Something shifted in his face. The soft, unguarded man of the past hour did not disappear, but something harder settled alongside him. Not replacing the tenderness. Armoring it.
“Are you?” he returned, holding out his hand. Smiling, Elizabeth took it.
Elizabeth blinkedagainst the glare and watched the search party register their presence. With a shout and wave, Elizabeth called them to her.
The groom who had found Atlas was already at the stable door, but it was Bingley who saw them first. He had changed course the moment the shout went up and was floundering through the snow toward the cottage with more enthusiasm than grace, his amiable face tight with worry.
“Darcy! Miss Bennet!” The relief in his voice was so plain it was almost comical. “Thank God. Thank God. We have been searching since yesterday. Miss Bennet has been beside herself. Jane, I mean. We came out at first light when the storm broke, but the cottage was empty and there were tracks leading away into the hills, and we feared the worst.”
He stopped. Took in the scene more carefully. Elizabeth in Darcy's coat. Their joined hands. Her loose hair. The color that rose in his cheeks had nothing to do with the cold.
“Ah,” he said.
Mr. Bennet had reached them. He was breathing hard as his eyes found Elizabeth's face. “Lizzy! Good,” he said, and his voice was not entirely steady. He reached for her, one hand gripping her shoulder. His fingers tightened. “You are alive. Thank goodness.”.
“I am sorry for the worry, Papa.”
“The worry.” His gaze, now recovered, moved to Mr. Darcy. To their joined hands. To the coat around her shoulders. “Yes. I imagine there has been a good deal of worry to go around.”
Mr. Darcy released Elizabeth's hand and stepped toward her father. When he spoke, his voice was low enough that only the three of them could hear.
“Mr. Bennet. I wish to marry your daughter. This is unusual, for certain. I intend to make my addresses properly. But I want you to know my intentions now, before we return.”
Mr. Bennet studied him for a long moment. Then he glanced at Elizabeth.
“And you, Lizzy?”
“I choose him, Papa. Freely.”
Whatever he might have said next was obliterated by Mr. Collins, who arrived red-faced and panting, his boots ruined beyond recovery.
“Most irregular,” he began, his voice carrying across the snow with the penetrating clarity of a man who had been practicing his disapproval for the entire walk. “Most irregular indeed. I must say, Cousin Elizabeth, that your behavior has been shocking. To be discovered in such compromising circumstances with a gentleman to whom you have no formal connection whatsoever. I shudder to think what Lady Catherine de Bourgh will say. Her ladyship has very particular views on the conduct of young women, and I assure you that this sort of —”
“Sir.” One word from Mr. Darcy. Collins's mouth remained open, but no sound came out, which was the most useful position it had occupied since his arrival at Longbourn.
Collins rallied. “I must protest! I had made my intentions toward Cousin Elizabeth clear, and this situation — the honorable course would be —”
Mr. Darcy turned to look at him. Just looked. The full weight of Pemberley and ten thousand a year settled into that single glance, and Collins wilted like a hothouse flower in a frost. He took a half step backward, then another, until he was partially concealed behind one of the footmen.
Mr. Bennet, who had watched this exchange with the expression of a man being offered unexpected entertainment, returned his attention to his daughter.
“He trembles when he is angry,” Mr. Bennet observed, glancing at Darcy's hands. “And yet he did not raise his voice.”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “He would not.”
Her father was quiet for a moment. Then: “We shall discuss terms when we are all warm and dry.”
“Mr. Collins,” he added, without turning. “I would consider it a personal kindness if you were to remain silent until we reach Longbourn.”
Collins's mouth closed with an audible click.
Bingley stepped forward. “There is a cart waiting on the road.” He hesitated, glancing at Darcy, and something passed across his open, honest face. Something quieter than his usual cheer. He looked at Darcy standing in the snow, having claimed Elizabeth before her father with neither shame nor apology, and Elizabeth saw the moment the thought landed. She saw him look away. Toward the road. Toward Netherfield, where Jane was waiting.
The look lasted only a moment. She filed it away and said nothing.
Mr. Darcy's hand found hers again as the party moved off. His thumb traced a slow circle against her palm. He brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, and the gesture was so tender and so public that Collins made a strangled sound from behind the groom and Mr. Bennet raised an eyebrow, and Elizabeth did not care about any of it.
She looked back at the cottage one last time. The glass conservatory caught the morning sun and blazed with light, and she thought of the painter who had worked there a century ago and the husband who had built it for love and the two people who had sheltered inside it when the storm came, and found that they were not the same people who walked out.
