“He comes every evening,” said Mr. Darcy with a sigh.
Mr. Wickham shook his head at me. “I am surprised at you, Miss Bennet, I must say. Word that he proposed to you this afternoon spread quickly, and I was stunned to hear that you had accepted. When you and I spoke of him—”
“What can I say, Mr. Wickham?” I said. “Mr. Darcy quite improves as one gets to know him.”
“Improves in essentials?” said Mr. Wickham.
“In essentials, he remains the same,” I said. “But he is essentially a person devoted to the people he is responsible to.”
Mr. Darcy smiled as I said that.
Mr. Wickham scoffed. “You accept his money, notjusthis hand, Miss Bennet, let’s not play games. And speaking of money…” He raised his eyebrows at Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Darcy groaned. “You know, George, I am quite bored with this conversation, I must say.” He reached into his pocket and came out with a coin purse. He counted out coins into Wickham’s palm. “There. Now go.”
Wickham squinted at the money, shrugged at Mr. Darcy and then shrugged at me. “Have a pleasant evening, Willie my boy.” He loped out of the sitting room.
I watched him go. When he had disappeared, I said, “Have you been killing him?”
“Would you believe, no, I haven’t had the stomach for it? It seems foolish, really, in the end. If I could punish him in some way that would change his ways, that would have some point. If I could end him, so that he could hurt no one else, that might have some purpose, also. But it will all reset in the morning, so there is no reason to do anything to him, anything at all.”
“I thought you wished to do it for your own satisfaction,” I said.
“I take no pleasure in violence,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “That is good. You are a good man, Will Darcy.”
“I am whatever pleases Elizabeth.”
I beamed at him.
“I have noticed your family calls you Lizzy,” he said. “Is that a name only meant for them?”
“You may call me that if you like,” I said.
“If it pleases you,” he said.
I crossed the room to him. “I think… we should go. What would please me is to travel, to take advantage of all we could see and do on this Thursday. If it will be Thursday forevermore, then there are ever so many Thursdays we could experience. No reason to stay here and ask for my hand in marriage over and over.”
“All right,” he said. “Then on the morrow, you wish to set off?”
“I thought I might as well stay here. What is it like when you wake up here in the morning?”
“Oh, the servants are quite confused,” he said. “With you here, it will be even more confusing. But I shall speak to someone about making up a room for you.”
“I thought…” I shifted on my feet. “I thought you’d be abed already. I was going to climb in with you, actually.”
He coughed.
“I know,” I said. “But I thought, if we’re traveling together, we must get past this.”
“What happened to the idea of not asking for that for your amusement?”
“Well, we don’t have to dothat,” I said. “We can simply sleep near one another, however. This way, if we must share a bed during our travels, we have already done it and it will not be difficult.”
He coughed again.
I furrowed my brow. “All right, you don’t agree.”
