“Would you come in?” he asked. She started, as though she had been lost in her own thoughts and not even noticed him. Elizabeth met his eye and nodded, moving past him without a word to sit in a chair by the fire.
He noticed the lines of fatigue etched into the corners of her eyes. Their disagreement might weigh on her as much as it weighed on him.
“I wanted to apologise,” he said haltingly. “I should not have kissed you when you did not welcome it, and I should not have demanded you confide in me. It is a privilege to be earned, not demanded.”
“No, I have been…” She sighed tiredly. “I want us to be friends, and I do wish to speak with you as we did before—before you went to Pemberley. And I should have yielded to your?—”
“Let us not talk of kissing me with words such as ‘yielding,’” he said firmly.
“I only meant—it is unfair of me to let…to let my distractions come between our relationship.”
He was about to ask what had distracted her to such a degree that she rebuffed him and looked so ill, but he hesitated. One look at her face told him it would not be forthcoming. Every nerve screamed at him to demand she tell him, but that would only make her less willing to have anything to do with him.
“I did not have the chance to tell you how much I liked your aunt and uncle,” he said to start a conversation she would engage in.
The polite smile on her face deepened to a sincere one. “I am so glad. I knew you would. My aunt especially liked you, but that might be because you are both from the same area of Derbyshire.”
There was a hint of her former playful spirit, and Darcy felt hopeful for the first time in days. “Then what am I to do to win over your uncle?”
Elizabeth gave him a mock thoughtful look. “He is an angler when he has the opportunity. A morning in your trout stream would make him your friend forever.” She laughed, then added, “But I do not think you have to induce him to approve of you; I could tell at dinner he already does.”
“I think we will be friends,” Darcy agreed. “Your uncle seemed the sort of man I could sit in silence and read the newspaper with or discuss their respective accounts with ease. The sort of man who would not ask me a question unless he was truly interested in what I had to say.”
“He will listen, and even try to argue you out of your opinion if he disagrees.”
“Then you are very like him,” he said, smiling.
Elizabeth turned a little pink. “I hope I do not try your patience.”
“I would not change a thing about you.”
There was the heated look in her eyes that he remembered from before he left. Perhaps it was only his ten-day absence to overcome before they were restored to their ease of their former relationship.
“I would change nothing about you, either,” she finally said, the pink of her cheeks a striking contrast to the pallor of the rest of her skin.
“Not even my pride? My disdain for those outside my circle?”
“You have managed to mend that on your own,” she said in her lively way. “I am fortunate that you need so little improvement at the beginning of our marriage.”
“Are you ready for our rout at Lady Galway’s tonight?”
She blew out a breath. “I was stunned to receive her invitation. Her husband only sent a card after we married rather than call.”
“The earl is not a friend of mine, but it would not be wise to refuse a man of his station. I suspect he waited to see how well you were received and how badly my reputation was damaged by Georgiana’s marriage before he extended any invitations. Perhaps that mention in theMorning Postpersuaded him, so I ought not to be so scornful of gossip. Regardless, since Wickham has disappeared and you are an elegant and lively woman, Lord Galway will now notice us.”
Her cheerful expression fell.
“Are you worried about your reception?” he asked, surprised. Elizabeth was never one awed by status before. “You will enchant people with your ebullience, as you always do.”
“While you make them cower with your intelligence and reserve?” She asked this lightly, but her face showed genuine distress. She was trying to tease him, but something worried her.
“Lady Summerlin will be there,” he reminded her, “and Mrs Ballston wants her daughters married, so she will also be there. I am sorry that you have had to prove that you are a credit to me. You do not deserve that, and the only approval that matters should be yours andmine. There is not a reason in the world to doubt you, of course, but good society is demanding and critical.”
She rose hastily. “I, I suppose I ought to get ready, then.”
Elizabeth was typically confident about her own value. She had stood up to her father and Lady Catherine, but the invitation of an earl flustered her? Or was it the reminder that she had to prove herself worthy when she came to town?
He could not help but notice her sudden return of her lowness of spirits. “Do you doubt that everyone approves of you?”
