“You have gone very quiet,” he observed, his hands remaining at his sides. His gaze held hers, dark and steady and fraught with a want she was not so naïve as to mistake. Yet he stood in the hay-sweet dimness and waited.
Did he require an invitation? Elizabeth felt suddenly adrift. “I do not know what it is you want, Mr. Darcy. I have fulfilled our agreement. Little Tom offered me his wooden horse, and I intend to govern your household, perhaps not to your mother’s exacting standard, but I shall endeavor. Have I not been the wife you supposed you wanted?”
“You are more than I thought I wanted.” He swallowed and rubbed the back of his neck. “But perhaps I have not been the man you would have married had you a free choice in the matter.”
“A little late for regrets, is it not?” She heard the flippancy in her voice and chided herself for it. “Or is it an annulment you seek?”
His eyes widened, and he shook his head severely. “Never that,” he said, his voice rough and low. “I would not… I am not speaking of dissolution, Elizabeth. I am speaking of…” He ran a hand through his damp hair, looking at the rafters as though the cobwebs might offer him the words he could not assemble.“I had not thought, when I entered into this arrangement, that I would… that I did not anticipate…”
“You are doing a remarkable impression of a man with a stone in his shoe, Mr. Darcy.”
His gaze snapped back to her, and something almost like relief crossed his features at her teasing. “I am making a cake of myself.”
“You are.”
“I would wish for your affection, Elizabeth.” The words came out rough, unpolished, nothing like his usual careful speech. “But not if you do not freely give it. I would not compel you or take that which is not willingly offered. I would wait, if that is what you require.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught. He was offering her a choice, not a command. The knot in her chest eased, for he stood there, plainly longing to bridge the distance, yet refusing to claim what was not freely given.
“If you wish for affection, Mr. Darcy,” she said, suddenly emboldened, “perhaps you should begin with honesty. Why this sudden interest? Why now, when you made your feelings so clear at Meryton, when you pointedly avoided me in Hertfordshire, when you thought me tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt you?”
“I judged you based on limited information and allowed pride to blind me. I spoke that insult because I needed to convince myself you were not worth wanting, because I had looked at you across that assembly room and could not look away, and I was not prepared for what that meant.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught. She had braced herself for evasion, perhaps a dignified apology, but not this—never confession.
“I spent the entire winter trying to forget you.” Darcy’s voice lowered almost to a whisper. “I could not. When circumstancesdemanded I find a wife, you were the only name my mind ever offered up. The only woman I could imagine in that role, or any role.”
“You told me that,” she said softly. “In my father’s study. That I was the one woman you could not manage to forget over a winter of trying.”
“I meant every word. I have simply been too proud to speak plainly about what it cost me.”
Elizabeth studied the tension etched about his eyes, the way his lips parted as if to speak, and then closed again. Something fluttered in her chest—a hope, unfamiliar and perilous, that this marriage might yet become something she had not dared to imagine.
“You have changed, Mr. Darcy. The man who spoke so harshly at Meryton would never have offered such words.”
“I have had time to reflect,” he admitted. “And time to see past my own preconceptions.”
A sound from the hay behind them made them both turn, a rustle and then a soft chirrup, and a tabby cat emerged from between the bales, tail held high, picking her way across the packed earth toward them with the self-possession of a creature who had appointments to keep and considered them merely obstacles.
“Good heavens.” Elizabeth crouched to pet her, grateful for the interruption, for the excuse to look anywhere but at his face while she assembled her thoughts. The cat wound around her damp skirts, purring with the satisfaction of an animal who knew attention was her due. “Who is this imperious creature?”
“The barn mouser. The grooms call her Cat.”
“That is a terrible name for a cat of such obvious dignity.” Elizabeth scratched behind the tabby’s ears, and the purring intensified. “She is clearly a Cleopatra. Or perhaps a Boadicea.”
Darcy’s mouth curved. “You wish to name my barn cat after a warrior queen?”
“Look at her. She clearly believes she rules this barn with an iron paw. One should acknowledge reality.” Elizabeth glanced up at him and found him watching her with an expression that made her heart flutter unexpectedly. “What?”
“Nothing.” But his voice had softened. “Only that you are remarkably gentle with small creatures.”
“I have had considerable practice of late. Thomas, Sidney the snail, Captain the one-eared horse. My expertise with small, difficult things grows daily.”
“I had noticed.”
She rose, and he offered his hand to help her, and she took it without thinking, feeling the warmth of his palm against hers and the steadiness of his grip. He did not release her immediately, and she did not pull away but stepped forward, lifting her face to his.
“You may kiss me, if that is what you wish.”
