Page 40 of Mr. Darcy’s Honor (Darcy and Elizabeth Forever: Pride and Prejudice Variations #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE SIX-SECOND ENGAGEMENT

The carriage door closed behind Elizabeth with a solid thunk. The sudden absence of rain, wind, and shouting created a silence so profound it seemed to ring in her ears. She settled on the dry cushions and watched Darcy confer with Bingley before climbing in to join her.

“Bingley has gone to sort out the wreckage of my aunt’s carriage. And to ensure Wickham is properly restrained.”

Elizabeth could only nod, a curious lightness filling her chest as the reality of her situation settled upon her.

She was safe. She was with Darcy.

Only then, with danger past, did she allow herself to truly look at him. His face was pale. His injured shoulder clearly caused him pain—she could see it in the careful way he held himself and the tightness around his mouth. Yet his eyes burned with an intensity that stole her breath.

“You came for me,” she said, the simple words inadequate for the emotion behind them.

“Did you doubt that I would?” Darcy’s voice was rough with feeling.

“I never doubted you would try,” Elizabeth replied honestly. “I could not be certain you would succeed.”

“Neither could I,” Darcy admitted, his gaze taking in her disheveled appearance and the bruises visible on her wrists. “Are you hurt elsewhere?”

The question brought a rush of awareness—the throbbing ache in her shoulder where her arm had been twisted, the soreness in her feet from running through the woods, and the raw patches on her palms from her fall. Yet none of it mattered now.

“Nothing that won’t heal,” she assured him, suddenly acutely aware of her bedraggled state—hair falling from its makeshift binding, dress torn and muddied beneath Wickham’s coat, and half-boots ruined beyond repair.

A peculiar expression crossed Darcy’s face—part relief, part wonder, as if she were the most precious sight he’d ever beheld. “For a woman avoiding scandal, you’ve created quite a spectacular one, Miss Bennet.”

Elizabeth laughed despite everything—the rain, the mud, and the lingering fear of a completely ruined reputation. “I apologize for the unorthodox greeting, Mr. Darcy. I would have sent a proper invitation to meet at the bridge, but my correspondence was somewhat… restricted.”

“Your message reached me nonetheless,” Darcy replied, his eyes softening. “Though I confess, your poetic talents are rather unusual.”

“Desperate circumstances inspire desperate verse,” Elizabeth countered, feeling a tentative smile tug at her lips. “Perhaps I should have recited Fordyce’s Sermons instead? I understand they make quite an impression.”

“A tactical error,” Darcy replied with unexpected playfulness. “I might have mistaken you for Mr. Collins in disguise.”

“Heaven forbid!” Elizabeth’s eyes widened in mock horror. “I should never have been rescued.”

“On the contrary,” Darcy assured her, his expression growing serious. “I would search for you across continents, Elizabeth Rose Bennet.”

The simple sincerity of his declaration stole her breath more effectively than any elaborate speech could have done. Her name on his lips, spoken with such quiet certainty, with such depth of feeling, made her heart stutter and race.

Elizabeth Rose Bennet. Not ‘Miss Elizabeth’ or ‘Miss Bennet’—but her full name, claimed with an intimacy that propriety would normally forbid.

The carriage suddenly felt impossibly small, the air between them charged.

Elizabeth was acutely aware of every detail of Darcy’s presence—the damp curl that had fallen across his forehead, the raindrops still clinging to his lashes, and the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

His gaze held hers, unwavering, as if afraid she might disappear should he look away.

Darcy surprised her by taking her hands in his. His expression was one she had never seen before—intense yet vulnerable, determined yet uncertain.

Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat.

This was not the distant, proud man who had once declared her “tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt him.” Nor was it the feverish patient who had called her his wife in delirium.

This was Darcy stripped of pretense, of social armor, of all the barriers he had constructed between himself and the world.

“Elizabeth,” he began, his voice low. “After our conversation yesterday, I had planned a careful, measured approach—letters from Pemberley, a return visit in autumn, and a proper courtship conducted with all the patience you requested. But now, I cannot hold back my intentions.”

“It seems we have met again, so soon,” Elizabeth murmured, acutely aware of his warm hands enveloping hers despite the chill of the rain.

“I hope not too soon,” he said, his gaze not leaving hers. “You asked for time. You spoke of six months, of correspondence, of certainty. All sensible precautions that I fully intended to honor.”

“I did,” she acknowledged, her heart racing.

“But I find, Elizabeth, that near loss has a way of clarifying one’s priorities.” His grip on her hands tightened slightly. “You did not specify six months, precisely. You might have meant six weeks. Six days, perhaps.”

A laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her. “Six hours?”

“Six minutes,” he countered, his expression lightening further.

“Or six seconds,” she offered, hardly daring to believe the direction of the conversation.

“I believe those have elapsed,” Darcy observed, his smile broadening. “Several times over.”

Elizabeth’s own smile grew to match his, a lightness filling her that lifted away all the fear and uncertainty of the past hours. “So they have.”

“Then I will ask again, with no expectation of delay or deferment.” Darcy’s expression grew serious, though his eyes remained warm. “Elizabeth Bennet, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Elizabeth gasped, wondering at the surprising twist. The events of the past hours, the terror and triumph, the exhaustion and exhilaration, all seemed to coalesce into this single point of decision.

Yet it was not truly a decision at all. Her heart had made its choice long before her mind had caught up to the truth.

“Yes,” she said, the word carrying all the emotion she could not express more eloquently. “Yes, I will marry you, Fitzwilliam Darcy.”

The joy that swept across his face was answer enough. He raised her hands to his lips, pressing a fervent kiss to her knuckles. The touch sent a tremor through her entire being, a whisper of what might be.

“You have made me the happiest of men,” he said, his voice slightly unsteady.

Elizabeth looked down at their joined hands—her small fingers enveloped in his larger ones, the contrast between them symbolic of so much. Her skin was reddened from brambles, his bearing the calluses of a gentleman who rode and fenced.

“Despite the mud?” she teased.

“Because of it. It proves you are real, Elizabeth, not a fever-dream I conjured during my illness.”

His words reminded her of their time at Netherfield—the long hours of nursing, the moments of vulnerability as fever stripped away his reserve, and the growing connection that had taken root during those quiet nights. How far they had come since then.

A thought occurred to her, and she reached into her pocket, withdrawing Lady Catherine’s envelope. “I believe this constitutes my dowry. Provided by your aunt, no less. Not the ten thousand pounds she might consider appropriate for the mistress of Pemberley, but a start nonetheless.”

Darcy’s eyes widened momentarily before understanding dawned. A slow smile spread across his features—not the polite, restrained expression he showed to society, but something warmer, more intimate, shared only with her.

“Lady Catherine would be mortified,” he observed drily.

“Precisely.” Elizabeth turned the envelope in her hands, considering its contents. “Though I confess, I feel a certain poetic justice in the arrangement. She sought to remove me from your life, and instead provided the means for me to enter it more fully.”

“Keep it,” Darcy said firmly. “Consider it a wedding gift from Lady Catherine, though she may not recognize it as such.”

The thought of Lady Catherine’s face should she ever discover the true fate of her money brought a fresh giggle of mischief. “How generous of her. Perhaps we should invite her to the wedding.”

“Perhaps we should elope to Gretna Green ourselves,” Darcy countered, only half in jest. “It would serve her right.”

The suggestion startled another laugh from Elizabeth.

The thought of dignified, proper Mr. Darcy eloping like a character in a sensational novel was absurd—and yet, he had just proposed to her in a muddy carriage after fighting Wickham with a walking stick.

Perhaps he was not as predictable as she had once believed.

“Can you imagine my mother’s distress? To be deprived of the satisfaction of planning a wedding? It would be cruelty indeed.”

“A valid consideration,” Darcy conceded, though the gleam in his eye suggested he was not entirely opposed to the idea. “Especially considering the many flowers that could speak in our stead.”

“Ah, the language of flowers.” Elizabeth felt a flush of shyness invade her joy. “I do wonder, though, why Jane chose the pink rose for me?”

“Sisterly discretion,” he replied, his expression growing tender. “Remember that dreadful verse comparing a woman’s lips to petals of the reddest rose?”

Of course she did. She’d quoted it in the postscript of the rescue letter. Together, they recited:

Thy lips, like petals of the reddest rose,

Thy cheeks, like apples ripened on the bough,

Thy slender form, which grace and charm bestows,

Before thy beauty, I can only bow!

“I would have chosen the reddest roses,” Darcy explained, “but Jane intervened, insisting pink would be less… overwhelming for someone recovering from nursing a fevered patient.” His eyes held hers meaningfully. “Though I maintain that red would have been more accurate to my feelings.”

“And to your feverish cheeks resembling apples,” she teased, studying his face and marveling at the changes wrought by happiness. The severe lines of his countenance had softened, the habitual furrow between his brows smoothed away.

He looked younger, more approachable, and devastatingly handsome. Her heart gave a peculiar flutter at the realization that this man—this proud, brilliant, complex man—was to be her husband.

The carriage door opened suddenly, admitting a gust of rain and Bingley’s cheerful face.

“I’ve told the driver to turn around,” he announced, oblivious to the moment he had interrupted. “And you’ll never guess who’s just arrived—Colonel Fitzwilliam and Colonel Forster, with half the militia to arrest Wickham.”

He climbed in, settling opposite them with a satisfied expression. “They’ve got Wickham’s accomplices out of the ditch. Quite a sight, I must say—like drowned rats in livery.”

Through the carriage window, Elizabeth caught sight of Colonel Fitzwilliam directing several militiamen as they hauled a raving and frothing Wickham from the muddy road.

The sight filled her with a complex mixture of emotions—relief, vindication, and a surprising touch of pity for a man whose life had been shaped by his own worst impulses.

“What will happen to him?” she asked, turning back to Darcy.

“He will face consequences,” Darcy replied. “But that is a matter for another day. For now, let us focus on your return to Longbourn and your family.”

And explaining to them how their second daughter has managed to become engaged to one of the wealthiest men in England while looking like a drowned cat, Elizabeth thought. Her mother would be ecstatic about the match, of course, but the circumstances were hardly what anyone could have anticipated.

“And our future,” Elizabeth added.

Darcy’s hand turned beneath hers, their fingers interlacing in a gesture far more intimate than propriety would normally allow. The contact sent a shiver of awareness through her entire being.

“Yes,” he agreed, his smile returning full force as he looked down at her. “Our future.”