It had been Lady Catherine, then! He looked up. She quirked an eyebrow, and the east wing lost its chimney. He cleared his throat and dashed off a few more windows. “What of them?”
“Shall I meet any more of them while I am in Town?”
“I am sure Fitzwilliam will want to see you. I regret I cannot vouch for my uncle. Though he is typically less belligerent, in this instance, he may prove as inimical as his sister.”
“Oh, I have great hopes of finding him absolutely insufferable. So far, you only have one awkward relation to my half a dozen. I might feel their impropriety less keenly if you could produce somebody half as embarrassing as Mrs Philips.”
She grinned wickedly, and Darcy’s charcoal snapped.
“Enough talk of family! I am done.” He detached his sketch from the board and passed it to her. “Elizabeth Bennet, I give you Pemberley.”
Though he had come to enjoy Elizabeth’s singular manner of teasing, he would be the first to admit he had not yet learnt to be openly ridiculed, and he knew not quite what to do when she took one wide-eyed look at the drawing and erupted into unreserved peals of laughter. “You are displeased with the house?”
She sucked in a vast breath and said in a slightly more sedate tone, “It is not quite what I was expecting, no.”
Her entire countenance was contorted with the effort of suppressing her laughter, and in spite of himself, Darcy felt his own lips begin to twitch. “Am I to be included in your joke, madam?”
“’Tis only that I must be sure to inform Miss Bingley that I have found a fault in you after all.”
“I hardly think Miss Bingley would agree that Pemberley is a failing.”
“And neither would I, but honestly, Fitzwilliam, who taught you to draw?” She turned the sketch, holding it up so that only her eyes were visible above the page—and a perfectly arched, perfectly derisive eyebrow.
He tore his gaze away from her to look at what he had drawn. “Oh.”
She began laughing again. “Please tell me our apartments are not in this wing,” she begged, pointing to the part of his sketch where he had apparently seen fit to squash some nine or ten exceedingly irregular windows into a space not large enough for six. “I do not think we shall both fit.”
He smiled wryly and shook his head, revelling in her teasing once more.
“Though the other wing is little better with the roof pitched as it is. Perhaps we could put the nursery there. The children would have no need to stoop.”
He bit the insides of his cheeks, determined not to laugh and thereby allow her a complete triumph, but she was not done.
“However does one see out between all these columns? And is that a ghost on the roof? Is the house haunted? Or is it on fire because this chimney has fallen over?”
It really was ridiculous how dearly he loved her. “In my defence, you have been distracting me since we sat down.”
“You cannot talk and draw at the same time?”
“Elizabeth, I can barely think in your presence. You must know this. I have been afflicted thus since I first laid eyes on you.”
“I think not. I distinctly recall your being decidedly unimpressed on that occasion.”
She spoke in jest, but Darcy was at once all seriousness. “I beg you would forget the things you overheard me say that evening. I was determined to be displeased with everything, and so I was. And I have paid a heavy price for it. You must know you are so much more than tolerable.”
She looked wholly unpersuaded. He reached for her hands, setting the sketch aside. “I have not the talent to compose you a poem to convince you of your loveliness, but I can tell you that I forget to breathe when you smile, that my heart races when I hold you, that I am at my least gentlemanly when this eyebrow arches just so.” He ran a thumb along her eyebrow, pressing it upwards at the centre with the slightest pressure. “And I can tell you that kissing you is both the greatest pleasure and the greatest torture I have ever known.”
A gentle blush suffused her countenance, but she shied not from his gaze. “I am mindful that I have said much worse of you than you said of me that evening. I am afraid I owe you quite the panegyric now.” She broke into a broad smile. “But you shall not rush me. Mr Collins assures me that superior flattery cannot proceed from the impulse of the moment, and so you must allow me time to arrange a suitable compliment.”
God, but this woman made him happy!“By all means, take as long as you need,” he told her. “I would wait a lifetime for you.”
Netherfield
17thJune
To Lady Catherine de Bourgh,
In view of your violent objections to your future niece, I have taken steps to relieve you of the indignity of accepting subsistence from her future husband’s estate. You may expect to receive articles from my attorney in due course with particulars.
