“A fair bargain.”
“Or anything foolish.”
“That is a far more difficult condition.”
“I suspected it might be.”
His gaze warmed, and Elizabeth felt again that curious sensation of being understood and challenged at once. Therehad been men who admired Jane’s beauty, men who laughed at Lydia’s liveliness, men who tolerated Mary’s solemnity and Kitty’s giggles, men who spoke to Elizabeth because she was convenient or amusing. But Mr. Darcy listened as though every turn of phrase might reveal something worth knowing.
She had not known how much she wanted to be listened to until he did it.
The thought frightened her enough to make her glance toward the door.
“I truly should return to Jane soon.”
“At once, if you wish it.”
There was no pressure in his voice, no attempt to detain her. That made her want, perversely, to stay.
“Not at once,” she said. “Mrs. Nicholls granted half an hour.”
“You choose to extend your ten-minute compromise, then?”
“It was only a compromise on my end; Mrs. Nicholls had no notion of my desire to leave.”
“Then twenty minutes remain.”
“You count very strictly.”
“I was a soldier. Time mattered.”
“And now?”
“Now,” he said, looking at the book in his hand, “I find I value it more when it is not commanded.”
Elizabeth understood that more than she wished. So much of her own life had been ordered by necessity—Longbourn’s accounts, her mother’s nerves, her father’s indifference, her sisters’ futures, Netherfield’s secrecy, the Gardiner children’s care. To sit in a quiet library and speak with a man who did not require her to be useful every moment felt like a luxury she had not known enough to desire.
“How do you do with un-commanded time, Mr. Darcy?”
“Badly, I suspect.”
She smiled. “That is not an answer.”
“It is an honest one. I am out of practice.”
“With leisure?”
“With choosing pleasure without first justifying its usefulness.”
There was no self-pity in his tone, only truth, and Elizabeth’s heart softened in spite of all her caution. She thought of everything Susie had told her: the debts, the tenants, the militia, the closed rooms at Pemberley, the sister he loved and could not yet fully bring home. Mr. Darcy’s pride might be real, but so were his burdens.
“Then perhaps you should begin with small pleasures,” she said.
“Such as foolish essays?”
“Precisely. Foolish essays, quiet fires, and tea that has gone cold because the conversation proved more interesting.”
He glanced at her cup. “Your tea has indeed gone cold.”
