He swallowed a gasp at the words—his words. The opening line of the letter he had penned in a parsonage while his world burned.
“Be not alarmed,” her voice found its footing, “by the apprehension that this conversation contains any repetition of the sentiments I expressed at Hunsford. I do not intend to call you proud. I do not intend to call you ungentlemanly. I have no plans to mention your arrogance, your conceit, or your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, because I have spent two months discovering that none of those words apply to a man who dances with the sister nobody dances with and pours tea for the mother nobody endures and rides twenty-four miles to protect the family he once called an obstacle to his own happiness.”
Darcy could neither move nor breathe, compelled to stand in a hedgerow and witness Elizabeth Bennet take his letter and render it wholly unrecognizable.
“You told me, in a parsonage in Kent, that you had struggled. In vain,” Elizabeth murmured, her mouth curving into a smile that was not quite joy, but something far more. “That your feelings would not be repressed. I find myself making a similar confession. I suspect I shall make it with considerably less vanity and rather more struggle, because I am Elizabeth Bennet, and I rarely do anything gracefully that I could do with wit—and the wit is all that is keeping me upright at this moment.”
The world contracted to the space between them. Somewhere in the thorns, a blackbird sang—a sharp, liquid note marking time. Nettle sat in her hollow, the silent witness to a covenant in the making.
“You loved me, you said, against your will, against your reason, and even against your character. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” he said, his voice barely a rasp.
He would remember those words until the day he drew his final breath. They were the worst thing he had ever said and the truest thing he had ever felt, inextricably tangled, and she had heard only the arrogance, while he had been too broken to offer her anything else.
“I wish to inform you, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth continued, her breath catching as she steeled herself, “that I find myself in a similar predicament. But I must improve upon your version, because your version was frankly terrible, and I believe I can do better.”
She took a breath, like a woman standing on the edge of a precipice, deciding that the fall was worth the flight.
“I love you,” she said. The three words hung in the air, distinct and crystalline. “I love you not against my will but with every stubborn, defiant particle of it. I love you not against my reason, but because my reason has spent months assembling evidence, and the verdict is absolute. And I love you not against my character, but entirely in keeping with it. My character has always been to argue with the people I respect most, to walk through mud for the people I hold dear, and to carry home the things I find in the hedgerows that others believe are not worth saving.”
Her voice fractured on the final word—a small sound of surrender that she caught and held.
“You once asked if you were the last man in the world I would be prevailed to marry,” she said, her eyes locked onto his,unblinking, searing. “But you haven’t been for a long time. You are the first. You have been the first for longer than I dared to know, and the knowing is terrifying—it is the most terrifying thing I have ever endured. If you do not say something soon, I am going to blame this entire situation on the dog, turn my back on you, and walk home, and I shall never speak of this again.”
Darcy stood motionless. He looked at the woman before him—her hair, wild, dark waves falling over her shoulders, her shawl clutched in white-knuckled hands, her eyes bright with either tears or victory, and her heart offered without disguise, and every defense he had constructed since Hunsford dissolved like morning frost in sunlight.
“You are shaking.” He moved at last, his composure in tatters. He reached out, fingers hovering near her shawl, as if a touch might shatter the moment.
“I am shaking,” she breathed, her eyes darting to his trembling hands, “considerably.”
“You are the steadiest person I have ever known. You walked three miles through mud for your sister. You refused two proposals when you had nothing. You are standing in a hedgerow, being braver than anyone I have ever met.”
“You are deflecting with compliments. I proposed. An answer is customary.”
He didn’t answer with words. He lifted her hand, his fingers trembling slightly. He pressed his lips to the center of her palm—not the back of the hand, but the very pulse of her, the skin warm and rapid. Elizabeth’s breath hitched, a sound of pure, unadulterated release.
“Elizabeth.” He spoke the name against her skin, his breath a soft tremor. “I have loved you since Hertfordshire. I proposed to you badly in Kent. And it seems you are better at proposing than I am.”
“Would you accept or refuse? That is the question.”
He lowered himself to his knees, in the mud at the hedgerow, and looked up at her. “I would accept you in a ditch, a parsonage, and yes, I would accept you in the hedgerows where your mother predicted you would all perish, because where has never mattered. Only the who. And that has been you since I watched you cross a field with mud on your petticoats and thought, this woman will be my undoing. I was right, and the undoing has been the making of me. I accept, Elizabeth. I accept you.”
Elizabeth kissed him.
She had not planned it, but it happened. With him kneeling, she drew him into her arms and pressed her mouth to his. The kiss was brief and fierce, tasting of salt, of spring, and of the dizzying sweetness of a woman who had spent two months falling and had, at last, landed.
Darcy’s hand rose to cradle her face, his palm against her cheek, fingers threading through the dark tendrils of her hair. He kissed her back with the thoroughness of a man who had imagined this moment through a thousand solitary nights and now meant to do it justice. His attention was full, unhurried, and entirely hers.
They separated because breathing required it. Elizabeth’s face was flushed, and her eyes were impossibly bright, and Darcy did not wish to stop gazing at her, because she was the most impossible and most beautiful creature to ever grace his world.
“You have disarranged my hair,” she said.
“Your hair was escaping before I touched it.”
“I have just proposed to you, and you are critiquing my coiffure.”
“I have just accepted, and you are critiquing my critique.”
