Page 1 of Courting Elizabeth

Chapter 1

DARCY

I had expected her astonishment.

I had even hoped it would rob her, for a few seconds, of that lively gaze that disarmed me with a constancy grown humiliating. For months, Elizabeth Bennet had taken pleasure in contradicting my certainties, smiling at my silences, and finding in my every word a pretension I could not always deny. To see her finally speechless should have granted me some advantage.

I had not anticipated that this silence would frighten me.

She stood near the fireplace in the small parlor of the parsonage, one hand resting on the back of a chair. Rain beat against the windows. Mrs Collins was absent, Mr Collins detained at Rosings, and each drop seemed to measure my waiting.

I had spoken too long. I knew it now. I had laid bare the ardor of my feelings, the struggles they had forced upon me, my family's objections, the inferiority of her connections, the prudence I had been compelled to overcome. Everything that, in my mind, proved the strength of my attachment must have seemed, in hers, an inventory of her defects.

Yet I loved her.

I loved her enough to forget what my name demanded. Enough to offer Pemberley to a woman whose mother shouted her matrimonial schemes in assembly rooms, whose younger sisters lacked all restraint, and whose father too often retreated behind a book when he should have been governing his household. Enough to stand before her with no defense but my certainty of being accepted.

That certainty cracked when she raised her eyes.

“You are asking me to become your wife, Mr Darcy?”

Her voice was calm. Too calm.

“That is precisely what I am asking.”

“After reminding me of everything that makes this marriage undesirable in your eyes.”

I clenched my fingers behind my back.

“I wished you to understand what my feelings have conquered.”

“You have chiefly taken care to explain what they must endure.”

Part of me was irritated that she should dwell on form when I had just offered her my entire existence. Another part knew she was right.

“I expressed myself clumsily.”

“You expressed yourself with great precision.”

She turned her face away. The warmth of the fire carried toward me the scent of her hair, a trace of soap and rain. I knew every movement of that neck without ever having touched it, every inflection of that mouth without ever having kissed it. I had never desired a woman with such violence. This thought, in the close silence of the parlor, seemed almost indecent.

“If I were to consider accepting,” she resumed, “I would not renounce my family.”

Something gave way beneath my ribs.

If I were to consider.

Those words nearly erased everything else.

“I will not ask it of you.”

“My mother will embarrass you.”

“No doubt.”

Her mouth twitched.

“Lydia will speak too loudly. Kitty will imitate her. Mary will recite sermons at table. My father may offend you through negligence as surely as my mother through excessive attention.”