He reached out and traced the queen. “Elizabeth, you captured my heart in even fewer moves than that.” His finger moved to the king. “But this drawing is not solely about that morning. It is about everything that came after. The conversations that drew us closer, the gradual understanding that what began as a duel had become a courtship—no, more than that. Had become love.” He finally looked up to meet her eyes and found them bright with unshed tears. “This is what I have been trying to tell you all along. You are my equal, Elizabeth. You are my match.”
He took both her gloved hands in his, holding them as carefully as he had held the drawings. “The queen to my king. The woman I love. The woman I want to stand beside in unity for the rest of my life.”
“Fitzwilliam,” she whispered, his name a prayer on her lips.
He sank to one knee before her, looking up at her with every ounce of love and devotion he possessed.
“Elizabeth Bennet. You challenge me. You surprise me. You make me want to be better than I am. You trusted me when you had every reason not to. You chose me. You see me, not my fortune, my status, or my connections, but me.” His voice broke slightly. “I am irrevocably, completely, desperately in love with you. Will you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”
Elizabeth simply stared at him, tears streaming down her face, her hands trembling in his. Then she sank to kneel before him until they were face to face, eye to eye, equal to equal.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will marry you. I will be queen to your king.”
“Elizabeth…” His heart expanded in his chest.
“I love you, Fitzwilliam,” she said, reaching up to cup his face. “I think I have loved you since you kept vigil outside Jane’s door all night. Or perhaps since you told me about your sister with such pain and trust. Or perhaps since that morning when you brought a sword to a chess match because you did not understand the rules but came anyway because I demanded it. Or perhaps…” Her smile was tremulous and beautiful. “Perhaps since the moment you looked at me across that chessboard with shock and delight, and I realized you were not at all what I expected. Or, it could have happened when I saw you strolling toward me, a brace of pistols in your hand at first light.”
Darcy could not help himself. He closed the small distance between them and kissed her. It was not a careful kiss or a tentative one. It was desperate and joyful and full of all theemotion that had been building between them since that first night at the assembly.
Her hands slid into his hair, pulling him closer. His arms wrapped around her waist, holding her as if he would never let go.
When they finally broke apart, Darcy rested his forehead against hers.
“I do not deserve you,” he whispered. “But I swear to you, Elizabeth, I will spend every day of my life trying to be worthy of the trust you have placed in me.”
“You already are,” she said. “I only needed to see it clearly.”
Darcy helped her to her feet, noticing with some alarm the state of her gown, wrinkled and dusty from kneeling on the floor.
“Your mother will…”
“Let her,” Elizabeth said with a laugh. “Let the whole world see. I do not care. I am engaged to Fitzwilliam Darcy, and that is worth any amount of wrinkles.”
“Engaged,” he repeated, testing the word and finding it perfect. “You are going to marry me.”
“I am.”
When they opened the door, Mr. Bennet extended his hand. “Before you ask, you have my permission and my blessing.”
Pleased beyond measure, Darcy turned toward Elizabeth. “When?”
“Soon,” Elizabeth said, tucking the nine pieces into her reticule.
“What will we do with those?” he asked. “They are yours, but…”
“They are ours,” Elizabeth interrupted. “They tell our story. Perhaps we should keep them at Pemberley, where we can look at them and remember how we found each other.”
The casual way she spoke of their future, as if it were already real, made Darcy’s heart swell with an emotion too large to contain. He kissed her again.
“Come, you two.” Mr. Bennet gestured toward the ballroom. “I have had enough excitement for the evening. Our friends and family will wonder what has become of us.”
Elizabeth took Darcy’s arm. He was engaged to the only woman he would ever love. He found his equal, everything he had hoped for, dreamed of.
She was far more precious than ink and watercolor. She was everything.
The momentthey entered the ballroom, every eye turned to them. It was impossible not to notice—Darcy’s hand possessively on Elizabeth’s arm, the way they stood close together, the wrinkles in her gown, the barely contained contentment radiating from them both.
Miss Bingley’s expression was murderous. Elizabeth’s mother looked as if she might swoon from excitement. Jane’s smile was radiant. Both Charlotte and Colonel Fitzwilliam simply grinned knowingly.
