Darcy stared at her.
Elizabeth looked up at him with every feeling she possessed and smiled through the tears gathered on her lashes.
“Yes, Mr. Darcy,” she whispered. “Of course I will.”
For one suspended moment, he did not move.
Then his eyes closed briefly, as if gratitude had struck him too deeply for speech. When he opened them again, he glanced once toward the garden path, then back at her, and something warmer than joy entered his face.
They were hidden enough.
Only just.
Darcy reached for her with exquisite care, as though even in happiness he would give her every chance to step away. Elizabeth did not. She went into his arms, and the moment they closed around her, the world changed.
She had been embraced before. Jane held her often. Lydia flung her arms about people when she was pleased. Kittyclung when she was frightened, and even Mrs. Bennet, on rare occasions, had pulled Elizabeth close in a rush of nerves and feeling. Her father had done so only a handful of times in memory, usually when she was very small and he wished to reward some clever answer.
This was nothing like any of those.
She rested her cheek against his chest and felt the steady, rapid beat of his heart beneath her ear. His arms were firm around her, warm and careful and strong enough that for the first time in longer than she could remember, Elizabeth did not feel as though she must hold herself upright by will alone. She could lean. She could breathe. She could be held without being managed, protected without being restrained, loved without being made smaller.
It was safety, but not the dull safety of walls and locked doors. It was warmth. It was aliveness. It was the scent of clean linen, wool, and the faint trace of the outdoors clinging to his coat. It was the heat of him against the chill of the day, the tremble in her own hands, the strange sweet weakness in her knees, and the astonishing certainty that she had stepped into a future she wanted with her whole heart.
Darcy bent his head, his cheek brushing lightly against her hair.
“My dearest Elizabeth,” he murmured.
The words shivered through her.
She lifted her face.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, then returned to her eyes, asking without words what propriety and longing had made very difficult to say aloud. Elizabeth’s breath caught, and she did not look away.
He leaned down.
“Darcy!” Colonel Fitzwilliam’s voice rang out from somewhere beyond the hedge, much too loud and far toocheerful. “I say, have you and Miss Elizabeth disappeared into the shrubbery, or has Longbourn developed secret passages?”
Elizabeth jumped.
Darcy froze, his expression caught somewhere between desire, frustration, and reluctant amusement.
“Richard,” he muttered.
The colonel’s voice continued, deliberately nearer but still giving them every mercy of warning. “Bingley, do you see them? No? Curious. Very curious. Perhaps we should proceed slowly and make a great deal of noise, in case any innocent parties require time to emerge from botanical concealment.”
Elizabeth pressed both hands over her mouth, horrified and laughing at once.
Darcy closed his eyes for one pained second, then released her with obvious reluctance. “I am going to murder him.”
“Not before you speak to my father, if you please.”
His gaze softened immediately. “No. Not before that.”
They stepped from behind the hedge just as Colonel Fitzwilliam, Mr. Bingley, Jane, Georgiana, Kitty, and Lydia came into view along the path. Lydia saw Elizabeth’s flushed cheeks, Darcy’s expression, and the hedge behind them, and instantly began to giggle.
“La, Lizzy! What were you doing back there?”
“Lydia,” Jane said softly, though her own eyes were shining.
