She considered the question with the seriousness it deserved. "Yes," she said. "But I am beginning to think that the things most worth having are the things that frighten us most."
He reached for her hand. Slowly, deliberately, giving her time to pull away. She did not pull away. His fingers closed around hers, and the contact -- bare skin to bare skin, no gloves, not in the cold night garden -- was electric, a circuit completed, a current that ran through both of them.
"You are the handsomest woman of my acquaintance," he said. "I believe I mentioned that in the letter."
"You did. I was not sure whether to be flattered or annoyed."
"Which did you choose?"
"Both." She smiled, and the smile was a new thing, not her sharp smile or her defensive smile or the polite smile she wore in company, but something softer, unguarded, a smile she had not shown anyone before. "I chose both, Mr. Darcy, because you have the singular talent of inspiring contradictory emotions simultaneously."
He laughed. The sound surprised him -- it was not a sound he made often, and in the silence of the garden it felt like a confession. She looked at him with that new expression, the warm one, the one that made his chest ache, and she laughed too, a genuine, delighted sound that wound itself around his laughter and became something larger than either.
They stood in the garden laughing together, their hands linked, the cold air turning their breath to mist, and for the first time since the library at Netherfield, Darcy felt something that was not guilt or fear or desperate longing.
He felt hope.
They walked back to the assembly rooms in companionable silence, their hands still joined, and when they reached the door and propriety required them to separate, she squeezed his fingers once before releasing them.
"Goodnight, Mr. Darcy."
"Goodnight, Miss Bennet."
The formality was gentle now, a game rather than a wall, and the smile she gave him over her shoulder as she walked back into the light was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He stood in the cold for a long time, his hand still warm where hers had been, and thought: I could live on that smile. For the rest of my life, I could live on that smile alone.
He did not think he would have to.
Chapter 7: The Rainstorm
The rain began at three o'clock, a curtain of grey that fell across Hertfordshire with the suddenness of a stage effect. Elizabeth and Jane had been at Netherfield since noon, ostensibly visiting to discuss wedding plans, actually because Jane wanted to see Bingley and Elizabeth had discovered that she wanted, with a new and startling urgency, to see Darcy.
This was Jane's doing. Not intentionally -- Jane did not scheme -- but her gentle persistence had worn Elizabeth's resistance to a polished nub. "You are happy when you see him," Jane had said that morning, with the devastating simplicity of a woman who believed the world was generally good. "Why deny yourself happiness?"
Elizabeth had opened her mouth to list reasons and found, for the first time in her life, that she had none.
The rain made departure impossible. Bingley declared it a providential event and ordered rooms prepared with an enthusiasm that bordered on transparent, while Caroline observed the arrangements with the sour expression of a woman watching her home invaded by the enemy.
"It seems you are stranded again, Miss Eliza," Caroline said. "How unfortunate. One hopes this evening will be less eventful than your last overnight stay at a ball."
"One can hope," Elizabeth agreed pleasantly. "Though I find that eventful evenings tend to produce the most interesting results."
Caroline's smile could have curdled cream. She retreated to her rooms with Mrs. Hurst, and the evening settled into a quiet domestic tableau: Bingley and Jane in the drawing room, talking softly over the fire, and Elizabeth wandering the corridors of Netherfield with a restlessness she could not name.
She found the library.
Of course she found the library. The room pulled at her like a magnet, or a memory, or both. She pushed open the door and stepped inside, and the scent of leather and old paper hit her with the force of a physical recollection: his hands in her hair, his mouth on her throat, the sound he made when she pulled him closer.
The fire was burning this time, bright and steady, casting the room in amber. Rain hammered against the windows, a percussive backdrop that made the room feel enclosed, intimate, a world unto itself. She ran her fingers along the spines of the books and tried not to think about the last time she had been in this room and failed utterly.
She heard his step before she heard his voice. She was learning his particular footfall: measured, deliberate, the stride of a man who was always aware of where he stood.
"I thought I might find you here," Darcy said from the doorway.
"This seems to be our room."
"Does it?" He entered, closing the door behind him. Not all the way. A crack of light remained, a concession to propriety or its ghost. "I had not thought of it that way."
