When they finally parted, she opened her eyes to find him watching her with an expression that filled her with something between giddiness and wonder, that a man so reserved, so formidable, so accustomed to deference, should look at her as though she were the one with ten thousand a year.
“You see,” she managed, her voice not entirely steady. “That was not so terrible.”
“Rather wonderful, actually.”
“Then perhaps this courtship of yours has promise after all.” She stepped back, though her hand lingered on his waistcoat. “But we should return before the household assumes we have drowned.”
“A pity.” His mouth curved, and his tone was dry, although mischief danced in his eyes. “I find I am in no hurry to share you with the household.”
His words were light, yet they settled somewhere unlooked-for. To be shared, as if she were a prize he would rather keep tohimself, as if the kiss had spanned the distance between contract and the fragile romance neither had dared to name.
She turned toward Penny, steadying herself against the mare’s neck. “I shall have to devise a scoring system for this courtship. Marks for creativity, deductions for excessive brooding.”
“Then I shall endeavor to brood only when you are not looking.”
“That rather defeats the purpose, Mr. Darcy. Tortured silences lose their effect entirely without an audience.”
“Then I shall brood transparently, and you may critique my technique.”
She laughed despite herself, and the sound seemed to ease something in his posture, some tension she had not consciously registered until it released. He moved to help her mount, his hands steady at her waist, and for a moment they stood closer than necessary, his breath warm against her temple.
“Elizabeth.” His voice was rough and warm. “Thank you for permitting me to try.”
She did not trust herself to answer. She nodded once, allowed him to lift her onto the sidesaddle, and fixed her eyes on the path ahead.
They rode through fields rinsed clean by rain, the great house emerging in the amber light. Elizabeth sensed his gaze but kept her eyes fixed forward; her thoughts were a tangle of tenderness and uncertainty, all too new to be trusted.
Why would a man who could command her compliance care whether she gave it willingly? He had purchased her, and the law permitted him everything. And yet he had stood in that barn and asked, as though her wanting mattered more than his right.
And she had kissed him, closed the distance, and felt her heart flutter like an awakening of something she had not known. She had chosen the feeling, but was it Darcy himself, ormerely the courtship she had been denied, the romance she had surrendered when she signed her name to a contract? She could not say, because men of his station did not ask. They claimed and commanded, and they took what the world had already set before them.
But not Darcy.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE WAITING HEART
“Elizabeth! Fitzwilliam!”Georgiana flew down the entrance steps, dragging her parasol while footmen hovered with towels and the stable boys collected their mounts. “We were about to send a search party. Mrs. Reynolds had the groom saddling horses, and Hannah was convinced you had been swept away by a flash flood.” She stopped, taking in their bedraggled state. “Good heavens. You are absolutely soaked through.”
“A keen observation,” Elizabeth managed, though her teeth had begun to chatter. “The rain was rather more emphatic than anticipated.”
Darcy, ever the picture of composure, tightened his arm about her shoulders. Elizabeth, for her part, found her legs had mislaid their customary resolve, and the chill that crept through her bones left her knees as unreliable as a Longbourn weathervane.
“You are shivering.” Georgiana seized her arm and began steering her toward the house with an authority that belied her youth. “Clarice! Hot water for Mrs. Darcy’s bath, immediately. And tea—no, perhaps brandy—Fitzwilliam, what does one give a person who has been soaked to the bone?”
“Warmth,” Darcy answered, his voice roughened, and before Elizabeth could protest or summon the wit to object that she was perfectly capable of walking, he swept her into his arms as though she weighed nothing at all.
Behind them, Georgiana made a sound that could only be described as a muffled swoon. Elizabeth caught a glimpse of Hannah exchanging a significant glance with the younger Darcy, the sort of glance that suggested the servants’ hall would be buzzing with romantic speculation before the hour was out, although strangely, she now did not mind.
Darcy’s strong steps up the stairs were steady, not rushed, so as not to jostle her. “Hot water for Mrs. Darcy’s bath,” he ordered the assembled household. “Have Cook prepare the good broth, rich and nourishing. Extra blankets and a warming pan for the bed. And someone find Mrs. Reynolds?—”
“Already here, sir.” The housekeeper’s voice floated up from below, calm and competent. “Everything is in hand.”
Elizabeth let her head fall against his shoulder, her thoughts knotting themselves like ribbons left out in the rain. The kiss in the barn belonged to some other, braver woman—one who had not been transformed by Derbyshire weather into a shivering bundle of nerves. She longed for a clever remark to reclaim her dignity, but wit, it seemed, had abandoned her for drier company.
Darcy carried her into her bedchamber, where a fire already crackled, and Clarice waited with fresh linens draped over her arm. He set Elizabeth down on the settee near the fire with a gentleness that made her chest ache, then stood there for a moment, looking down at her with an expression that made her think of the barn, of his hands hovering at her waist and the way he had thanked her for permitting him to try.
“I shall leave you to Clarice’s care,” he said, his voice lower now. “But if you need anything at all?—”
