Readable, easily and effortlessly. Elizabeth felt something break within her—not in pain, but in release. Tears came before she could prevent them. She pressed her hand lightly against her mouth, her gaze fixed upon the page as though it might vanish if she looked away.
“I can read it,” she said, her voice trembling. “I can read it.”
Darcy said nothing. He did not need to. The room had stilled.
“What is it?” Lydia demanded, already crossing the space. “What has he given you?”
Elizabeth could not speak. She simply turned the book so that the others might see.
“Oh!” Kitty exclaimed. “The print—”
“It is so large,” Mary said, stepping closer.
Lydia clapped her hands. “You can read without squinting at all!”
Georgiana’s eyes shone with serene satisfaction.
Mrs. Bennet, however, looked from one to the other with increasing confusion. “I do not understand,” she said. “Why should Mr. Darcy give you such a thing?”
Before Elizabeth could answer, Mr. Gardiner stepped forward.
“Because, madam,” he said calmly, “Mr. Darcy wrote to me some weeks ago to request permission to pay his addresses to your daughter.”
The room erupted.
Mrs. Bennet’s shriek of delight was immediate. “To Lizzy?” she cried. “To my Lizzy?” She turned upon Elizabeth at once. “And you never told me!”
Elizabeth laughed through her tears. “I had not the opportunity.”
Mr. Collins looked entirely undone. “I had always believed—” he began, then stopped, then recovered himself. “Indeed, I had anticipated such an arrangement. I may say, without undue modesty, that my influence—”
No one listened.
Darcy did not look away from Elizabeth. Nor she from him. The world had narrowed.
The joy around them, though genuine, seemed distant.
He took her hand.
“Come.”
She followed him without question.
The side room was quiet.
The door closed behind them with a soft finality that seemed to mark the moment as separate from all that had come before.
Elizabeth stood very still.
The book remained in her hands.
“I do not know how to thank you,” she said.
“You need not.”
“I do.”
Her voice trembled again.
