“You practically leapt out of the shrubbery and compromised me in front of everyone, so I have no choice but to accept you!”
“Did you not once call me a wicked man?”
“I believe I meant vile, sir. Avileman. But why did you do it?” I asked, lifting my face upward.
“I have come to know you very well, Elizabeth. If there are two paths to travel, you will take the harder road. When you love, you love so deeply that I could not risk your flight into some demented notion that you would be a plague upon me. Have you begun to harbor notions of being a stoic?”
“I would dearly love to be so deep, sir, but I have the mind of an hysteric. Look at how you have reduced me to a quaking wreck. Are we truly to marry?”
“Truly. Do you need me to carry you to the house, dearest?”
I finally laughed. “If you did, you would forever corrupt my sisters’ notions of romance. No man who didnotcarry them in a swoon would then be deemed worthy.”
“I have carried you in a swoon,” he said in a heated whisper, “and hope to do so again upon occasion.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Mr. Darcy had escorted my poor, shattered person back to the house where I was teased, caressed, and scolded for keeping such a secret close and giving no one a word of warning that I had “caught” Mr. Darcy. To say it was embarrassing would do little justice to what I endured, but I clutched at little Queenie for dear life and forced myself to smile.
My mother insisted Mr. Darcy and his sister stay, but he looked at me in his penetrating and perceptive manner and said, “I believe Miss Elizabeth is developing a headache. Perhaps it would be best if we left for London, particularly at this hour. If we linger any longer, we would be forced to use lanterns on the road. Besides,” he said in a somewhat pointed manner, “I believe my sister has some notion of going on a brief holiday.”
“A holiday?” my mother demanded. “But you have only just arrivedhere!”
“I plan to go to Brighton before my presentation, ma’am, and I wondered whether I might invite Elizabeth and Miss Bennet to accompany me?”
Another surprise? Had these people no consideration for my nerves?These were my ungracious thoughts, but in truth, the moment my head no longer hurt, I could think of little I would rather do than escape Hertfordshire.
“The seaside?” Mama cried while clapping her hands, her annoyance forgot. “But how lovely for my girls to see the Pavilion!
“I shall escort them myself if Mr. Bennet will allow it,” Mr. Darcy said. “Would Monday suit?”
And just as suddenly as our visitors had been swept into Longbourn by a cold breeze, they were swept out again in short order. I staggered up to my room and fell onto my bed, and Jane—dear Jane—slipped in with a cold cloth for my eyes.
“I have cried myself sick,” I said in a pathetic rasp.
“Hush. Leave Mama to me. Hopefully, I can secure you an hour before the trunks are brought down.” She paused. “Poor Lizzy, you look done up. Are you not happy?”
“I shall be when I have recovered. What a terrible trick Mr. Darcy played upon me! I had no notion he was coming. I all but told him to give me up! And then to speak to Papa before saying a word to me—horrible man.”
She chuckled. “And if your head did not hurt, you would be laughing even now. I do not believe you disliked it.”
“Go away, Jane.”
My sister chuckled once more, kissed my forehead, put the cloth on my eyes, put a shawl on my feet, and after filling a glass with water that she set on the table next to my bed, she left me alone. I may have actually swooned then, for I remember nothing with regard to the subsequent two hours.
After dinner, while my entire wardrobe was emptied out and declared a shamble of rags for which I was wholly blamed, I slipped down to my father’s book room.
His eyes swept over me with one of his driest looks. “If you are come to rage at me, you are wasting your breath, Lizzy. I could not refuse such a man though I know you do not like him much.”
“He will make me terribly happy, Papa. He has a grand library, you know. His butler once condescended to explain to me that the collection had been amassed over generations.”
He sniffed, looked back at the page he had been reading, and spoke as though disinterested. “That is some consolation when I am forced to visit you.”
I bent down to kiss his cheek. “I dearly love you, sir.”
He sniffed again but this time from another cause, and while patting my arm and still pretending to read, he said, “If you mean to force me to some similar confession, consider it said, child.” He cleared his throat and dismissed me. “Now go upstairs, and see if you can induce your mother to cease her shouting.”
In the midst of the pandemonium of packing our trunks, being required to try on every dress, having every seam inspected, and stitching imaginary tears, I was forced to endure many a jumbled conference on the details of my wedding. The date of this stupendous event had not even been set, yet the minutiae were already of consuming, urgent interest to Mama.
