Page 76 of Dear Friend

For the first time, the advantage her letters had afforded him felt less like hope and more like a debt that would one day have to be paid.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

9th November 1811

Meryton

Elizabeth

Elizabeth found Jane later that morning in her room, seated by the window with some mending forgotten in her lap. She shut the door behind her with rather more care than usual, for what she had come to say seemed to require a privacy which an open door at Longbourn could never be trusted to provide.

“Jane,” she began, watching her sister eye her with some suspicion, “I must tell you something, and I hardly know how to begin it properly.”

Jane set aside her mending at once. “I thought you looked like someone swollen with a secret at breakfast. Thank goodness I did not have to ask before you offered to speak. Now sit down and tell me.”

Elizabeth sat beside her and related, as plainly as she could, what had passed upon Oakham Mount. She told Jane of meeting Mr. Darcy there, of the unexpected turn their conversation had taken, and finally of his asking permission to pay his addresses to her. By the time she reached her own promise to consider him, she was conscious that she had spoken rather faster than the story required.

Jane had listened without interruption, but the pleasure in her expression had grown impossible to mistake. “Lizzy. Mr. Darcy wishes to court you.”

“He does.” Elizabeth could not prevent a smile of her own. “And he was very proper about it. He asked nothing of me beyond permission to speak to Papa if I should decide his attentions were agreeable to me, and gave me as much time as I wished to consider it. Which was very considerate of him, though I confess it did nothing to make thinking any easier.”

Jane reached for her hand. “And what do you think, now that you have had several hours in which to attempt it? I do not mean what Mama would have you think, nor what anyone else might expect of you. What do you wish?”

“I like Mr. Darcy very much, Jane.” Elizabeth's answer came without hesitation. “He is a gentleman I respect, which is something that has always mattered considerably to me in any man I might think of marrying. He listens to me, even when he disagrees, and never gives me the impression that my opinions are merely to be indulged until he may return to his own. I admire his understanding and his steadiness, and I believe there is a great deal of kindness in him which he takes very little trouble to display.”

Jane's smile deepened. “You have assembled a rather formidable list in his favour.”

“I have not finished.” Elizabeth laughed softly. “I enjoy his company. I look for him when I enter a room, and when something occurs which particularly amuses or vexes me, I have lately discovered that I wonder what he would make of it. And when I know I am likely to see him...” She hesitated, then smiled at the admission. “I find I look forward to it rather more than I ought.”

Jane's expression softened, but she said nothing.

“I was pleased when he asked me, Jane. Very pleased. Indeed, for several moments I believe I was so pleased that I scarcely knew what to say to him, which is not a difficulty Mr. Darcy has often managed to produce in me.”

Jane laughed. “Then why did you not accept him?”

Elizabeth was quiet for a moment, not because she did not know the answer, but because putting it into words made her own conduct seem faintly ridiculous.

“Because I have known him less than a month.” She shook her head, smiling at herself. “Had I said yes upon the instant, I believe I should have felt as though I had spent these past three weeks waiting for him to ask me, and I had not. When I first met Mr. Darcy, I had no design upon him whatsoever. I did not speak to him because I wished to be courted, nor walk with him because I expected him to declare himself. I liked him because I liked him, and somewhere along the way I began liking him considerably more than I intended.”

Jane squeezed her hand gently. “And now?”

“Now he has asked me to give an answer to something I had allowed myself to consider only as a possibility before this morning.” Elizabeth glanced towards the window. “I do not require weeks to discover whether I like Mr. Darcy. I know that already. Nor do I require Mama to tell me what an advantageous match he would be. I should merely like a little time to become accustomed to the idea that what has grown so naturally between us might now become something deliberate.”

“You do not sound very undecided.”

“I am not.” Elizabeth looked back at her sister, and the smile which came then required no effort at all. “I only wish to arrive at my answer before I give it, rather than discover afterwards that I had been carried there by surprise.”

Jane regarded her with quiet affection. “I think Mr. Darcy will understand that.”

Elizabeth suspected he would. There had been something in the quiet certainty with which he had promised her all the time she required, no disappointment, no attempt to persuade her, which made her think he understood already.

Perhaps that was why the memory of him upon Oakham Mount had returned to her so often since she left him there. She could still recall the grave expression with which he had told her what he wanted, and the warmth in his smile when she had promised him an answer. The recollection produced a corresponding warmth in her now, one she was very glad only Jane was present to observe.

Jane's eyes narrowed with sudden amusement. “Lizzy, you are blushing.”

“I am doing no such thing.”

“You are.”