“Markle was responsible. He wanted to hurt us, but now he will never harm anyone again.” She laughed. “I knew you would come,” she cried, looking at Darcy. “I lured him out so the officers could find him! Our plan worked, Darcy!”
Darcy winced and lowered his eyes, and Elizabeth felt everyone’s attention turn sharply to her.
“Yourplan? Did you get kidnapped on purpose?” her father asked, incredulous.
Rather than answer, Elizabeth watched Darcy cover his face with his hands.
“Did you not want to tell them how it came to pass?” she asked him. “Oh,” she said slowly as she realised why Darcy looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him up. “My family won’t hate you,” she called to him. “The scheme was my idea, Papa.”
When everyone now looked at Darcy, he grimaced. “If your father allows it, I will return in the morning.”
“No, stay,” she pleaded. After all she had gone through, she needed a moment alone with him. At the least, he ought to stay because everyone who loved her best was present, although they were all giving her horrified looks except for Darcy. She looked around and fixed her eyes on her sister. “Jane,youknow what he means to me. You know why Darcy must stay!”
Jane’s cheeks turned red, and she brought a hand to them. “I–I know that, that Mr Darcy and Lizzy have…an affection for one another.”
“Yes, we do. Darcy and I are to marry.”
She grinned at her family expectantly. After everyone stared at her in silence, her father said to the others, “The surgeon did say a lack of air could alter her mind for a little while.”
“No, she is telling the truth,” Darcy said quietly. “I asked her to marry me.”
“Twice,” she said, laughing. “I refused the first one, but I was eager for the second proposal. It has been an eventful week.” She counted on her fingers. “A terrible proposal, a kidnapping, escaping, falling in love with Darcy, a better proposal after days of wondering if it would all come to nothing, and then finally a scheme to lure Markle into an arrest. I did fear I would die, but Darcy came after all.”
Why did Darcy look stricken? “Oh, did you not want to tell them about your first proposal?” she said in what was certainly a whisper. “Or did you not want to explain our plan? I take full responsibility for the scheme to trap Markle, you know. But we can tell my family whatever you like.”
“Not now,” he muttered while giving her a fond smile. “And I cannot dissemble for my life, anyway. Mr Bennet, I know it is very late, and you are worried for Miss Elizabeth, but may I speak with you?”
Her father let go of her hand and rose. “I insist on it.”
Darcy and her father left, and her aunt and uncle exchanged a curious look and they, too, left the room. Only Jane remained, giving her a look as though she saw something peculiar.
“Why did my father sound grim?” she asked.
Jane fell into a chair. “Oh, Lizzy, what did you do?”
The entire story—savefor the specifics of their morning at the inn at Dartford—took the better part of an hour to lay plain to Mr Bennet, and Darcy felt exhausted.
In Meryton, Elizabeth’s father had always struck Darcy as indifferent to everything, and nothing she had told him over the past week about him changed Darcy’s opinion. However, the clock had struck two, and he still asked questions about every choice and action he and Elizabeth had taken from when Steamer kidnapped them from Hunsford through the moment Darcy carried Elizabeth from the dry-house. He even pressed him for details as to what Mrs Gardiner had hinted at in a letter regarding Wickham.
Darcy stifled a yawn as Mr Bennet asked, “And she actually agreed to marry you, but after your abduction?” This was asked in a tone of exasperation.
“We came to mean a great deal to one another during that time, but I believe her affection to be sincere and not a result of our tragic shared experience.”
“I was rendered spiritless when I arrived in town, afraid for my dear Lizzy, and now I find myself in a dilemma.” He sighed. “On the one hand, you let the woman you claim to love put herself into mortal danger, but she is restored to us by your doing and her captor will be punished. And Lizzy has accepted you—although I am still uncertain why when I thought she hated you and you only looked at a woman to find a blemish.”
He ought to feel mortified, but he was too tired to care. “I hope your daughter will tell you I really am the object of her choice, and I will give you whatever assurances you need that my affection for her is not the work of the few days we were together.”
Mr Bennet still looked grave, and Darcy asked, “Do you intend to withhold your consent?”
“Well, I will have no relief from my wife if I oppose the match. Ten thousand a year is not forsaken lightly.”
“Elizabeth would say differently,” Darcy said flatly.
“Yes, she would need to truly esteem her husband.” He looked at him with new intensity, considering him for a long moment before he spoke. “The first proposal was before the first abduction?”
Who had conversations like this, counting the number of kidnappings and marriage proposals? Darcy nodded, hiding another yawn behind his hand.
“I am surprised that you condescended to ask the same woman a second time. Did you offer again because you were afraid that some misguided family member would assume you had taken advantage of her and she needed the protection of your reputation and name?”
