He held his breath, but would have exhaled in relief if he had but known he could not have proposed to her any more perfectly. This proposal made her forget the first one altogether!
“I know that I want you to share my life with me, the good and the bad. It is true that you have a huge fortune, that you are wealthier than I am, but I do not need your wealth, I have more than enough for the two of us and any children we may have in the future if you accept me. I have told you how much I love and respect you, but your thoughts and feelings are much more important to me than my own.
“I truly believe we were formed for each other, Elizabeth. It is the only way that I can explain it. My heart whispers that to me continually when we are together or parted, and I never want to be parted from you again,” Darcy took a deep breath. “If you agree, and if your feelings come close to or matching mine then my dearest, loveliest Elizabeth, I want to properly confess my everlasting and most ardent love to you and ask that you make me the happiest of men and consent to marry me, to be my helpmeet, my wife.” He was concerned when tears started to roll down Elizabeth’s cheeks. Darcy was about to apologise when she pulled him up off his knee and as he stood, she rose onto her tip-toes and placed a chaste kiss on his lips. ‘Does this mean what I think it does?’ Darcy thought as he froze.
“Yes, William, yes, a million times yes, I will marry you. I love you so much I could burst with joy and love. I did not realise it at the time, but almost from our first meeting I have been falling in love with you. My reaction to your insult was out of hurt, and then I looked for reasons to find you lacking. But while an important piece of our history, I do not want the past defining our relationship. I admitted to myself that I loved you around the time of Richard and Jane’s wedding. When I see how patient you are with my sisters, your sister, and all the rest of the family, how genuine you are, I am lost. You have demonstrated respect for me in our debates and discussions where you have treated me as an intellectual equal rather than a woman to be merely tolerated. You humbled yourself before me, my family, and yours. I know that you have the capacity to grow and that the changes that you have made are real, not transitory.
“When we played chess, you truly played against me and I have never detected any animus when I beat you.” She arched an eyebrow in challenge as he remained silent on his inferiority to her in chess. “Another thing that convinced me of how worthy and honourable a man you are was seeing your interaction with servants. Both yours and others. You treat them with respect, not disdain. How could I not love you? When you look at me, I see the love and esteem that I require in my husband radiating from your eyes. So yes, William, I will marry you, I want to marry you, and I too feel that you are my soulmate, the part of me I have been missing. I do not need a longer courtship to find out what I have known for a while, that you are the only man that I want, need, to marry.” Elizabeth’s smile continued to grow as his spread to show his dimples.
Darcy was overjoyed at her answer. There was a time when he had allowed despair to rule his head, a time that he believed he would never hear the words that she had just uttered. “Do you prefer Elizabeth or Lizzy?” He asked, his eyes glowing with happiness.
“Either, my love,” she informed him as she looked up into his eyes. Her response sounded like music to his ears. His head moved closer to hers as she on tiptoes moved toward him and they shared a second chaste kiss as their lips lightly brushed. They pulled apart for a second and then they were drawn to each other again. Their lips met again in a longer, deeper, and more passionate kiss that held the promise of more to come in the future.
Having waited so long, he could not hold himself under the full regulation as he had intended. Darcy parted her lips, slipping his tongue between them to taste her as he had so ached to do for a year, groaning when she willingly conceded the field to him and counterattacked with her own. They would have stayed in this aspect for much longer had they not heard Charlotte clear her throat.
“I do hope I am interrupting the kiss following a successful proposal, not the one trying to convince you to say yes, Eliza,” Charlotte teased. The couple blushed furiously but being a woman who prefers banter to embarrassment, Elizabeth’s eyes locked on her oldest friend outside of Jane and Mary.
“No, Charlotte. You interrupted the after effects of a proposal I most joyously accepted. It is something new I thought I would try out. Since he seems the most adamant about the winning of my hand, I gave it to him,” Lizzy teased back.
“Thank goodness you did, because Eliza if that was your refusal, then it was no wonder why he asked again and soon all the men in the land will be lining up to propose to you.” Charlotte smiled sweetly as Elizabeth laughed.
“I knew how it would be, Master William. I truly believe you will be ever so happy together and I know that Lady Elizabeth will be the perfect mistress of your estates and homes.” Mrs Reynolds clapped her hands and a tear of happiness rolled down her cheek as she looked from one to the other. The housekeeper and Charlotte left the library, with the door open so that the betrothed couple could talk.
“I need to travel to Hertfordshire to ask your father’s blessing, my love,” Mr Darcy warned his Elizabeth that he would have to depart soon.
“No, actually, you do not!” she countered archly, “you only have to ride as far as Dovedale. My Papa could see that I was in love with you even before I admitted it to myself. Before we departed, he talked to me and I acknowledged that if you asked me to be your wife that I would accept you, hence, he gave Uncle Edward leave to act in his stead.”
“In that case,” Darcy’s excitement started to grow as he began to realise his betrothal could become official days earlier than he had believed possible, “I will away to your Uncle now.” Before he could leave, he noticed that his betrothed was frowning. “Elizabeth, why are you sad on such a happy day?”
“I was just realising that after I took you to task for being a hypocrite that I am guilty of the same, William. I feel so ashamed at being so selfish for having made you wait so long to renew your addresses all because I refused to live in the present. I knew that you were aching to pay your addresses and I still did nothing to alleviate your suffering. You are such a good man who was so very patient with me.” Elizabeth was on the verge of taking herself to task. “I deserve to be censured by you, I…”
“Elizabeth,” Darcy’s saying of her name focused her on him instead. “You were neither hypocritical nor were you selfish in waiting to allow me to renew my addresses. You had every cause to doubt me, and I can fully understand that you had to be sure,” he replied with gentleness and generosity she felt she little deserved. “If I were the man I was before, my arrogance and pride would not have allowed me to understand. I do not believe that you were trying to hurt me by intention, rather that you had to remove all doubt from your mind, and I would rather that you accept me with no doubt, than with even a little sliver of uncertainty. Do you not know that there was no wait too long for me if I were to win your heart?”
“Thank you for acquitting me so quickly,” she replied ruefully, “but I ignored my own advice to leave the past in the past and look to the future. You are a much better man than I had so far given you credit for. Allow me to feel the vexation and shame at my behaviour that I believe is my due!” Elizabeth tried to explain her thinking and why it hurt her that she had hurt him. “I knew by the time that we left Hertfordshire that I was in love with you, I could have relieved your suffering a fortnight earlier at least!” She was ashamed of her actions and looking at her feet as she spoke.
“Lady Elizabeth Bennet, look at me right now!” Darcy raised the timbre of his voice to gain her attention and raise her eyes off the floor, “Elizabeth,” he murmured as he gently lifted her chin so their eyes met. He was compassionate and loving as she indulged in a moment of self-doubt, “I am not as good as you seem to think I am. Everything good that you say I am now is because you challenged me to be better. Had you not pointed out my failings at Hunsford, God only knows what kind of man I would be today, let alone ten years from now. Before you pointed out my hypocrisy, I, in my blind attempt to win your hand, was totally ignorant to your dislike of me. My eyes had been clouded by pride and self-importance as I unconsciously emulated the last person in the world that I should have.” His voice hitched when he swallowed the words on his tongue as he refused to mention his aunt by name.
“Now every morning that I awake starts with the pleasure of thanking God that He sent you to me so you could help me be a better man. I give thanks for how my life has improved. You saw me, not my wealth, not for my possessions, nor my position in society, none of which you need from me! You saw a man with the same shortcomings of any other human, and with all of that, you have grown to love me, fallibility and all. It is I who should admitmyselfishness. Many may have noticed these same faults, but it was only you that had the fortitude and courage to point them out to my face. I am only amazed that with all of my failings that you are able to love me,” he pointed out to her.
Elizabeth worried her lip, searching his eyes, which still held hers. She started with surprise when she noticed a tear roll down his cheek conveying the strength of his feelings, and to soothe his distress and her own she tentatively claimed his much larger hand in her petite one, interlacing her fingers with his. “Can you not see?” she asked softly. “I could not love you if it werenotfor your shortcomings. William, look at how you overcame them. As I watched you climb the mountain of change, it showed me your constancy and love. I saw a man who will doanythingto fight for those he loves, to show them that he loves and cares for them. How many men would not have turned tail and ran as far as they could to put as much distance between themselves and the harridan who took them to task as I did to you?
“Youstayed. You publicly acknowledged each point, and then corrected those faults I highlighted. I am not looking for a perfect man to love; perfection is something that only God and His Son Jesus have attained. Were you not the man that you have become, my love for you could never be! With your every decision, every action, every conversation you acknowledge and value those around you whether they are in your circle, our circle, of friends or not. The more I saw of the true you, the more I fell in love. How could I not when you were willing to make such an effort, and your promise that it was not just for my benefit, but your desire to become the man your parents had tried to guide you to be? Was not your very willingness to change the ultimate act of absolute unselfish love? Yes, we would be cousins by Jane’s marriage to Richard, but no more than that had both of us not become the people we are today. Do you not see that I loveyou, William? I love the man that has proven he is willing to change and become my better half as I hope to always be able to do for you. You are exactly the man I have always wished to win the love of! I have accepted you as you are today, not some idealized version of you,” she stated while offering a watery smile and waited for his response.
“That perfectly describes my love for you, my dearest, loveliest Lady Elizabeth. Your self-proclaimed imperfections of your quick temper and your propensity to make snap judgements is what forced me to look in the mirror and become the man that my dearly departed parents, and the rest of my family, always wanted me to be, had hoped that I would become.” As he spoke, he wished that his parents could have been there to see the man that he was today. Contentment washed over him to know they were watching over him from their heavenly home, but he still missed their physical presence each and every day.
“I love you, William,” his betrothed exhaled in a rush. “It is so very easy for some to say the words, but I say them to you with the greatest feeling, and in the deepest, truest meaning they can be expressed.”
“Perhaps it is because of its simplicity that the word ‘love’ can express such a wide range of emotions. I care not for the meaning of the word, just that it is the only word I know that is adequate to express the indescribable depth of feeling I have for you Elizabeth. I love you, my Lizzy!” Darcy vowed again.
He gently pushed the same errant curl from her face and leaned in until their lips met, with this kiss they could acknowledge that no matter how unlikely it once seemed that the love that each held for the other transcended the boundaries they had once believed were the limits of their own feelings into a deeper love that would take them a lifetime, an eternity, to explore and revel in together. They made a silent vow to follow Elizabeth’s philosophy in which they would ‘think of the past only as that remembrance gives pleasure,’ and from that day they both held to the pledge.
‘He is the best part of me,”Elizabeth thought.‘He could have made me pay a heavy price in mortification for my own hypocrisy, but he did not. I had thought three minutes ago I loved him as much as I know how, and he has gifted me with the chance to learn how to love him with even more depth!’
Not long after, they heard the dulcet sounds of the girls in the halls. If the girls had been loud when Lizzy and Charlotte had arrived, that had been but a whisper next to the crescendo produced from the six of them when they heard the news. Five would be sisters and Lily a cousin to them all!
“Oh my, I am to be related to royalty!” Georgiana gasped and Darcy chuckled, then called for Zeus to be saddled, intending to make a beeline for Dovedale.
After galloping almost the whole way, in well under an hour Fitzwilliam Darcy was shown into the study of Sir Edward Gardiner, prospective uncle. It did not take a soothsayer to divine the question that the man was there to ask. Gardiner, unlike his partner in business and brother Bennet would certainly have done, did not toy with Darcy.
