Looking into her intended’s deep eyes, seeing the sincere care for her, she could not come up with a single question. “Thank you,” she finally said.
He said, “You are very welcome,” and he squeezed her hands.
Unsurprisingly,later, when Fitzwilliam was not distracting her with his touch, she did come up with questions. She decided to record the questions so she would be able to ask even if he was chuckling in his delightfully rumbly way, or looking so warmly at her with his deep, dark eyes, or shaking that one dark curl off his forehead for the tenth time, or using any of the other thoroughly unfair distraction tactics on her.
She wrote, “Do you own Netherfield Park?” That one was just silly—she knew who owned it, a man named Bertrand Harrison.
Thinking a bit, she wrote, “Did you tell the Gardiners that you would be coming to Hertfordshire?”
One of the things she had wondered about a while ago was the coincidence of Fitzwilliam travelling with especially gentle horses at this time. Had she written to Georgiana about her fear of riding?
She wrote, “Did you know I was afraid of riding?”
Considering the fact that Fitzwilliam had connections to three people who had rented Netherfield, she wrote, “Did you encourage Mr Harrison to lease Netherfield to Mrs Popkins, Miss Garfield, and Mr Bingley?”
She felt ridiculous—the entire project of asking these questions seemed suspect, now. However, Elizabeth knew that the coincidences had been stacking up, and she did wish to take advantage of Fitzwilliam’s offer to answer any question honestly.
The ridinglessons had been suspended, but for now Misty and Lady lived in Longbourn’s stables. One of Fitzwilliam’s stablehands had come to Longbourn for the duration of the horses’ visit. When Mr Bingley and Fitzwilliam called these days, each often rode with his preferred Bennet sister. Mary sometimes enlisted Jane and Elizabeth to ride to Netherfield so that she could practice jumping enclosures; those days Mr Bingley and Fitzwilliam rode the Netherfield trails with the ladies while Mary was chaperoned by a maid, aided by Melvin, and supervised by the stable master.
Elizabeth had been enjoying her rides with Fitzwilliam too much to have much desire to pose her questions. She was a bit embarrassed by how odd those questions were and continually put off the awkward discussion. And yet….
One morning, she realised that Fitzwilliam had re-entered her life at that Meryton assembly about a month ago, and they had been betrothed for more than a fortnight. Their wedding, which she had begged her father to schedule sooner than his original plan, would occur in a week. It was high time that she asked her questions.
Planning ahead, she had packed Misty’s saddle bags with a quilt, her list of questions, some Chelsea buns, and a bottle of cider. The moment Fitzwilliam arrived, she asked if he wished to join her on a long ride, and he agreed, and so they set out that afternoon under skies filled with bright sunshine, chilly breezes, and autumnal coloured leaves.
They took the road rather than the orchard path, but when the road entered the forest, Elizabeth guided Misty off onto a small, steep path. It wound its way over to the backside of Oakham Mount, and when they had climbed about halfway up the hill, there was a level area, a field filled with golden grasses and the year’s very last blooms.
Elizabeth smiled at Fitzwilliam’s bemused expression as she spread the quilt onto the bending grasses. When she got out the food and bottle of cider, he said, “This is nice.”
It was nice. The Chelsea buns were sweet and still warm, the cider was sweet and still cool. Elizabeth loved being with Fitzwilliam, and she loved being outdoors; thus, the small picnic tasted especially delicious.
Then she brought out the paper. Fitzwilliam’s eyebrows jumped a bit. He looked as if he was eager to be amused by whatever she had brought.
“Do not expect poetry or wordplay, Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth said, “I merely wrote down my questions—which you promised to answer honestly, if you recall. I needed them in written form so that I will not forget how to think because of your—” she waved her hand up and down “—all of this.”
He pulled her close. “Oh, I thought it was my all-of-this—” and he kissed her— “that impacted your ability to reason.” He kissed her again
When they broke apart, panting, she replied, “I believe it is your person, your words, your actions, and your very presence that are my downfall.”
“I would wish to be an aid to upward climbing rather than downward falling,” he murmured.
“We will see, Mr Distraction. My first question is quite ridiculous, I suppose. Do you own Netherfield Park?”
She looked at him with full confidence of his negative answer, ready with the follow-up questions of whether or not he somehow paid Mr Harrison to lease the property to people in need. Those questions sounded quite mad, as well.
But he sat up straighter, surprise writ on his face for a moment before he adopted a neutral expression, and he stared into her eyes. Finally, he replied, “Yes.”
Feeling flummoxed, Elizabeth just asked, “You do?”
“Yes.”
“You own Netherfield Park?”
He smiled his most crooked smile—the one that made him look a bit like a rogue—and he answered, “Are you going to ask every question three times?… Yes, I own Netherfield Park.”
“I thought Mr Harrison owned it.”
“That is not a question, but I will answer all the same, just to prove to you how amazingly cooperative I am. The answer is, Mr Harrison used to own Netherfield, but I purchased it from him.”
