Read Mr. Darcy Forgot I Said No Online Free by Jenifer Edevane

No excitements, sir. Not even a strong opinion.

Pettigrew must never, ever be told.

***

The door opens.

I hear it, distantly. A click of the latch. A step on the threshold. A small, sharp intake of breath.

Elizabeth hears it too. She goes still against me. Neither of us moves. Neither of us opens our eyes.

There is a long, long pause.

Then a woman's voice, pleasant and composed and only very slightly unsteady, says, "Georgiana, my dear. I wonder whether you would be so kind as to show me the view of the trout stream from the terrace. My husband says it is very fine. I should like to see it again. For some considerable time."

And my sister's voice, small and breathless and, unless I am very much mistaken, trying desperately not to giggle: "Oh. Yes. Yes, Mrs. Gardiner. The trout. Of course. This way."

The door clicks shut again.

Elizabeth begins to shake against my chest. It takes me a moment to realize she is laughing. She has her face pressed into my shoulder and she is laughing so hard she cannot breathe, and I put my arms round her and hold her, and I start to laugh too, there on Georgiana's little sofa among the knitting needles and the strawberry pincushion and the green worsted, with the swans calling out on the lake and the house standing upside down in the water, in the better light.

Chapter Twenty-Seven — Elizabeth

"He forgot?" says Mama. "He forgot? And you let him?"

We are in the drawing room at Longbourn. All of us. Papa insisted. He said that if the truth was to be told, it was to be told once, to everyone, in a single sitting, so that he need never hear it told again. So Jane is on the sofa with Mr. Bingley, and Kitty is in the window seat with Anne, and Mary is at the pianoforte with her hands folded, and Lydia is sprawled on the hearthrug in a temper because nobody will tell her why the Colonel has come all the way from London, and Mama is in her chair by the fire, with her salts in one hand and her handkerchief in the other.

And Fitzwilliam is standing beside me with my hand in his, in front of all of them, looking exactly as he looked the first night at the Meryton assembly, except that now I know it is not pride. It is terror.

"I refused him, Mama," I say again. "At Hunsford. In April. And the next morning he fell off his horse and hit his head on a tree, and when he woke up he did not remember that I had refused him. He thought I had said yes. And the apothecary said that if we told him the truth it might do him a great harm, so we did not tell him."

"For six weeks," says Mama.

"Yes."

"While I bought lace."

"Yes, Mama."

"While I told Lady Lucas. While I told Mrs. Long. While I told your Aunt Philips, and she told the whole of Meryton—"

"Yes, Mama."

Mama stares at me. Then she stares at Fitzwilliam. Then she stares at me again. Her mouth opens and shuts several times, like a carp in a pond.

"And then," I say, "he remembered. And he broke it off. And I wrote him a letter. And I went to Derbyshire, and he—" I look up at him. "He asked me again. Properly. And I said yes."

"So you are engaged," says Mama faintly.

"We are engaged."

"To Mr. Darcy."

"With ten thousand a year."

"I believe so, Mama. I have not asked to see the accounts."