“How are we to live through these years?” she asked suddenly. “People will talk.” She imagined the gossip that would enmesh their lives as a hideous spider’s web.
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
He held her closer.
“Then we shall think only of ourselves. The world may say what it pleases.”
“We must join, Papa.”
He nodded, for the first time worried since he saw her.
Elizabeth gently smoothed the furrow from his brow, seeking to calm him with that tender gesture. “I know it will not be easy.”
“With your father?” he asked, scarcely recalling the man he had met a year before, and whom he had never truly known.
“No, with the world.”
“Then we shall take each day as it comes. This time, I have a plan. We shall speak with your parents—they will understand, and advise us well.”
“You need not fear, Mama,” Elizabeth said, a fleeting recollection of his former opinions crossing her mind, though it held little weight now. “She would never act against us.”
“I must ask your pardon for what I said at Hunsford. There are no perfect families—and mine is no exception.”
“But we must tell Mama only what is necessary...if necessary you can have a more consistent conversation with my father.”
He understood her perfectly; they needed to be sincere with the family. Yet some things would remain between them alone.
“Will you ever forgive me…for Hunsford?” she asked, just before leaving the room.
“Perhaps not,” he replied. “You must begin and end each day by asking my pardon.”
In the darkness, she did not blush—for it was exactly what she meant to do.
To live with him.
∞∞∞
Mr Bennet did not blink at their visible elation. Silently, he shook hands with Mr Darcy, and they quitted the house together.
“Things are not as I would wish them to be,” said Darcy in the carriage, and the sadness in his voice tempered much of Mr Bennet’s doubt and concern regarding the man who professed to love his beloved Elizabeth.
“They never are, Mr Darcy. It is what life does best—to astonish us, and sometimes even to alarm us.” He spoke with a calm, reassuring composure that drew a look of gratitude from Darcy.
“You are quite right, sir.”
“And when Lizzy is involved…well, it becomes even more difficult.”
They both smiled as they looked at her, and she blushed, overcome by a happiness she would not have believed possible even two hours before.
“But wonderful,” Darcy murmured, before helping her out of the carriage.
Chapter 20
Longbourn received them with Mrs Bennet’s voice already raised from the parlour.
“We dine at five, young lady. Where have you been?”
