She knew! Darcy’s heart twisted into an icy knot around this revelation, which changed everything, perhaps damaging every possibility between them. The reasons for her actions on his last visit were now only too explicable. “I am sorry,” he managed to reply, “exceedingly sorry that you have ever been informed of what may, in a mistaken light, have given you uneasiness.” He looked past her and exhaled a pained chuff of air before saying, “I did not think Mrs. Gardiner was so little to be trusted.”
“You must not blame my aunt.” Elizabeth’s voice was pleading. “Lydia’s thoughtlessness first betrayed to me that you had been concerned in the matter; and, of course,” she confessed, “I could not rest till I knew the particulars.” She took a deep breath. “Let me thank you again and again, in the name of all my family, for that generous compassion which induced you to take so much trouble, and bear so many mortifications, for the sake of discovering them.”
Darcy listened, his heart released from his initial fears as he heard Elizabeth describe his actions in the most benevolent of terms. She did not blame him for interfering. She was grateful, that was clear. But gratitude alone could be devastating to his hopes. He wanted more than her gratitude or an alliance founded on such an inequality. He wanted her heart, fully and freely given, or not at all.
“If you will thank me, let it be for yourself alone,” he responded to her firmly. “That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you.” He waited, anxious as well as fearful that she understood his meaning, but Elizabeth said nothing.
Her face was partially hidden by her bonnet but the pink tinge upon what he could see was unmistakable. Then, something inside him moved with such powerful emotion that he had to know all…here…now.
“You are too generous to trifle with me,” he began, putting his future in her hands. “If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”
“Mr. Darcy.” His name came haltingly to her lips as she brought her face up. “Please…my feelings…” She seemed to be struggling to catch her breath, but the glow of her eyes told him that she was not in danger. “My feelings have undergone so material a change since that unfortunate day last spring that I can only receive with sincere gratitude and the most profound pleasure your assurances that yours continue the same.”
“Elizabeth.” He whispered her name lest the spell he knew himself to be under shatter and fall to the earth around him. “Elizabeth,” he repeated, gently enfolding her hands in his as he reveled in her sweet smile and shining eyes. Bringing her hands to his lips, he kissed one gently, then the other, then held them close against his heart as he told her, at last, all that resided there in terms of his deepest love, gratitude, and hope for the future.
He did not know how it happened, his heart was too full, but they were moving, walking he knew not where. There was so much to feel, so much to say, so much happiness that begged to be examined. Darcy told of his aunt’s visit, of his painful confrontation with her, and yet how it had taught him to hope. He spoke of his struggle to mend his ways and how he had studied to show her at Pemberley that her complaint of his character had been heeded. Elizabeth expressed her surprise at the manner in which he had taken to heart all her harsh words and blushed to recall them. His letter he forswore, but she cherished it, advising him to think of the past only as its remembrance gave him pleasure.
“I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind,” he replied, kissing once again the hand he held. “Your retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of ignorance.” He tucked her hand against his side. “But with me, it is not so. Painful recollections will intrude, which cannot, which ought not to be repelled.” He stopped their progress and, tracing her cheek, sighed. “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child, I was taught what was right; but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit, allowed, encouraged, almost taught to be selfish and overbearing — to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own.”
He dropped his hand and gathered hers to him again as he spoke his soul into her beautiful eyes. “Such I was, from eight to eight-and-twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”
They walked several miles, Elizabeth telling him of her apprehensions on his discovery of her at Pemberley, Darcy assuring her that his only thought had been of earning her forgiveness. He told of Georgiana’s pleasure in her acquaintance and her disappointment at its sudden end and that his gravity at the inn had been caused by the measures he was already planning in rescue of her sister. She thanked him again, but of that painful affair neither desired to speak more.
“What could have become of Mr. Bingley and Jane!” Elizabeth glanced at her watch and then down the path behind them. “We should be returning home, and they are nowhere to be seen!” They turned back, Darcy holding her hand and placing it within the crook of his arm. “I must ask,” Elizabeth addressed him, “whether you were surprised to learn of their engagement.”
“Not at all. When I went away, I felt that it would soon happen.”
“That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as much.”
“My permission!” Darcy exclaimed. “No, no, that would be heights of presumption I would never dare scale, my dear girl! I hope I have learned better!” She smiled. He told her of his confession to Bingley the night before he left for London, how he had been mistaken in so much of what had occurred the previous autumn. “I could easily perceive his attachment to her, I told him, and was convinced of her affection. Then, I was obliged to confess that I had known your sister to be in Town last winter and conspired to keep it from him. He was rightly angry. But his anger, I am persuaded, lasted no longer than he remained in any doubt of your sister’s sentiments. He has heartily forgiven me now.”
They walked on, and if he had ever been speechless in her presence, it was ended now; for he knew her to be sympathetic to all his visions and plans for their shared future. In this vein, he continued till they reached her home, parting only just before entering the dining room at Longbourn.
Chapter 12
Love’s Fine Wit
They were abominably late. Everyone, including Bingley and Miss Bennet, was already at table when they came in the door. “My dear Lizzy, where can you have been walking to?” came a chorus of inquiries led by Elizabeth’s elder sister as they entered. Darcy resolved to bear the blame, but Elizabeth’s answer — that they had wandered about till she was quite beyond her own knowledge of where they had been — was enough to satisfy their curiosity.
Darcy looked down the table. Elizabeth had taken a seat removed from him lest they arouse any premature speculation, but she was the only one whose conversation he desired, whose smile he coveted. He looked on with some envy at Bingley and Jane. The acknowledged lovers were under no constraints of convention and could talk together in a semiprivacy denied to the rest of the company. With growing resignation, Darcy looked to Elizabeth’s parents and ruefully acknowledged that it was toward them he should direct his attention. He had experienced rather more of Mrs. Bennet than he could wish over his recent visits to Longbourn, but of Mr. Bennet, he knew little. Where should he begin with this man from whom he would soon be requesting Elizabeth’s hand?