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“Well, then,” Elizabeth said, casting a sharp, sidelong glance at him as they rounded the bend of the lane. “It appears we have discovered a single point of agreement between us. A momentous occasion. What is to be done with it?”
“That, Miss Elizabeth, I must leave entirely to your ingenuity,” Darcy replied, watching the frantic machinations of her brilliant mind as reflected in those fine, dark eyes. “I await your decision.”
“If I marry you, the fortune is mine—in my own name, which no husband may touch. You gain nothing from the marriage except a wife you did not choose. If I do not marry you, the fortune is yours—unconditionally, irrevocably. You gain everything from my refusal.” She turned to face him. They had stopped walking again. The light was failing, and the bare branches above them were sharp against the darkening sky. Her face was half in shadow and half in something colder. “So I must ask, Mr. Darcy: why are you still in Hertfordshire?”
Because I could not leave, he thought.
The words were so close to the surface that he could feel them pressing against his teeth. Because he had ridden back from London in the ice. Because her fine eyes had followed him from the Netherfield ball to London and from London back to this mud and this road and this impossible, brilliant, furious woman with a broken valise and a family who had thrown her at him like the final toss of the dice. Because ‘I gain you’ was the only honest answer, and the one answer that would sound exactly like the fortune hunter she already suspected him of being.
She would not hear ‘I gain you.’ She would hear ‘I gain your fortune,’ though her uncle had put it beyond any husband’s reach, and Elizabeth Bennet was not a woman to let a point of law interfere with a settled conviction.
“Because I cannot profit from your loss, Miss Elizabeth,” he answered aloud. “It would not be honorable for me to remove myself without giving you the opportunity to claim your inheritance.”
“Even at the cost of marrying me? A woman you hold as barely tolerable and not handsome enough to tempt you? Who tramples in the mud and embarrasses you to your friends?”
The wince was internal, and Darcy would not let even a flinch show. “You wish for me to recant, but any regret I express now would be met with suspicion that I am only flattering you because of your changed circumstance. I am not a man who takes back my words, Miss Elizabeth. And I am honorable enough for you to trust me when I say I cannot slither away, play the coward’s game, and let your fortune fall into my lap. The decision is yours, Miss Elizabeth.”
“I am not asking you to marry me,” she said suddenly. “I cannot do what I do not wish.”
“Assuredly. I would not compel anyone to marry me,” he agreed.
“But you will answer the rector for the banns to be read?”
“Yes.”
“It does not mean we are marrying. It gives us time.” She met his eyes, and for the first time since he had found her on the drive, something like vulnerability flickered across her face. “I am not asking for your heart, Mr. Darcy. I am asking for your patience.”
His heart. As though she did not already possess it—had possessed it since that October assembly, when she laughed at something her friend said and he felt the ground shift beneath his feet. She was asking for patience, and he would have given her years.
“You shall have all the time you need.” He wanted to press her hand to ease her inner turmoil, but he kept his hands at his sides. She still clutched the valise, and he could not take the weight for her. And so, he did the only thing he could for her.
Longbourn’s chimneys were visible now through the bare trees at the end of the lane, smoke rising thin and pale against the grey sky.
“I believe,” he said, “that this is as far as I ought to accompany you.” He gestured toward the house. “I shall be at your service, should you need me.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth, and he expected a cut, that she could not think of anything she would require from him. Instead, she said, “My mother will want to know what you agreed to.”
“Tell her whatever you wish.” He paused, weighing his next words carefully. “Miss Elizabeth, I am aware that this situation is not of your choosing. I know you find me disagreeable, and that you would prefer almost any alternative to what your uncle has forced upon you. But I would have you know—”
He stopped. What could he say without sounding like pleading? What could he offer that wouldn’t be tainted by the fortune hanging between them?
“Yes?” she prompted.
“I do not consider this a hardship,” he said slowly. “Whatever you decide, I would not have you go home believing that you were one.”
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, suspicious at once. “You need not be gallant, Mr. Darcy. There is no one to see it but the rooks.”
“Then the rooks may carry it to Meryton.” He bowed. “I shall write to Mr. Pennyfeather tonight.”
“You are generous, Mr. Darcy.” She inclined her head in a curtsy so slight it might have been imagined, and he fancied she despised him a little less than when her valise first struck the gravel at Netherfield.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A BIRD IN THE SWEATY HAND
Elizabeth survived Sunday’s reading of the banns—the first time her name and Mr. Darcy’s name were read aloud together. She kept her eyes glued to a prayer book as the entire Bennet pew threatened to topple under the combined force of her mother’s fluttering and sighing and her youngest sisters’ giggles.
Across the aisle, Darcy sat bolt upright in the Netherfield box, enduring the parish’s unified, unblinking stare. Elizabeth caught his eye once when the congregation was dismissed, and he had the appearance of a resigned cow at an auction.
