Page 103 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
He looked at me then. Fully, the way the sun was looking at the water—directly, without apology, and illuminating everything.
“I love you, Elizabeth.” He said it as though it were a fact of geography—as though he were pointing out that the stream ran east, or that the meadow sloped toward Longbourn, or that November followed October. “I have loved you since the kitchen, when you fed me biscuits and scolded me, and your eyes were magnificent. I lost the ability to classify you, and the inability has been the making of me. And here I stand at a stream where my sister learned to be brave, and I am asking you to let me be brave in return.”
My throat was tight, my eyes burning, and my hands shaking, and I could have deflected with wit, but I chose not to.
I looked into his eyes, those dear, dark, watchful eyes, and I did not see a man assessing me for my worth. I saw one who valued me, not counting the cost, but taking me with all my faults and foibles and finding me very suitable indeed.
He extended his hand. “Will you cross with me?”
I looked at the stream. The flat stones, dry now, the water low and quiet, the far bank leading back to Netherfield and the fields and whatever came next. A small crossing.An ordinary crossing. The kind a girl had made in a rainstorm when she had learned that the choice was hers, and the choosing had changed everything.
I took his hand. His fingers closed around mine, warm and steady.
“Do not look down,” he said.
“I am looking exactly where I wish to step.” I kept my gaze on him, noting that naughty lock of hair over his forehead, and trusting him to guide me across. I didn’t see the stones, but I didn’t miss a step, stone by stone, hand in hand. When we reached the Netherfield side, I wrapped my arms around him and said, plainly, “I love you, too, finally.”
He lifted my hand and pressed his lips to my knuckles. The pressing was gentle and deliberate and completely improper, and I did not care, because propriety had governed us long enough. The man holding my hand had crossed every boundary I had built, and I had let him, and the letting was not surrender.
It was a choice. Mine.
