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“I would not dare,” he replied smoothly, though the corner of his mouth twitched. “Especially when I have a few stipulations of my own to add.”
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed with immediate suspicion. “You have conditions?”
“Naturally. If we are entering into an agreeable alliance, both parties must be protected. First, you shall not gallop across the estate unaccompanied on strange horses simply to test your mettle against the local terrain.”
“That is excessively paternal,” she scoffed, though the tension around her mouth eased a fraction. “Note that I do not ride, so this will not be an issue.”
“Good. Second, when we are at Pemberley, I ask that you not rearrange my library without consulting me. The books are organized according to a system that has taken me years to perfect, and I cannot be held responsible for my temperament if I discover that Herodotus has been shelved beside Mrs. Radcliffe.”
“You have Mrs. Radcliffe in your library?”
“My cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam has Mrs. Radcliffe in my library. I have repeatedly failed to remove her.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “I shall leave your library unmolested, Mr. Darcy. What else?”
“Third, I am not a man of extensive conversation before ten o’clock in the morning. I will endeavor to be civil, but I cannot promise to be interesting until I have had coffee.”
“I believe I can accommodate a silent breakfast. I am not precisely sparkling at dawn myself.”
“And lastly…” He hesitated, aware that he was approaching territory that might be misinterpreted. “When you walk, as I know you will, I should like to accompany you occasionally. Not to supervise or curtail, but because—” He stopped. Started again. “The grounds at Pemberley are extensive. There are paths I think you would enjoy, and views I should like to show you. If you would permit it.”
“Why would I not permit you to walk through your own grounds?”
“Because,” and here, he turned his gaze to her eyes, stepping slightly closer, “I would request that you permit me to look at you without you assuming I am planning your execution.”
Elizabeth stared at him, her lips parted in disbelief, before the ghost of a real, helpless smile finally broke through her defenses, softening the sharp angles of her face until his chest ached with an entirely new variety of terror.
“You are making fun of me.” She looked down at her long list.
“No, I am entirely serious in meeting your expectations.” He turned to look at the daffodils, because looking at her was becoming rather more complicated than he had anticipated. “My mother planted daffodils at Pemberley. Along the lake walk, and around the pavilion she built at the water’s edge. She said they were the first honest thing after winter—the flowers that did not pretend spring was already here, but announced it was coming.”
He had not meant to say that. The words had emerged unbidden, pulled from some unguarded corner of his memory by the sight of yellow petals nodding in the March wind. His mother had been dead for ten years. He did not speak of her casually. He did not speak of her at all, if he could avoid it.
They had stopped walking at some point; he did not recall when, and there, right in front of them, was a patch of sturdy daffodils, straight and tall like tiny sentinels saluting the coming spring.
“Your mother sounds like a woman of considerable wisdom,” she said, her voice losing its sharp edge. “I should have liked to meet her, I think.”
Elizabeth’s gaze drifted from the daffodils to a cluster of crocuses pushing through the cold soil at the border’s edge—purple and white and a pale, determined yellow, their petals still half-furled against the March chill.
“The crocuses have come up,” she said, almost to herself. “My father says they are foolish flowers. They bloom before the last frost has passed, and half of them are killed for their trouble.”
“And what do you say?”
She knelt—heedless of her already-ruined hems—and touched one of the purple blooms. “I say they are brave. They cannot know whether the frost will return. They only know that the light has changed, and something in them insists on answering it.” She looked up at him, and an unshielded vulnerability in her gaze made his breath catch. “I have always thought there was something admirable in that. In pushing through anyway, even when the odds are poor.”
Darcy knelt beside her—an action his valet would certainly have despaired of, given the state of the gravel and the cost of his trousers—and studied the small, stubborn flowers as though they held the answer to a question he had not yet learned to ask.
“Miss Elizabeth.” His voice was half-lost in the wind. “Your list addresses what you require from the marriage. Separate chambers, correspondence, your funds, visits from your sisters. All reasonable and practical.” He paused, watching her fingers hover over the crocus petals. “But you have not told me what you want. What you hope for. What would make you…”
He stopped. The word he wanted felt too large for this garden, too presumptuous for a conversation conducted over half-frozen flowers and muddy knees.
“What would make me what, Mr. Darcy?”
“Happy.” He met her eyes. “I am asking what you want from your life. Not from this marriage or from me. From your life.”
Elizabeth’s hand stilled on the crocus. For a long moment, she did not speak, and Darcy watched her search for the clever deflection, the sharp rejoinder, the wit that served as her armor against a world that had never quite known what to do with her.
And he watched her fail to find it. Then, when she looked at him again, when she dared to settle her gaze on him, he saw her struggle and wished to ease it.
