“Every word.”
The intensity of his answer made her pulse flutter. She lowered her gaze for one moment, then looked back up at him. “I am now prepared to give you an answer.”
He stared at her.
For a second, hope seemed too much for him to trust. “Do you mean—” He stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “Miss Elizabeth, do you mean that you—”
She smiled and gave the smallest nod.
“Yes.”
The word was barely more than breath, but he heard it. She knew he heard it because his whole face altered, the restraint of weeks breaking beneath a joy so sudden and naked that Elizabeth’s own eyes stung.
Then she lifted her brows. “Though I must insist upon the question being asked properly again. I cannot be expected to give a final answer to a proposal that was previously refused and delivered in such a torrent that I scarcely knew where duty ended and Mr. Collins began.”
His smile came slowly, almost helplessly. “You found fault with my eloquence?”
“I found myself in want of a map.”
“That is fair.”
“Therefore, if you still wish to hear my answer, you must ask again. At a suitable time. With considerably fewer references to Mr. Collins.”
“None,” he said at once. “I shall mention him not at all.”
“That would be a great improvement.”
He stepped nearer, not enough to draw notice from the room but enough that his voice could drop to a whisper meant only for her. “Then you may depend upon it, Miss Elizabeth. I shall ask again, properly, and I shall spend every moment until then imagining the answer.”
His breath brushed warm near her ear, light as a touch, and Elizabeth felt a startled flutter pass through her from throat to fingertips.
She ought to have stepped back at once.
Instead, for the space of one heartbeat, she remained where she was, the sound of the household fading around them while his words settled into her like a promise.
Then Hill appeared with Darcy’s coat, and the moment broke.
Elizabeth moved away, cheeks warm and smile barely contained, while Darcy accepted his coat with a composure that would have convinced anyone who had not seen the happiness still shining in his eyes.
As he left with the Netherfield party, Elizabeth stood beside Jane in the doorway and watched the carriage roll into the dark.
Jane slipped an arm through hers. “Lizzy?”
Elizabeth looked at her sister and smiled.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Jane’s face lit with understanding, and together they watched until the carriage lamps disappeared down the drive.
Chapter 27
Two days passed before Darcy could ask the question properly.
He would have asked the very next morning had the weather not turned against him with all the malice of November. Rain fell in gray, relentless sheets, drumming upon Netherfield’s windows, flooding the lanes, and reducing even Bingley’s eagerness to call at Longbourn into a reluctant admission that Miss Bennet would hardly thank him for bringing half the weather into her mother’s drawing room.
Darcy bore the delay badly.
He wrote three versions of what he meant to say, rejected all of them, and spent half an hour staring at a fourth until Richard came into the library, took one look at him, and asked whether he was composing a declaration of love or a peace treaty between hostile nations.
