“Well then, let us turn to you, Miss Bennet! The same young lady who declared, loudly and repeatedly, that she would marry only for love, be it to a modest vicar or a young solicitor just beginning his career. It mattered not who or what he was, provided there was love. And scarcely two months later, you told me you were to marry Mr Clinton.” His tone grew firm and somewhat loud.
“Hush!” whispered Elizabeth, glancing anxiously towards the door.
“Good heavens, what is it? It is no secret now that you broke the engagement. I saw him myself today—married to another.”
“You jest!”
“Indeed, I do; yet I cannot deny that I am jealous. Mr Clinton is no modest vicar or struggling solicitor—he is one of the wealthiest and most influential men in London.”
Elizabeth looked at him in astonishment. “Richer than…us?”
At thatusand her question, Darcy burst into laughter. Though he had smiled often in the last hour, this was the first true amusement he had known in a long while.
“Yes, madam, richer than ourselves. Do you regret the exchange?”
Though Elizabeth did not smile broadly, it was clear that no shadow now remained between them…yet there were still details unexplained.
“Well then? Why could we not speak of—”
Elizabeth hastily laid her hand upon his lips that he might not utter that name aloud. She needed to explain quickly, for she did not wish him to commit any blunder.
“The great love had come…and gone in the same instant for me,” she said, yet without regret, for she now sat beside her that love. “In truth, the matter was otherwise. I was not to marry a man…but the Academy.”
Seeing that he required more, she continued, “Mr—” she gestured towards the direction where, most likely, the wedding breakfast was now proceeding without them, “has no heirs, and suddenly I appeared. It was a surprise to both of us. He declared that I was what he had sought ever since his wife’s death—a successor for the Academy—”
“He wished to make you the heiress to the Academy?” Darcy was genuinely astonished. Mr Clinton was not a man to entrust such fortune and influence to anyone lightly; Elizabeth had impressed, conquered, convinced him.
“Yes. And the succession, if made by will, would have been laborious and not without danger—”
“He has near relations still.”
“Precisely.”
“And so marriage was the simplest means of making you his heiress. And you accepted his proposal?”
Elizabeth shook her head, and the discovery that she had not been engaged made him unspeakably happy.
“You radiate pure arrogance,” she said, looking at him, “you will never be rid of it. You were engaged to Lady Elizabeth, and I must live with that, but the gentleman is triumphant, for he shall have been my first fiancé—”
“I am odious,” he admitted, drawing her close to his breast to kiss her. Elizabeth nodded, but once in his arms, she forgave him everything. Yet again, he would not prolong the pleasure.
“Well?” he urged.
“And he gave me time for reflection, but one day I saw that he and Mary—”
“Oh, heavens!” Darcy understood at once.
“I do not know if their love is this…,” she said, motioning to the space between them, where love existed as truly as within their hearts and bodies, “but it is certain that he came to me and told me the truth—about Mary—that he admired her, and believed the sentiment to be returned. He begged me to keep his proposal for ever secret, lest Mary should learn of it.”
“And now you tell me,” he answered with playful reproach.
“Yes—but if you reveal it to anyone, I shall break the engagement. And speaking of broken engagements…?”
Darcy smiled and nodded. “You were saved by the affection between Mary and Mr C; I—”
He paused, looking at her, how impatient she was to hear the truth, “Speak, do not let me wait, in the name of God!” And though Elizabeth had changed much, she was still the woman he had first seen in the Meryton assembly room—spirited, proud, a little prejudiced, no matter what—and that delighted him more than anything. He needed passion, and passion did not spring from composure and decorum.
“Richard and Lady Elizabeth, in their turn, fell in love.”
