What will she choose?
∞∞∞
Get married? Tomorrow? Without my family?
Elizabeth’s head was swimming.
Nothing felt steady.
Her parents—were not her parents. Or perhaps they were. Perhaps none of this was true at all. Lady Catherine might be mistaken. Or worse—deliberately misleading them. There was no way to prove any of it. No certainty to be had. No evidence beyond words and long-buried memories.
Blood told nothing.
Everyone’s blood was red.
She shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs from her mind.
Darcy’s shoulders slumped. “I… I see. I apologize, Elizabeth. I should not rush you.”
“No!” she blurted out, horrified at his inference. “No, you misunderstand. Just… just give a moment.”
She lifted up her eyes to meet his dark ones.
And there it was.
Not pressure. Not expectation.
Hope.
Vulnerability.
Love.
Everything else in her world felt as though it had been torn up by the roots—her family, her name, even her past—but he stood before her unchanged. Steady. Certain. Waiting, but not demanding.
He was offering himself to her—not the situation, not the circumstances—himself.
And for all the confusion swirling in her mind, that one truth rose clear above the rest:
She knew him.
She trusted him.
Shelovedhim.
And he was not asking her to solve the world.
Only to choose him.
And that—she could do.
Not because everything else was clear.
But because it wasnot.
Because when everything else had fallen away, he had remained.
Elizabeth drew in a breath, her voice steadier than she felt. “I am not uncertain of you,” she said quietly. “Only… of everything else.”
