Page 50 of The Last House in Lambton (Pride and Prejudice Variations #6)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

I waited in a state of paralysis—without thought, breathless, and confused.

“Have they all deserted you?” he asked, approaching in his gleaming top boots with his purposeful stride.

“I am afraid we are the victims of a conspiracy, Mr Darcy.” I was deeply embarrassed and blushed as I stood to meet him. “Should we follow our sisters back to the house?”

“No. We should give them what they want. Let us go on a brief tramp,” he said with the oddest half-smile.

Before I could say otherwise, he had secured my arm and steered me around the stone walls and onto a path that went behind one of our fallow fields.

Almost abstractedly, I reflected that this had been my path when escaping the wrath of the farmer’s dog.

Strange how life has its looping threads, all weaving us into some creation beyond our comprehension, and taking us back to places we have already been to be experienced anew.

We did not speak for some time, and I suffered a bitter heartbreak while deeply relishing our every commingled breath. My mind reeled. Why had he come? What could he mean by it? Had I not told him bluntly our regard for one another was hopeless? Had I not said plainly I would ask no more of him?

When we came to a muddy dip that made the path unpromising, we turned back, and he said, “Will you not share what has so captured your thoughts?”

“I was recalling how often I walked this path when I was a child,” I replied vaguely.

We were nearing the stone wall again, and he took my hand purposefully. “Perhaps we should find a place to sit,” he suggested.

“My goodness. Do you forget with whom you are walking? I am not remotely tired, nor would I be if we walked ten times as far.”

He hesitated before capturing my eyes with a most arresting look, and my heart began to pound in a purely reflexive response.

“I know it, but I am afraid I have done something you will not like, and I wish you to be seated when I tell you.”

I whipped around to face him directly. “You cannot be in earnest that I am to sit down and stare up at you for some awful news! I demand to hear whatever you must say while standing!”

“Very well.” He smiled almost apologetically and said, “I have spoken to your father, Elizabeth.”

“Yes, I saw you—and?” I demanded fretfully.

“You do not understand, dearest. I have spoken to your father.”

I staggered and flailed around behind me for somewhere to sit, finding myself seated with very little dignity just where he had originally intended.

“You what? You spoke to him before you spoke to me?” I cried.

“I did. ”

He crouched down before me and looked earnestly upward into my face, and I reached blindly to cover his mouth to stop him from speaking.

“No, tell me you have not!”

He kissed my palm and gently removed my hand. “Tell me you do not dislike the idea.”

“Oh, I do not! You know it already! But—does my mother know?”

“I believe so. She was calling for her salts and being half-carried up the stairs by?—"

“Good God! What have you done?”

“Mr Bennet did not refuse me, you know. He gave you away in under five minutes.”

“How can you joke at such a moment? Do you not see? You are well and truly caught!” I cried. My hands flew upward like agitated birds and landed on my heated cheeks. “If Mama knows it, you are now committed. She will not let you out of this without suing for a breach of promise!”

He captured my hands and brought them back down towards to earth to rest in the solidity of his grip. “Why do you think I did so, Elizabeth? You are even now thinking of ways to avoid it.”

“Only to-to spare you,” I said on a dry sob. “Did you not get a sufficient dose of Longbourn in the past hour to cure you of your regard for me? You and I may suit, but our worlds spin in altogether different orbits!”

He reached up to caress my cheek. “I might have known your first concern would be for me. Do you not remember that we are already running with the stars? What do we care for mere worlds? Now cease your wails, my love, and tell me I may take you home.”

I was dreaming, deep in a nightmare of the most joyful kind that would be ripped from me upon the moment of waking. I could not speak and could no longer force my eyes to focus .

“My word, you are not going to faint, are you?” he asked, grasping my arms to steady me.

“I may,” I said weakly. “And it would serve you right. I do not understand anything at all.”

“Consider that your family is, at this moment, gathered at the window and partaking of this scene, love. You have had me on my knees for some time now, and your youngest sister has probably called gleefully up to your mama that you are giving me a hard go of it. And she, poor lady, is likely staggering down the stairs to see for herself and threatening to have you sent to the road to take your chances with a peddler if you do not?—”

“A tinker.”

“What? Oh, as you will. I wish you joy of him, my darling,” he said with a grin. “But why are you crying?”

“I love you so,” I said through sheets of tears. “I am almost in pain. How many times have you knelt before me while I have wept? It is so mortifying, Mr Darcy.”

“Those moments have been the best of my life, Elizabeth. Do you not see how important you are to me? You have taught me everything worth knowing.”

“I?”

“Yes, and I shall tell you all about it, but think, love, of your poor mama. Let me kiss you, so she may fall back onto her couch and recuperate.”

He did not wait for me to reply and took matters into his own hands, which was just as well.

I had fallen into a state of profound stupidity by this time.

He kissed me while I was seated and without ever withdrawing his lips, pulled me to standing and kissed me rather too thoroughly, I thought, and in such a public fashion that my knees trembled under the weight of such unseemly passion.

“I believe I may faint in earnest, sir,” I mumbled .

“Rest your head on my heart, then, and hear its steadiness. I live for you, you know.”

His words were tender and beautiful, but he was also suppressing a laugh, so well-entertained was he by my befuddled state and perhaps more so, the degree to which he had shocked me with his kiss.

“You know, just as soon as I come to my senses, I shall be enraged at how you have paid your addresses to me,” I mumbled stiffly into his waistcoat.

He ran his fingers through the curls that hung down my back and said, “I do know it, and I can hardly wait to hear your strictures on the manner in which I have secured you.”

“You practically leapt out of the shrubbery and compromised me in front of everyone, so I have no choice but to accept you.”

“Did you not once call me a wicked man?”

“I believe I meant vile, sir. A vile man. But why did you do it?” I asked, lifting my face upward.

“I have come to know you very well, Elizabeth. If there are two paths to travel, you will take the harder road. When you love, you love so deeply I could not risk your flight into some demented notion that you would be a plague upon me. Have you begun to harbour notions of being a stoic?”

“I would dearly love to be so deep, sir, but I have the mind of a hysteric. Look at how you have reduced me to a quaking wreck. Are we truly to marry?”

“Truly. Do you need me to carry you to the house, dearest?”

I finally laughed. “If you did, you would forever corrupt my sisters’ notions of romance. No man who did not carry them in a swoon would then be deemed worthy.”

“I have carried you in a swoon,” he said in a heated whisper, “and hope to do so again upon occasion.”