Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

"LIZZY," SCREAMED LYDIA at the top of her lungs from the bottom of the house. "Get down here this instant."

Elizabeth, who had been lying down in her bed on top of the covers, face down in the pillows—a pastime she engaged in more often than she cared to admit these days—got up and went to the top of the stairs.

Lydia was at the bottom. "Lizzy!" she bellowed up, saw Elizabeth, and then lowered her voice. "Get down here. It's Mr. Darcy."

"What?" said Elizabeth, her heart climbing into her throat.

Certainly, some part of her had hoped Mr. Darcy would come to her defense in some way. Certainly, she'd hoped he would have defended her character or explained the way of it to someone.

She had to admit that she'd begun to have strange, meandering wonderings about Mr. Darcy. He'd been so insistent, after all, that they take his carriage to Kent. He'd rearranged his entire schedule just to convey her. And there were other things. She remembered, once, at Netherfield, he'd fixed her with this look and said that she willfully misunderstood him, and she wondered, well, what if she had really misunderstood him?

She examined everything he'd done, including that disastrous dance at the Netherfield Ball and the way he'd pulled her into his arms on that couch the night they were found by the Matlocks, and she realized she'd have to conclude he was in love with her.

Only…

Well, there was the thing he'd said that first night at the Meryton assembly, when he hadn't realized she was listening. Tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt him. That seemed to rather go against everything else, didn't it?

What was he doing here?

She banged down the steps, her heart similarly banging against her rib cage. She rushed to the foyer, where Mr. Darcy was just then alighting inside the house, removing his hat from his head and speaking to the servant who'd greeted him.

Except, then, he looked up and saw her. "Ah, Miss Bennet," he said.

"Mr. Darcy," she gasped.

"You look… are your cheeks always so rosy?"

She flushed deeply, looking down, mortified.

"Can we speak?" he said.

"Of course," she said.

The servant said that Mr. Darcy must be shown into the sitting room, where Mrs. Bennet and the others were gathered.

"Oh," said Mr. Darcy, "well, I need to speak to Miss Bennet alone, I think."

"Let's walk," she said. It was April now, warm enough for rambles outdoors.

"Very good," he said, putting his hat on his head.

She snatched up a bonnet from where it hung by the door and tied it on. She wished her heart would stop its incessant pounding.

They left the house together and then began to walk a stone pathway that wound its way behind Longbourn.

Abruptly, she stopped. "Oh! You're still healing. You can't walk!"

He gestured. "I'm on my feet, aren't I?"

"But you know what I mean." She threw up her hands, shaking her head. "I'm sorry. Apparently, I'm very out of sorts."

"I've come to apologize," he said.

"I see?" She was very confused.

"For my aunt, Lady Matlock, and the awful things she said and the rumors she started and the detrimental effect it's had on your family."

"Well, it's not your fault, sir.

"I think it is, however," he said. "I got you in that carriage with me. I forced you into it, and you didn't want to come with me."

"Oh, it was no hardship avoiding traveling post," she said.

"You were not enjoying yourself," he said. "I look back on it, see how strained you were, and I realize… I made a fool of myself, I see that now. I'm ever so sorry. I'm especially sorry because your reputation—your family's reputation—I want to fix it."

"How could you fix it, sir? The rumors are so widespread, and I don't think any of us girls shall make a good marriage, and my mother is—"

"I thought I'd ask you to marry me," he said.

She was speechless.

He winced. "My uncle, he's pointed out that there are other things I could do, and I most certainly can put my influence into finding you a suitable husband, someone who'd be willing to marry you even after…" He cleared his throat. "Well, no, that's sounds horrid, as if I'm trying to get someone to take my leavings or something, and I don't think of you that way. Heavens, Miss Bennet, I think you saved my life out there. I might have bled to death without you."

"I did precious little."

"You fetched me water and gave me clean bandages and kept me warm."

She flushed again. "I was entirely inappropriate and—"

"You were perfect," he countered. "The situation was such as it was, and you were quite astounding."

She bowed her head.

"All right, here it is," he said, "I know you never wanted to marry me. You won't hurt my feelings if you refuse me. I know how you see me. I could not blame you for seeing me that way."

"No, I was hasty, sir. You were rather insistent on sacrificing yourself for my safety while we were out there, and I realized I had misjudged your character."

"Truly?" He gave her a wide smile. "Is that so? Well, that's something." He looked quite pleased.

"You don't wish to marry me."

He cleared his throat, and now he wouldn't meet her gaze. "Oh, I don't know, Miss Bennet."

Dash it all! He was in love with her.

But then he said, lifting a shoulder, still gazing at the ground, "I suppose I was being foolish behaving the way I did, though. I shouldn't have maneuvered you into that carriage or asked to dance with you or fantasized about all the times we'd walk together on the grounds of Rosings. The truth is, I couldn't have married you, not then. Your family is not well connected, and you are not at all the sort of woman I am expected to marry. You have relatives in Cheapside, for goodness sake, and I hardly know what a wedding might look like, what a gaudy sort of spectacle that would have been. So, what I was doing, anyway, it was abundantly unfair to you. I repent of all that."

She sniffed, drawing herself up.

He looked up at her. "Oh, Lord. Of course, you're going to refuse me. This is the worst marriage proposal of all time."

"Well, why do you want to marry me now?"

"I always wanted to marry you. I just couldn't."

She folded her arms over her chest. "You don't have to lie to me, Mr. Darcy, especially when you're clearly simply proposing to me out of guilt."

"It's not out of guilt."

"I heard you the first night you came to Meryton with Mr. Bingley," she said. "I heard you say that Jane was pretty and that I was not."

His eyes widened. "You heard that?"

"So, don't pretend," she said. She didn't want him to marry her because he felt guilty. She wanted a man who truly regarded her, and who she would respect in turn. She wanted mutual affection, maybe even true love, the violent kind in stories.

Of course, all of those wants had bloomed in the soil of a heart of a young woman who was not in the position she was in, buried under rumors and scandal and having denied the proposal of Mr. Collins and now thought to have been, well, used and discarded by Mr. Darcy.

Yes, she could see why his guilt was making him marry her. He was an honorable man, wasn't he, not at all like Mr. Wickham had made him out to be. What had he said about how if he lived and she died, it would be abominable? He cared about the way he appeared to the world, and to look as if he were a man who would use a woman like Elizabeth ill and leave her to bear the brunt of it, it was not something he could bear.

Of course, of course.

This was all about appearances.

"I'm not pretending, Miss Bennet," he said. "I don't entirely understand it myself, but haven't you had someone's looks sort of grow on you before?"

She did know what he was talking about, because it had happened with him in reverse. At first, she'd thought him quite handsome, and then the more often he opened his mouth and spoke, the less so she thought him.

He winced. "Oh, dash it all, that's a wretched thing to say to a woman a man wants to marry. I've never actually done this before, you know? It's not as if I ever bothered to practice. I thought I'd propose naturally. What a fool I am."

"It's all right," she said, taking pity on him. "You think that if you leave me here, taking the brunt of this rumor, it makes you look bad."

He considered. "I suppose so, yes. I had thought of that a bit, but most of my concern was for you. I thought, if you and I marry, it would help the relative position of your sisters. Also, I, erm, I may have interfered with your sister and Bingley, so, I could undo that and—"

"What?" She was incensed. "You what?"

He grimaced. "Can this get any worse? I should go, I think. I should simply leave."

"You're taking it back, then?"

"Taking what back?"

"The marriage proposal."

"I can't take it back," he said, affronted. "I'm a gentleman. If I've asked you, I've asked you. No, I don't wish to take it back. Obviously, I still want to marry you. Very, very much. I'm in love with you, Miss Bennet."

Oh, yes, he was in love. She let out a little laugh. He was awful at pretending, but he was trying. He wasn't a bad man. He cared about propriety too much, but at least he did it in a way that made him kind. Of course, she would have to find out more about Mr. Wickham. But he was very, very wealthy, and she would be utterly foolish to turn him down.

It was really a choice between disgrace and ruin and being mistress of his large estates and hosting lavish dinner parties and hobnobbing with the peerage. If she denied him, she was just being stupid.

"I accept," she said.

His jaw dropped in surprise.

She let out a laugh. "Oh, it's not that shocking, is it?"

"You hate me."

"I assure you, I do not hate you."

"You did," he countered.

"I suppose I was harsh on you, but I know you better now, and… well, being your wife, it does not sound unpleasant."

"I see," he said, his smile a little rueful.

"Oh, I don't mean it in that way. I am not what your aunt implied. I'm not trying to use you to climb socially. To be honest, while I do enjoy attending social functions, I am just as happy at home with a book curled up near the fire, and I don't need lavish things. You needn't spend any of your income on me—"

"Apologies," he said, letting out a breath. "There's no need for that, Miss Bennet. We'll, er, give it some time, shall we? And perhaps affection will grow between us."

She smiled. "I feel quite certain it could. I have a great deal of respect for you, sir, and I shall endeavor not to be embarrassing to you. I shall do exactly as you ask, and you won't regret this, giving this to me, helping my family. I promise you."

His jaw worked. He looked into her eyes and then, his gaze seemed to hone in on her lips. But then he jerked his eyes up to the sky. "Time," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"Oh," he said, lifting a finger. "But I think a quick marriage. I can procure a special license."

Of course, he wished to quell those rumors of his bad behavior right away, didn't he? "All right. I certainly don't have a number of social engagements these days. My calendar is quite open, sir."

"You don't object, then?"

"No, why should I?"

"If you think it might make things look… more salacious, I suppose, the rush."

"Oh, no," she said. "It will only preserve the ruse you wish to perpetrate, I suppose, that you're actually madly in love with me instead of doing this out of duty and all that."

"I said I was in love with you," he said, with a laugh.

She laughed, too. "Yes, sir, well, you're not very good at that."

"At what?"

"At lying."

His expression froze and he looked rather devastated.

"Oh, I don't mean it to be…" She reached out, taking his hand, wishing to reassure him. "I'm sorry. I have this way about me, simply saying whatever I think without thinking of how it will sound until it's too late."

He put his other hand over hers, clutching her hand between both of his. "Don't apologize for that, Miss Bennet. I like that about you rather a lot."

Her lips parted and now she felt almost trapped in his gaze. Oh, maybe he did… maybe he was in love with her, sort of, somehow? Maybe…

No, don't be foolish, Elizabeth. A man like Mr. Darcy doesn't fall in love with a girl like you.