Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

It was all tended to rather efficiently. Darcy dashed for the door to call poor Dorothy, who had not had an easy afternoon, and then stood back rather awkwardly as the maid, followed by the cook, dashed in with a bewildering array of bandages and salves, to tend to Elizabeth's finger.

It had been only a prick, and the lady herself was mostly unharmed. The worst damage had been to the upholstery on the chair on which she was seated, which had caught some drops of rose-red blood before she had realised how freely the wound had gushed.

Under the cook's sharp eye, Dorothy began blotting and treating the fabric in the hopes of preventing a stain, whilst Elizabeth nimbly tended to her own injury by popping her bleeding finger in her mouth for a moment to clean it and then wrapping a soft piece of cloth around it to stop any further bleeding, tucking the ends in to keep it in place.

All of this, Darcy watched in some mixture of fascination and alarm. He was no stranger to minor injuries, having grown up, as one does when one is the heir to a great estate, out hunting or on the sports fields at cricket or the like, but this was different. It was strangely intimate, private, so unlike the scrapes and bumps of the playing fields. It disturbed him in ways not entirely unwelcome. And that disturbed him all the more.

At last, when the cook was satisfied as to the state of the chair and Elizabeth's finger had stopped bleeding, the two staff dipped their heads and rushed out of the room as quickly as they had entered it. Elizabeth had returned to her chair, but now sat unoccupied, her embroidery abandoned once more on the small table and her finger wrapped with that tiny scrap of cloth.

"Are you well?" Darcy offered these words in place of the thousand thoughts tumbling through his head, all so imperfectly formed that he could never put them into coherent speech.

"Yes, very well. I thank you." A perfectly polite, impersonal reply. Had they lost that glimmer of rapport that had enveloped them earlier?

Darcy swallowed. "I should leave you in peace. You are injured and must be wishing me gone." He glanced at his own seat, now empty, and turned his head towards the door.

"No!" Elizabeth's voice called him back from his disappointment. "Please, stay. Unless you have… unless you have other demands on your time." She looked up at him from her seated position through the thick lashes that rimmed her fine eyes. "Please."

He was not a hard man to convince. He let out a contented sigh and returned to his seat.

Ought he now to resume his addresses to her? Was this the appropriate time? Or had matters gone so far astray that a proposal would land at her feet like a heavy brick, unwanted and offensive?

And then, struck once more by a most unwelcome thought, Darcy stopped. For the very first time, he began to wonder at the appropriateness of his planned proposal. And, worse, for the first time, he began to entertain doubts as to whether such an offer, which would surely have considerable monetary value in the salons and ballrooms of London, would be welcomed at all, and accepted.

He had always assumed that he need only hint at the matter and any young woman of his choosing would be there, gazing at him with adoring eyes, ready to leap at the chance to become Mrs Darcy. Think of all that would entail: a fine house in London, a great estate in Derbyshire, several other small properties around Britain, a choice of carriages for every day of the week, the society of earls, more pin money than any person would know what to do with, and a husband who had been called handsome more than once in his hearing.

But now, having spent this time with Elizabeth, talking about everything from ugly urns from Sheffield to his sister's broken heart, he began to wonder if he had—in this instance at least—been wrong. Bingley's sister Caroline would accept him in an instant. She did not even like him, particularly, and he certainly did not like her, but she would be willing to overlook that minor inconvenience for the chance of being mistress of Pemberley. Any number of debutantes (or their mothers) would act likewise, clamouring for the name and wealth, quite heedless of the man attached to them.

Elizabeth, he now considered, was different. It would be foolish to say she cared nothing for riches, for everybody must have enough to eat, and only a fool would ignore the very real dangers of poverty. But while comfort might be her aim, a fortune was not. If the rumours he heard were true, had she not refused Mr Collins' offer only hours after he and Bingley had fled Meryton? Whilst this parsonage was hardly a match for Pemberley, it was more than comfortable, and in time, she would have Longbourn as well, once that odious parson inherited it.

But she had passed up what was, objectively, an excellent offer for a secure future. This was not a woman to be swayed by wealth. Perhaps… just perhaps, his own gold-plated offer was not so enticing, at that.

No. If she were to accept him, it would be for himself alone and not his deep pockets.

And, for the first time ever, he began to wonder if he was enough for a woman like her.