Only if she chooses me, I thought. I took a deep breath. “Well, I have succeeded in the reason I have come to see you, I suppose. You say you will write her a letter to tell her that you never meant to keep her away? She will know that she has your support and the inheritance besides, and she will not feel so desperate.”
“I shall do so immediately,” she said. “I feel awful for having caused her that sort of doubt. I never had children of my own, of course, but I love Elizabeth like my own daughter. I should have told to her to come to me straightaway, I think. It was my error to think she needed to rest. I shall rectify it.”
“My thanks,” I said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Then, another agonizing two days passed before I was summoned to see Miss Bennet. I arrived at Longbourn feeling edgy and anxious, worried that she had summoned me to tell me that she had chosen Bingley’s proposal.
We were not alone, but allowed to sit together in one corner of the sitting room while the rest of her family (sans her father, since he was rarely in the same room as her mother, it seemed) and the colonel spoke on the other side of the room.
We were easily observed, but we could speak in low enough voices that we would not be overheard.
“I understand I have you to thank for restoring me to Lady Susannah,” she said.
“As it happens, no restoration was necessary,” I said. “It was only a misunderstanding.”
“Yes, happily so,” she said, smiling at me. “It does change things, because it means that I could remain unattached and that even if there are dreadful rumors about me, when I go and travel with James, no one need know.”
I regarded her. “This is important to you, traveling, is it not?”
“It has always been our plan, that is all,” she said. “I have to say, I still feel I wish to consider Mr. Bingley’s proposal, for there is something so tidy about it. But…” She let out a little laughand a pretty flush spilled over her cheeks. “But I suppose I keep thinking about that thing you said to me.”
“What thing?”
“About how you should like to please me or figure out how to please me and to do it for your whole life—I don’t remember exactly. What I remember is the way you looked at me when you said it, and the way your voice…” Her blush deepened.
“I meant it,” I said, and a hoarseness had crept into my voice.
“Yes, I do not see how it is that I say no to that,” she said. “But then… you and me… where would we be? Where would we live, sir?”
“If you wish to travel—”
“No, I am not asking you to say that you will allow me to dictate everything in our marriage, for I know that you cannot. You will have responsibilities.”
She was right, of course. I could not go gallivanting all over the globe with her, not constantly. “Well,” I said, “I have a house in London and my main house is in Derbyshire. It is called Pemberley. There are other houses in a few places. But mainly I reside at Pemberley. And London, of course. Do you wish to know what street the house is on? It is not in the most fashionable part of town, I suppose, but this changes rather too quickly—”
“No, I don’t care about fashionable streets,” she said, laughing. She was still blushing. “No, I never thought someone like me would ever have any kind of offer like that.”
“But as I say, if you want to travel, we can.”
“No, I know,” she said. “It is only that James will be here or with Mr. Bingley, I suppose. It won’t be as we planned. It will be different.”
I suddenly understood. “Is it about travel, Miss Bennet, or is it about your brother?”
Her lips parted. “Oh. What a question.” She let out a breath.
“That is why you could not choose between Bingley and me, then,” I said. “Because he would keep you close to your brother, this brother who you have grown up so close to, with whom you share all of your secrets, who shares all of his with you. This is the barrier.”
She met my gaze.
“Well, I don’t mind your brother or Bingley, as it happens,” I said. “If you wish it, I shall be quite amenable to accompanying them on whatever adventures you would like.”
The smile she gave me seemed to take over her entire visage. She was beaming. “All right, then.”
“All right, then,” I repeated, nodding.
“No, I mean, all right, then, I accept,” she said, letting out a little laugh, hand to her chest. “I shall marry you, Mr. Darcy. I shall be your wife.”
