Page 38 of Not Without Me, Miss Elizabeth

Elizabeth drew herself up, prepared to make her own case in turn. "Sir, your fine speech does not afford me the respect I require. Hear me plainly, then. I have lived, and thrived, upon a measure of independence. I have been free to read as I please, to speak my mind, to go where I choose. I will not conceal my displeasure, nor my indifference, when I feel either. I must have my say in the whole of our life together. I will not be directed in how to think or act merely because it suits your judgment better than my own. I am my own person, sir, and I require that to remain true within marriage as much as without it. Let us not go on angering one another further." He began to speak, but she cut him short. "Pray, do not."

He dropped his gaze to her hands, then gathered them gently in his own and raised them to his lips. "Elizabeth, dearest. I adore your thoughts, your feelings, your pert opinions most of all. I have no wish whatever to silence them, or you."

"And yet you are quick enough to make your displeasure known when you dislike what I say, as you have only just done. You conceal your own feelings very poorly, sir."

This observation checked him entirely. He considered her fingers, held still within his own, before speaking again. "Elizabeth, I will not pretend to be a perfect man. I have answered to no one but myself for the greater part of my life. I inherited a considerable fortune, and with it, no small burden of responsibility. I ask only your patience. I know I shall make mistakes, but I will own them honestly when I do. Do not give up on me for it. You shall have the freedom you ask of me, only allow me some grace in return. I will never bring you shame, though I confess I may, on occasion, make a considerable fool of myself, and say things rather worse than I mean them."

She laughed at his own self-reproach. "As you are doing now."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "As I am doing now."

She turned his words over in her mind. He had listened to her, had taken care to hear her fully, and to weigh what she said. However gruff his manner might run at times, he plainly cared what she thought and felt. He was, besides, witty, well-informed, and not without a certain handsomeness she was no longer inclined to deny. Whatever their difficult beginning, she had come tobelieve him a good man. A man, she was beginning to understand, that she could love.

"Very well, Mr. Darcy. If you will allow yourself only the occasional fuss, and grant me always an equal voice in our partnership, the liberty to speak my mind, whatever the subject, and however inconvenient you may find it, then I will accept you, upon those terms."

"You may find I require rather more leeway for fussing at the outset, my love." A faint, rueful smile touched his mouth. "I have a great deal to learn about governing less, and I confess it will not come naturally to a man who has spent his whole life being obeyed rather than questioned."

"Then I shall simply have to remind you of it whenever the need arises, Mr. Darcy, early, and often, I should think, and I shall always have my say in the matter besides." She offered him a pert smile, though something gentler moved beneath it.

He raised the hands still held in his and kissed them both, gently and with evident tenderness, lingering a moment longer than strict necessity required, while his intended bride regarded his now-untroubled countenance with real warmth, so unlike the guarded, forbidding man she had first known at the Meryton assembly that she could scarcely credit they were one and the same. Looking up to meet her eyes, he said, low, "What can I possibly have done to deserve you?"

The flattery, however plainly offered, suited her very well indeed, and she found she had no wish whatsoever to check it. Mr. Darcy went on, for some considerable time yet, saying a great many more such pretty things to the woman who had at last, against every early impression either might have formed of the other, consented to become his wife.

CHAPTER 21

Elizabeth lay on the great four-post bed, gazing up at the ceiling above, tracing the same carved beam she had counted, absently, in some other room on some other night not so very long ago. Night had fallen, and she had been given the bed as promised, while Mr. Darcy took the settee across the room, close enough that she could hear the small shifts of his weight against its frame.

The room lay still, but her mind would not settle, turning over and over the events of the day, and of the whole long, impossible week before it, as though by sheer repetition she might finally make some sense of how thoroughly her life had altered. Exhausted as she was, sleep would not come. She rolled to her side.

His voice called out in a whisper,"Elizabeth?"

She had been facing away from Mr. Darcy, and decided to turn around to see him on the settee, as she replied, "Yes, Mr. Darcy?"

He spoke louder now, and it was evident to Elizabeth that he also struggled to fall asleep that night. "Call me Fitzwilliam."

"Fitzwilliam..." She let the name settle on her tongue, unfamiliar still. "I shall need some little time to accustom myself to it. Youhave always been Mr. Darcy to me."

His tone was reflective, as he replied, "You have been Elizabeth to me for rather longer than you know."

That speech surprised her. "Have I?" She leaned forward, in his direction, trying to see him across the darkened room, curiosity overcoming her weariness.

"You have." He answered without shifting his gaze from the ceiling, as though the admission cost him less when he did not have to meet her eyes while making it.

Nervous of the question, and nervous besides of whatever answer it might draw from him, she asked it regardless, unable to leave it unspoken any longer. "Why do you wish to marry me, Mr. Darcy?"

"Because I love you, Elizabeth." He turned his head then, to look at her properly from across the room, something entirely unguarded in his face now that the dark made it easier to say such things aloud.

"When did you begin to love me?"

"I could scarcely say. It has come upon me so gradually I cannot mark the exact beginning of it, the way one cannot always say precisely when a season turns." He considered a moment longer. "Though I believe it began the very morning I nearly rode you down with my horse."

She laughed aloud, the sound startling in the quiet room. "You cannot be serious!"

"I assure you, madam, I am entirely serious." There was no answering humour in his voice at all.

"I do not understand it in the least. You were furious with me that morning, and I no less furious with you."

"Nor, I confess, do I entirely. But when you spoke to me that morning, apologising for having crossed my path, and then simply walking away, wanting nothing further of me, I could scarcely credit it. I have known a great many people eager to throw themselves into my company, hoping to secure some advantage by it. You were the first I ever encountered who wished for nothingof the kind. When you turned back to face me a second time, your pertness struck me forcibly, and then a third time, when you took me to task for riding too recklessly. I believe you did something very few people are willing to do."