Page 17 of Epiphany (A Little Bit More Darcy and Elizabeth #2)
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E lizabeth’s love of snow diminished considerably over the next day. The drifts that had accumulated on Thursday crystalised overnight into an icy blockade that kept them imprisoned at Longbourn and deprived of callers throughout the whole of Friday. It was a situation with which Jane appeared quite comfortable, but then, she had received word explaining her gentleman caller’s absence, thereby allaying any doubts in his affection. For Elizabeth, it meant only that she was prevented from taking any exercise, leaving her at the mercy of her mother and younger sisters’ inanity and denying her any reprieve from her own distressing reflections.
Matters had been much simpler a few months earlier when she had despised Darcy. Doing so had not caused her a moment’s worry. She had reviled many less irksome men. When he left Hertfordshire, she had believed herself perfectly content never to think of him again, her enmity readily consigned to an unpleasant memory. Even after she had absolved him of any wrongdoing towards Wickham, recognised the prodigious care he took of all those he esteemed, better understood his self-averred resentfulness, learnt to admire his taciturnity, grown covetous of his rare smile and even rarer laughter, and become altogether too enraptured with his person— still , Elizabeth had been untroubled by doubts. For then, he had been engaged to somebody else, and her regard for him had been immaterial, an injury from which her heart would have eventually recovered.
It was all different now. Mr Darcy had broken with his cousin, and her feelings had assumed a portent of unbearable moment. Hope assuaged her at every turn, whispering that he might mean to propose to her, obliging her to constantly repress it, for it would be the worst form of evil to tempt him away from Miss de Bourgh. She could never live with herself for such a despicable act against another woman. Yet, therein lay her struggle, for Elizabeth grew increasingly unsure that she could easily live with a decision to refuse him if he did care for her. In such circumstances, she doubted her heart would ever recover.
Thus it was, despite all the reasons she ought not even to be contemplating it, Elizabeth could not prevent herself from endlessly speculating what it was that Darcy felt for her. By Friday morning, she had settled it that he could not possibly love her, for she knew he thought her too plain, her family too vulgar, and her situation too far beneath him. It was halfway through breakfast that she remembered his resolute disavowal of all he had ever said in censure of her beauty. Her resulting blush caused her mother to check her brow for a fever and instruct her to don an extra shawl.
By midday on Friday, she had recalled Darcy’s request for a front row seat to watch the Gardiner children’s Christmas play and decided that his disdain for her connexions was perhaps not quite so severe as she had assumed. By suppertime, she had decided that he must admire her, for nothing else justified his cousin’s violent jealousy. By bedtime, she had recognised herself for the fool she was to presume such a man would ever notice her and despised herself for wishing that he would. By midnight, her reflections had turned to the way he listened, rapt, every time she spoke, and she despaired of ever finding another man who made her feel so precious.
Elizabeth woke early on Saturday, after too little repose. She tossed and turned in her bed long enough to make it certain sleep would not return, then pushed off her covers and crossed the room to open the curtains. Snow still blanketed everything. It was a little churned up at the gate and along the drive where the servants and farmers had traipsed through it, but the world was otherwise unchanged. She rested her head against the pane and sighed. There would be no visitors again today. There absolutely must be walking, though. If the servants had managed to get through the drifts, then so could she, and without some fresh air to clear her mind, she would go distracted long before anything thawed.
Something fluttered foolishly in Elizabeth’s stomach at the thought of an accidental meeting out of doors with Darcy, but she quashed the silly notion and pushed herself away from the window to pull the cord for the maid. Hot water was presently provided, and in short order, Elizabeth was dressed in her warmest woollen stockings and thickest walking dress, ready to stomp out her agitation on the snow. She snatched up her bonnet and crept along the hall, navigating every loose floorboard and creaking stair, retrieving her coat, and digging out a pair of gloves without drawing any unwanted attention. Satisfied she had not roused anyone who would object to her going out, she pulled open the front door—only to stagger backwards two steps, shocked by a blast of icy air and a vastly unexpected sight.
“Mr Darcy!”
He lowered his hand from where it had evidently been poised to knock. “Miss Elizab?—”
She gestured for him to be quiet. “You will wake everyone!” she hissed, her heart hammering so violently that manners quite escaped her. “What are you doing here?”
He looked at her intently for a moment. Then he smiled very slightly but most effectively. “I came to see you.”
His whispered voice was even more resonant than his usual one, an observation that vexed Elizabeth no end, for she had not previously been aware of its having any effect on her, never mind the absurd blushing breathlessness afflicting her at present.
“Well, I wish you had not!” she replied in an angry whisper.
The effect her words had upon his countenance tugged at her heart, though in too many directions to make it easy to know what else to say.
“I am excessively sorry to hear that,” he said too loudly.
She pressed a finger expressively to her lips to silence him again. He obliged her, and they were both silent until a sharp gust of wind blew a flurry of snow into the house, and without thinking, Elizabeth gestured for him to come in so she could shut the door.
Then she wished fervently she had not, for inside, he was no longer silhouetted in the doorway but lit by the hall fire and standing awfully close to her, and she suddenly felt uncomfortably aware of how much larger he was than she. He removed his hat, which for some reason unnerved her further still.
“I was about to walk out,” she whispered, as though it might make him put it back on again and go away. It did not.
“I would advise against it. It is freezing out there.”
“That did not stop you.”
“No. Not much would have.”
The intensity of his gaze was—well, it was wonderful in truth, though it was hardly helping Elizabeth to remain impartial, and thus its effect was to make her angry. It was difficult to sound angry when one was attempting to be silent, however, which was perhaps why, when she told him again that he ought not to have come, he seemed less distressed by it than before.
“So you have said. Might I enquire why?”
Elizabeth gave a small, humourless laugh at the question, so simple in contrast to the complexity of her jumbled thoughts. She grew increasingly rattled the longer she struggled to frame a response, unable to answer that she dreaded the discovery he was an unprincipled scoundrel or that she had no wish to be tested on the strength of her own principles.
“Because it is snowy,” she blurted at length.
Darcy—most unfairly—gave her another of his intoxicating little smiles. “Snowy?”
She nodded defiantly, incensed that he should be diverted—and handsome—when she was so miserable. Both put her at an insufferable disadvantage.
“Might I be so bold?—”
“Hush! Pray, keep your voice down.”
“Forgive me,” he whispered. His deeper timbre seemed to hit a pitch that reverberated directly in her breastbone. “Might I be so bold as to enquire what is the significance of the weather?”
Abandoning all pretensions to composure, she replied in an agitated whisper. “Because the snow is knee-deep in places, which means you must have come on foot. And anyone who walks three miles anywhere in knee-deep snow must have a very particular reason for going there. And if that reason is me, which it is because you have said so, then it makes what I must say even harder.”
“And what is it you must say?”
Elizabeth baulked and blushed deeply. “Obviously, I cannot say it until you have said what you came to say. And it would be better if you said nothing, for then so might I.”
“That would make for a very dull conversation.”
“This is not amusing! Why are you smiling?”
He stepped closer to her. “Because I do not believe you truly wish me to remain silent. Neither do I believe that you wish to say to me what you think you must.”
“You presume a great deal, sir,” she replied, desperate to shoo Darcy away from the truth that he had so readily and infuriatingly discerned. “Pray, what great penetration has convinced you of this?”
“Miss Elizabeth, I know enough of your disposition to be certain that, were you absolutely, irrevocably decided against me, you would acknowledge it to me frankly and openly, not seek to avoid speaking at all.”
She inhaled sharply, taken aback for a fleeting moment, until her surprise was usurped by a tremble of pleasure that he should comprehend her so well. Her pleasure was just as quickly subsumed by resignation.
“That changes nothing,” she replied bitterly.
“I beg to differ. I came here wholly uncertain of my reception, but you have given me hope that whatever other impediment to marrying me exists, it is not your sentiments.”
A small noise escaped her—exasperation, perhaps, or maybe despair—that he had, despite her pleas, confirmed his intentions, thereby placing the responsibility of behaving honourably squarely at her door.
“Regrettably, we both know my sentiments are immaterial.”
His smile vanished. “Elizabeth, no. Never think that. My insatiable need to know your sentiments is why I am here. Perhaps I ought to have paid you court for longer, to nurture your regard. A man who felt less might have, but I could go no longer without discovering whether I had any hope.”
“You have twisted my meaning!” she cried in a voice more whimper than whisper, but he was making this so impossibly difficult, speaking of his hope while she was desperately attempting to quash her own. “But you are right—you have been entirely reckless in coming here in this manner. I thought you disdained precipitance.”
“I do.” His small smile returned. “This was not precipitance. If I had acted precipitately, I should have come to you in November instead of leaving Hertfordshire.”
November? She stared at him, aghast to discover that his feelings were of such long duration. As though refusing him were not already the most painful thing she would ever have to do!
“You are the most provoking man I have ever met!” she exclaimed in a furious whisper. She jumped clear of the ground when the library door abruptly opened, and her father stepped into the hall.
“Is anything amiss, Lizzy? Mr Darcy? I heard you both talking out here and thought I might leave you to it, but matters do not appear to be progressing in the direction I anticipated.”
“I was simply attempting to explain my position to Mr Darcy, but it is difficult to speak with conviction when one is whispering,” Elizabeth replied.
With an annoyingly knowing look, Mr Bennet pushed his door open wider. “Should you like the use of my library? You ought to be able to raise your voices to suitably persuasive levels in there.”
“Thank you, yes,” Darcy answered at the same time as Elizabeth replied, “No!” in a voice she could no longer even pretend was quiet.
“Thank you. But I do not need to be in your library to tell Mr Darcy that I will not marry him.”
Her father raised an eyebrow. “If that is what you mean to tell him, I suggest you not only go in but barricade the door, because if your mother should overhear you, I cannot vouch for your safety.”
“That is easily resolved,” Darcy replied, his eyes fixed on Elizabeth. “Do not refuse me.” Then he turned on his heel and strode into the library, leaving her with no choice but to follow him.
* * *
He had lied.
It was, without a doubt, the most—possibly the only —impetuous thing Darcy had ever done, but he could not have prevented it. Trapped at Netherfield, unable to go to Elizabeth to see what damage had been done, he had passed the whole of the previous day in torment as he pictured Anne abusing her so abominably to her face. He had attempted to assuage his disquiet by reminiscing about those precious few moments in Meryton on Wednesday, when they seemed to have made such a momentous advancement in their understanding.
Alas, by the evening, his recollection of that encounter had altered until Elizabeth appeared to look up at him with less admiration and more abhorrence. He had been reduced to stalking impatiently through Netherfield’s rooms, reminded at every turn of the early days of his acquaintance with Elizabeth. Days when desire had flared hot and then, instead of dwindling as desire more commonly did, continued to burn, allowing deep and abiding admiration to creep in beneath the flames and catch him unawares.
Impatience to see her, to remedy whatever injury Anne had caused, to salvage whatever chance he had left of making Elizabeth love him, had kept him awake half the night listening for the sound of rain to wash away the snow. That same impatience had summoned a stream of curses from his lips when he opened his curtains at dawn to discover the landscape unchanged and brought him traipsing across fields of snow at an indecently early hour to present himself to a woman who, for all he knew, might not even like him.
Impatience was fast ceding to hope, and hope to exhilaration, however, as she inadvertently revealed more and more of her feelings, for they looked nothing akin to dislike.
“This is a wretched beginning,” Elizabeth said once the door was closed.
“You concede it is a beginning, then?”
“That was not my meaning, as well you know. Mr Darcy, no matter how used you may be to getting your own way, you cannot force me to marry you against my will.”
“And never would I attempt to. But I can discover your reasons for continuing so obstinately to insist that you do not wish to.”
“That is not what I said. I said I would not marry you.”
Darcy’s heart turned over in his chest, though he did his best to conceal it from Elizabeth, lest she grow so vexed that she ended the interview. “Why not?” he enquired evenly.
She shook her head, and her brow creased with dissatisfaction. “It is frankly reprehensible that you should even need to ask. I am sorry if you do not wish to marry your cousin, and I can quite comprehend why you might not, for I have rarely met a more disagreeable woman, but you cannot forsake her after five-and-twenty or six-and-twenty years or whatever it is. You may be able to walk away unscathed and marry where you will, but as a woman, she will be ridiculed and scorned if you break with her now. Miss de Bourgh will not find it easy to secure another suitor at her age or with her indifferent health. Therefore, you will be abandoning her to a life of loneliness, with neither partner nor children to keep her company. And all this to say nothing of her feelings. It is simply not right!”
She was all but panting with indignation by the end of her speech and seemed braced for some sort of reprisal, but Darcy could scarcely keep the smile from his face.
“Do you have any idea how much I love you, Elizabeth Bennet?”
Her surprise was almost comical. “What did you say?”
“You are the most admirable, compassionate, passionate , and beautiful person I have ever met. And I love you.”
She blinked at him a few times and appeared unable to catch her breath. He thought she was about to smile, but instead she exhaled heavily and shook her head.
“But you must still marry Miss de Bourgh. If not for her sake, then for mine, for how many years would it be otherwise before you came to resent me for the fortune you sacrificed to marry me? You are too much of a gentleman to mention it, but Mr Wickham had no such qualms, and he told me that the engagement with your cousin was planned to enable your estates to be combined. Can you promise you would never come to regret forfeiting Rosings Park for my one-hundred pounds a year?”
Appalled, Darcy stared at her. “You would bring up things George Wickham has said at such a moment as this?”
“Yes, because it is true, is it not?”
“No! It—” He stopped and rubbed a hand over his face before reluctantly admitting, “There is some truth to it. My mother and aunt did speak of it at one time, when Anne and I were first born, but I never took it seriously, and neither did my mother or father. Lord knows they proposed enough alternatives in my formative years to remove all doubt of that. But—” He sighed deeply. “It seems Anne believed it.”
Elizabeth did not respond straightaway. She only frowned as she considered this new information. He took heart from the fact that her eyes never left his for one moment of her deliberations.
“Believed?” she said at last. “In the past?”
“Yes! All misunderstanding between us has been well and truly resolved, and she led me to believe that she had clarified matters for you, also. Little though I liked the discovery that she had come here on Thursday, or how she spoke to you, I thought I understood that amongst all her insults, she did at least relay the information that she and I are not engaged.”
“She did,” Elizabeth replied, still frowning, “but she did not tell me that you never were . I thought you had broken the engagement. She seemed so very angry.”
Darcy wanted to crow. Finally, he comprehended Elizabeth’s reluctance! He constrained himself to a smile. “Anne always seems angry. It is a family trait, I am told.” That earnt him a grin, though Elizabeth attempted to disguise it. “Do you see now? There never was any union planned for us. I have never aspired to combine our fortunes or our estates. Anne is neither angry nor distressed about it. She scarcely could be, considering it was she who attempted to break the blasted engagement.”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow in exactly the same manner her father had moments before.
“That is how we discovered our mutual misapprehension,” Darcy explained, somewhat chagrined. “She told me on the way back from Kent that she no longer wished to marry me.”
Elizabeth’s eyes danced with mirth. She looked absolutely lovely. “That must have come as a bit of a surprise if you knew nothing about it.”
“Just a bit. I understand it was something your mother said about our dispositions being ill-suited that decided her.”
“Oh Lord, yes! On Christmas Day, Mama told her that you needed a wife who could teach you some liveliness, and Miss de Bourgh was not qualified. Goodness, I think you had better forgive your cousin her every injustice towards my family, for we seem to have matched her insult for insult.”
“You do enliven me, Elizabeth,” Darcy said with impassioned urgency, closing the gap between them and taking up her hands. “I have never known happiness such as I feel when I am with you. I have never laughed as much or worried as little. You lift my spirits merely by being in the same room. I cannot imagine my life without you, except that it must be the most miserable state of existence, and I have no desire to acquaint myself with it. What I want is for the chance to make you as happy as you make me. Every day, every hour, for the rest of my life. I want you to agree to marry me. Will you, Elizabeth?” He lifted her hands and kissed them, tenderly, reverently. “Will you agree to be my wife?”
Hope hammered out a desperate rhythm on his heart as he watched her. She continued to stare at him for what felt like an age until, to his vast confusion, she released a flurry of opposing sentiments at once. She nodded in the affirmative, and though she smiled, it was as tremulous as it was broad and largely eclipsed by the pitiful, shuddering breath she took, and the tear that spilled down her cheek.
“Yes, I will marry you.” She nodded and wiped the tear away with the heel of her palm, only for another to drop over her lashes in its wake. “Nothing would make me happier.”
The heartfelt delight this reply produced might have been such as he had never felt before, had it not been tempered by uncertainty. “Are you aware you are crying?”
Her smile broadened further still, and she gave a delicate sniff. “Yes, forgive me.”
“I thought you said you laugh when you are happy.”
“I do, usually. But I have never been this happy before.”
She laughed then, and Darcy thought he had never been more in love with her. He gently wiped away her tear with his thumb. “Neither have I.”
She beamed at him. “Then I must tell you, it becomes you very well.”
That was a compliment he had not anticipated. It made him profoundly aware of how admiringly she was regarding him and how closely they were standing. He had not intended to kiss her, not here with her father on the other side of the door, but he could think of no other way to express what he felt. And he knew enough of the world to recognise desire when he saw it.
He heard it in her rapid breathing, saw it in the unblinking fervency of her stare, felt it in the heat of her breath on his lips. She held herself still, as though she ought to be ashamed of feeling it, yet it seemed that if he touched her, she would melt into his arms more readily than lamp oil soaks into a wick. He was not resilient enough to withstand it. And he wanted, with alarming intensity, to see how hot she would burn. He kept the kiss brief, for her sake. It was enough time to leave them both breathless and for him to correct his estimation from wick to touchpaper.
“That was quite the revelation,” she whispered with a shy grin that did nothing to cool his ardour.
“ You are the revelation, Elizabeth. When we have more time, I shall tell you all the lessons that loving you has taught me.”
“Oh dear! You make it sound as though it has been rather hard work.”
He held her gaze steadily and tried not to let his voice betray all his desire, lest he alarm her. “It has been torture from beginning to end.”
She blushed but did not look away, and his heart soared, for he knew then that she comprehended him perfectly. He traced her cheekbone as he had envisaged doing more times than he cared to recount.
“Thank God you have relieved my suffering. I could not have survived another day keeping these feelings to myself.”
“I wonder if we ought to keep them to ourselves a little while longer, though.”
“Why? Pray tell me you have no doubts.”
“Goodness, no! None at all. Please do not think that for a moment. It is Jane. She would never begrudge us our happiness, but she has been exposed to the world’s derision for disappointed hopes once before. If we announce our news before she receives an offer from Mr Bingley—and I think it safe to assume he means to make one—it will raise eyebrows, and she will be embarrassed in front of all her friends a second time. I cannot do it to her.”
Darcy looked away to grimace ruefully at the far wall. Miss Bennet’s abandonment was as much his fault as Bingley’s—something of which, he knew, Elizabeth was aware. It was not a request he was going to be able to refuse. He turned back when he felt Elizabeth take hold of his hand.
“Now this is a wretched beginning. You cannot be angry with me already.”
What a sublime sensation, to have her touch him so boldly and regard him with such open affection. “I cannot presently think of a single thing you could do that would make me angry with you, Elizabeth. I am vexed at Bingley. As far as I know, he does mean to propose. I cannot fathom what the devil is taking him so long.”
“Well, in fairness, he and Jane have not had much opportunity to see each other since he came back.”
“Neither have you and I, and I still managed it.”
She agreed with a delectable little humming sound that was almost a purr. “But not every man would walk through a snowdrift to propose.”
Darcy wished to reply that not every woman was exceptional enough to warrant it, but he could not pay her the compliment without sounding as though he was insulting her sister. He settled for pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead.
“Very well. I shall remain silent a little longer. For you. Though if Bingley takes any more than a week, I may have to renege on my word. Disguise of every sort is my abhorrence, and this is the last thing in the world I would keep secret.”
“If Mr Bingley takes anywhere close to a week, I may renege on it for you. Any longer and people will think I am gone mad, for I cannot keep from smiling.”
Such an admission—pure ambrosia to Darcy’s mind after so much anguish—kept him smiling all the way back to Netherfield. Mr Bennet’s complicity in their concealment was attained as readily as was his consent, and all three parted company before the rest of Longbourn stirred.
Darcy arrived back before Bingley, Georgiana, or Anne were yet downstairs, and he spent the time before any of them appeared pacing the rooms of Netherfield, chasing the memories he had heretofore resented, every remembrance of Elizabeth now but a foreshadow of the bliss that was guaranteed to be his when they wed.