These Three Remain (56 page)

“Not at all, Charles!” Darcy took him by the shoulders. “I can think of no other man who deserves such happiness, truly I cannot. Did you think she might refuse you? What nonsense! I wish you joy, my friend, you and your future wife.” At his words, tears stung at Bingley’s eyes. Darcy clapped his shoulders roughly and turned away.

“Thank you, Darcy.” Bingley cleared his throat. “Thank you. Now, how may I serve you?”

“I can hardly say, except that I hope you will allow me to stay. It may be only a day, it may be more; I do not yet know.”

Bingley regarded him curiously. “My home is at your disposal, you must know that. Can you tell me no more?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Darcy replied. “It is business of a personal nature. Perhaps it is all folly, I do not know. But,” he continued with a smile, “it is nothing that will diminish your own joy however it falls out. All I ask is that you allow me to come with you when next you visit the home of your fiancée.”

“Certainly,” Bingley answered him. “I am to visit tomorrow. Since Jane and I are engaged, there is no time I am not welcome. We can go as early or as late as you please.” Bingley continued to look at him curiously.

“What do you say to a game of billiards before dinner?” Darcy proposed a distraction that had always worked with his cousin.

“Certainly!” Bingley pursed his lips. “Shall we wager on the outcome?”

Early the following day, Darcy and Bingley set out for Longbourn with a fresh autumn breeze at their backs. The leaves were turning, the multihued trees framing the harvested fields and golden pastures. Although Bingley had caught Darcy up on all the events since his departure two weeks before, there still seemed to be minutiae yet to be imparted; and so the ride was filled with the overflow of Bingley’s enthusiasm for his soon-to-be in-laws. Far from being bored, Darcy listened carefully for any clue that might lend him insight into the tenor of the Bennet household in general and Elizabeth in particular. From Bingley’s descriptions, it seemed that all there were in a flurry of goodwill and excitement over the coming nuptials. Of Elizabeth, he heard only how good she was to her sister and how often she had turned her mother aside to some task in order to allow Bingley some precious moments alone with his bride to be.

Their arrival was greeted with all the happiness that Bingley had described, although several curious glances were thrown Darcy’s way. Not a little fearful of what this day would bring, he could hardly look at Elizabeth. When they had dismounted and made their bows, Bingley immediately advocated that, on this beautiful day, they should all walk out and enjoy it. His proposal was readily agreed to, and while Jane, Elizabeth, and Kitty sought their bonnets and wraps, Mrs. Bennet took her prospective son-in-law by the arm and advised him with authority that the paths to and from Longbourn were the prettiest to be had in the area, although, she confided, she herself was not in the habit of walking.

While Bingley was thus engaged, Darcy stepped away and looked out over the garden. Most of it had been raked and overturned, but some hardy blooms still waved their colorful heads in the light breeze. He breathed in the musty scent, holding it for a moment in an attempt to soothe the racing of his heart. Again, time seemed to be plunging headlong into the future, his future, consuming and discarding the precious present in the most wanton manner. At one and the same moment, he longed for Elizabeth to appear and devoutly wished that she would delay, at least until he could achieve some semblance of control over his heart.

A noise from the doorway told him that the young ladies were ready, and he turned back to see Bingley holding out his hand to Jane. Elizabeth stepped lightly from the house, the sunlight dappling dark and light over her rusty brown spencer and green muslin dress. There was nothing elegant about her appearance. She was dressed for a walk. Yet her every expression and movement inspired his admiration.

Bingley secured his Jane’s hand, and as the pair set off, Elizabeth turned away from them with a smile and then — oh, it took his breath away to see it — lifted her eyes to him. It required no exercise of will or command of his limbs to take him to her side. He was suddenly there, and they were turning down the path after Bingley and Jane, the younger sister somewhere behind them. After a brief discussion of their route, in which Darcy took no part or interest, it was decided that they would walk toward Lucas Lodge, where Kitty would leave them in favor of a visit with Miss Maria Lucas. The arrangement could not have fallen out more favorably. It remained only to put some distance between themselves and the newly engaged pair, and he would have no excuse, nothing save his own fears, to hinder him from knowing his fate.

The group moved forward down the lane between fields and through a small wood. Sooner than he had expected, Bingley and Jane were well behind them, walking slower and slower as the privacy of their surroundings increased. “Mr. Bingley has chosen a fine day for a walk,” Elizabeth ventured, “although I do not think he notices where he is going.”

“Yes, it is a fine day.” Darcy looked behind them. “And I believe you are correct about Bingley. Your sister also, perhaps?”

“Very likely.” They walked on, leaves crunching and sliding beneath their feet, a renewed silence between them. Several excruciating minutes passed before he asked whether this was her favorite walk.

“Only when Charlotte is home, for there — do you see it?” She pointed ahead to a divergence among the trees. “That is the way to Lucas Lodge. I suppose I could walk it blindfolded.” He nodded that, yes, he saw where the way divided, and as he did so, Kitty brushed past them.

“May I go, then, Elizabeth?” she asked, studiously avoiding Darcy’s eyes. He could see that she wanted nothing better than to be away from such dull company as he provided.

“Yes, you may go, but return before dusk, and do not ask Sir William to drive you home,” she admonished her younger sister.

With a roll of her eyes, Kitty left them, hurrying down the path to her friend. Darcy looked back the way they had come, but Bingley and Jane were not to be seen. They were now quite alone. He waited to see which direction Elizabeth would go. With a quick glance up at him, she stepped forward, continuing down the path. He struck out after her. It must be now, he told himself.

He drew abreast of her and began to reach for her arm to arrest her stride when she slowed of her own accord and looked up at him with a troubled countenance. “Mr. Darcy, I am a very selfish creature,” she began, “and for the sake of giving relief to my own feelings care not how much I may be wounding yours.” Surprised by such a speech, Darcy stopped short and regarded her with concern. “I can no longer help thanking you for your unexampled kindness to my poor sister.” Elizabeth’s words rushed on although she could hardly meet his eye. “Ever since I have known it I have been most anxious to acknowledge to you how gratefully I feel it. Were it known to the rest of my family I should not have merely my own gratitude to express.”

She knew! Darcy’s heart twisted into an icy knot around this revelation, which changed everything, perhaps damaging every possibility between them. The reasons for her actions on his last visit were now only too explicable. “I am sorry,” he managed to reply, “exceedingly sorry that you have ever been informed of what may, in a mistaken light, have given you uneasiness.” He looked past her and exhaled a pained chuff of air before saying, “I did not think Mrs. Gardiner was so little to be trusted.”

“You must not blame my aunt.” Elizabeth’s voice was pleading. “Lydia’s thoughtlessness first betrayed to me that you had been concerned in the matter; and, of course,” she confessed, “I could not rest till I knew the particulars.” She took a deep breath. “Let me thank you again and again, in the name of all my family, for that generous compassion which induced you to take so much trouble, and bear so many mortifications, for the sake of discovering them.”

Darcy listened, his heart released from his initial fears as he heard Elizabeth describe his actions in the most benevolent of terms. She did not blame him for interfering. She was grateful, that was clear. But gratitude alone could be devastating to his hopes. He wanted more than her gratitude or an alliance founded on such an inequality. He wanted her heart, fully and freely given, or not at all.

“If you
will
thank me, let it be for yourself alone,” he responded to her firmly. “That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on I shall not attempt to deny. But your
family
owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of
you.
” He waited, anxious as well as fearful that she understood his meaning, but Elizabeth said nothing.

Her face was partially hidden by her bonnet but the pink tinge upon what he could see was unmistakable. Then, something inside him moved with such powerful emotion that he had to know all…here…now.

“You are too generous to trifle with me,” he began, putting his future in her hands. “If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once.
My
affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”

“Mr. Darcy.” His name came haltingly to her lips as she brought her face up. “Please…my feelings…” She seemed to be struggling to catch her breath, but the glow of her eyes told him that she was not in danger. “My feelings have undergone so material a change since that unfortunate day last spring that I can only receive with sincere gratitude and the most profound pleasure your assurances that yours continue the same.”

“Elizabeth.” He whispered her name lest the spell he knew himself to be under shatter and fall to the earth around him. “Elizabeth,” he repeated, gently enfolding her hands in his as he reveled in her sweet smile and shining eyes. Bringing her hands to his lips, he kissed one gently, then the other, then held them close against his heart as he told her, at last, all that resided there in terms of his deepest love, gratitude, and hope for the future.

He did not know how it happened, his heart was too full, but they were moving, walking he knew not where. There was so much to feel, so much to say, so much happiness that begged to be examined. Darcy told of his aunt’s visit, of his painful confrontation with her, and yet how it had taught him to hope. He spoke of his struggle to mend his ways and how he had studied to show her at Pemberley that her complaint of his character had been heeded. Elizabeth expressed her surprise at the manner in which he had taken to heart all her harsh words and blushed to recall them. His letter he forswore, but she cherished it, advising him to think of the past only as its remembrance gave him pleasure.

“I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind,” he replied, kissing once again the hand he held. “
Your
retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of ignorance.” He tucked her hand against his side. “But with
me,
it is not so. Painful recollections will intrude, which cannot, which ought not to be repelled.” He stopped their progress and, tracing her cheek, sighed. “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child, I was taught what was
right;
but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit, allowed, encouraged, almost taught to be selfish and overbearing — to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to
wish
at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own.”

He dropped his hand and gathered hers to him again as he spoke his soul into her beautiful eyes. “Such I was, from eight to eight-and-twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”

They walked several miles, Elizabeth telling him of her apprehensions on his discovery of her at Pemberley, Darcy assuring her that his only thought had been of earning her forgiveness. He told of Georgiana’s pleasure in her acquaintance and her disappointment at its sudden end and that his gravity at the inn had been caused by the measures he was already planning in rescue of her sister. She thanked him again, but of that painful affair neither desired to speak more.

“What could have become of Mr. Bingley and Jane!” Elizabeth glanced at her watch and then down the path behind them. “We should be returning home, and they are nowhere to be seen!” They turned back, Darcy holding her hand and placing it within the crook of his arm. “I must ask,” Elizabeth addressed him, “whether you were surprised to learn of their engagement.”

“Not at all. When I went away, I felt that it would soon happen.”

“That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as much.”

“My permission!” Darcy exclaimed. “No, no, that would be heights of presumption I would never dare scale, my dear girl! I hope I have learned better!” She smiled. He told her of his confession to Bingley the night before he left for London, how he had been mistaken in so much of what had occurred the previous autumn. “I could easily perceive his attachment to her, I told him, and was convinced of her affection. Then, I was obliged to confess that I had known your sister to be in Town last winter and conspired to keep it from him. He was rightly angry. But his anger, I am persuaded, lasted no longer than he remained in any doubt of your sister’s sentiments. He has heartily forgiven me now.”

They walked on, and if he had ever been speechless in her presence, it was ended now; for he knew her to be sympathetic to all his visions and plans for their shared future. In this vein, he continued till they reached her home, parting only just before entering the dining room at Longbourn.