stood and collected a calendar hanging on one wall. He sat and opened it to January of 1812. He pointed to a date and looked at Becca questioningly. She nodded. “What of Wednesday, the fifteenth day of January?”
Elizabeth looked at Liam, who gave an enthusiastic nod. “May I go and invite Mary and Richard to join us?” she requested of her parents. Both agreed. She was up in an instant, and in far less time than it took her to reach the sitting room after the proposal, she returned with an inquisitive Mary and Richard in her wake.
“Mary and Richard, as you may have guessed, Liam proposed, and Lizzy accepted him happily,” Becca told them once they were seated on the settee with Lizzy and Liam.
The two expressed their wishes for happiness to the newly engaged couple, as well as their sincere approbation.
