Page 86 of Courting Elizabeth

Her hands were trembling. She had clasped them to stop it, which only made the trembling more visible.

I crossed the room.

I had prepared phrases during the entire journey from London. I had prepared others during the night. None seemed usable now, standing before a woman who had just called our house her home in front of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

“You are cold.”

“No.”

“Your hands.”

“It is not the cold.”

I took her fingers between mine. They were frozen. I held them until they stopped trembling, and the silence lasted long enough for me to hear the fire crackling behind me.

It was that silence which decided me.

“I must tell you something before you repeat what you just said.”

She raised her head.

“You refuse to hear it?”

“I cannot receive those words before you know everything.”

I drew the small key to the secretary from my pocket.

“I had a duplicate made. I never used it, but I kept it because I could not bear for a lock in this house to escape my control.”

She considered the metal, then closed her fingers around it when I held it out to her.

“Is that what you wished to confess to me?”

“No. That is not the worst of it.”

I had to catch my breath before continuing.

“On our wedding day, at Longbourn, I followed you into the corridor. The door to your former room was ajar. I heard Jane ask you if your heart had changed.”

Elizabeth paled.

“You were there?”

“Yes.”

“You have known since that day.”

“I knew that you esteemed me, that you desired me, and that you feared losing me. I also knew that you did not yet love me and that the security offered to your family had weighed in your decision.”

She brought a hand to her lips, as if she suddenly recalled every word spoken with Jane.

“And you said nothing.”

“I did not wish to use what I had learned to obtain an affection from you dictated by shame or guilt. If I had confronted you that day, every smile, every gesture, and every night spent near me might have become a response to my hurt.”

“Yet you let me believe you knew nothing.”

“Yes. Once more, I decided alone what should protect us.”