Page 63 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

"Not yet. Say nothing to her of me. I shall come down when I am fit to."

"Fit to what?"

"To say a thing properly."

Bingley looked at him a long moment. Then, to his great credit, he let it drop.

That night Darcy sat at the desk in his library and tried to write it down.

He had a fresh pen and a clean sheet, and he could hold both. He wrote Miss Elizabeth at the top. I can offer you... He crossed it out. You would want for nothing. He crossed that out too. Pemberley is...

Every sentence he began was a thing he could give her. By midnight he had three pages of them. They were very well written. They were the three pages Bingley had thrown away.

He took a clean sheet and wrote one word. I.

Then he sat and looked at it.

He knew the next word. Bingley had told it to him over the brandy. I want you. He could manage want, very nearly. A man might want a horse, or an estate, or a woman, and still stand on his own feet.

It was the word under it that stopped his pen. It was the true one, and it was his father's word.

I need you to hold the cup, Fitzwilliam. My hands will not do it.

Darcy put the sheet in the fire. Then he put all the sheets in the fire. He had not liked to watch anything burn since Longbourn. He watched anyway, until there was nothing left.

His hand had gone to his waistcoat pocket. Her hairpin was there. His fingers closed on it, and he left it where it was.

He thought of her hair coming down among the orange trees. He thought of the soft sounds she had made into his coat. Sleep would not come.

He walked up and down the library instead, past the long shelves his father had built. He thought of another library. He had seen it only once, by lantern light, on the night of the fire. Mr. Bennet had stood in the wet ash and lifted his lantern to the far end of the wall. The Milton was on the end. Just there. You would have liked it.

An hour before that, by the bonfire, the same man had beamed at him over his Baskerville.

Darcy thought of his own copy. It stood on the second shelf by his father's chair at Pemberley. If that book had burned, he would not have made a joke of it. He would not have been able to speak at all.

He wrote to Mrs. Reynolds at Pemberley. He told her where to find his father's Milton, and asked her to send it up by the mail. He did not write why. He did not quite let himself think why.

He wrote to Mr. Bennet. He wished to replace the books that were lost, if Mr. Bennet would send him a list. I should consider it some small return for...

He stopped and read it over. Some small return. There it was again.

He scored it out so hard that the nib split. He took a new pen and wrote under it, I should like to do it, if you will let me. Then he sealed it before he could think better of it.

Mr. Bennet's answer came on the second of December.

Sir,

My wife would have accepted before she reached the end of your letter. I read it twice, which is the difference between us.

I enclose the list. My grandfather was a man of wide tastes and narrow means. You will find most of him in the cheaper shops. You need not hurry over the Tillotson. My grandfather never opened it, and neither have I.

The carpenter who made my daughter's crutch is at work on the shelves. I have told him you will pay for them, since you offer. He has ordered oak.

You will not find the Milton. I mention it only so that you do not waste your time.

Your obliged servant,

T. Bennet