Page 32 of He Insulted My Entire Family Before Proposing

Darcy grew grave. "There are trials in every marriage."

She laughed again, and this time he did too.

Then quiet returned, but it was no longer empty.

"And you?" she asked.

"I will be proud sometimes when I ought to be humble. I will think I understand before I have listened. I will need correction."

"That is a dangerous admission to make to me."

"I make it with full knowledge."

Elizabeth looked back into the room. Jane stood with Bingley, smiling softly. Caroline Bingley had retreated to the far side of the room, where she was no doubt recovering by judging furniture.

A public room. A corrected story. A man who had once called her tolerable now standing beside her as if her answer might decide the weather.

Her list had begun with an insult. It would not be burned. Elizabeth did not believe in throwing away useful paper merely because the gentleman named upon it had improved. But perhaps a record could hold more than injury. Perhaps it could also hold amendment.

He drew a breath as if he meant to ask and feared presuming on the right.

"You may ask," she said.

Darcy turned fully toward her.

"Miss Elizabeth," he said, and the slight tremor in his voice did more for him than all Hunsford's passion, "will you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?"

No objections.

No degradation.

No heroic sacrifice.

Only honor, placed where it belonged.

Elizabeth let him wait one heartbeat longer than mercy required. She was still herself.

"Yes," she said. "On one condition."

"Anything."

"Never again describe loving me as overcoming my family."

"Never."

"And if you are tempted?"

"I will remember Hunsford."

She smiled. "Very good. That is safer."

He took her hand and bowed over it, stopping there because a public room was not a place for private liberties.

Inside, Jane saw enough to smile. Caroline Bingley saw enough to require immediate refreshment.

Elizabeth stood beside Darcy at the edge of the public room and felt, not triumph exactly, but the return of something she had not known she missed: the right to be loved without being reduced, chosen without being excused, and seen without being separated from the people who had made her.

Later, there would be letters. There would be Mrs. Bennet's shrieks, Mr. Bennet's interrogation, Jane's joy, Lady Catherine's outrage, and Lydia's certainty that a wedding was only useful if officers attended. There would be settlements, visits, apologies unfinished and repeated, and all the ordinary work by which people proved their finest speeches were not temporary weather.