Page 19 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

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They went back to the ballroom separately, like conspirators, ten minutes apart. It was a useless precaution. Darcy knew it the moment he came through the door.

He had forgotten about the ring. Elizabeth had put her glove back on over it, but the sapphire was not small and the glove was thin white kid, and there was a distinct and interesting lump beneath it on the fourth finger of her left hand. She was standing with her sister and Miss Lucas, and Miss Bennet was looking at the lump with her beautiful mouth open, and Miss Lucas was looking at the ceiling with the air of a woman who has been proved right and is too kind to say so.

And Elizabeth was glowing. There was no other word for it. She looked as though she had swallowed a candle. She caught his eye across the room and blushed to the roots of her hair and looked away, and then looked back, and could not stop smiling.

Anyone with eyes could see it. Half of Hertfordshire had eyes.

"Good God," said a voice at his shoulder. Sir William Lucas was staring from Darcy to Elizabeth with the expression of a man watching a comet. "Good God. Mr Darcy. Am I to congratulate you?"

"Not yet, Sir William," said Darcy. "I have not spoken to her father."

It was the wrong thing to say, or the right one. Sir William drew the obvious conclusion at a volume that reached the musicians. By the time the last set was called, it was all over the room. Mrs Long knew. Lady Lucas knew. Lydia shrieked. Mrs Bennet, having been told by Mrs Long, stood very still in the middle of the floor, with her mouth open and her fan hanging from her wrist, for the first time in living memory without a word to say.

Miss Bingley left the room.

Darcy walked through all of it, through the whispers and the stares and the delighted nudges, and bowed in front of Elizabeth, and held out his hand.

"Our dance, I believe, Miss Elizabeth."

She took it. They went to the top of the set, because nobody would take it from them, and the music began.

He had danced a great many dances in his life. He did not remember any of them. He would remember this one until he died: the candles burning low and gold, the long line of faces watching them, her hand in his and the hard little shape of the ring under her glove, her eyes on his face every moment they were together and her smile when they came back after parting. They did not talk. There was nothing that needed saying. When the last chord sounded and he bowed to her, the whole room applauded, which was not at all the done thing, and Sir William called out hear, hear, which was even less so, and Elizabeth laughed aloud and covered her face with her hands.

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Mr Bennet received him in the library at eleven the next morning, looked at him over his spectacles for a long, long minute, and said, "Well, Mr Darcy. I did say I would hold myself in readiness."

"You did, sir."

"I did not expect to be kept up until three by my wife explaining your income to me."

"I am sorry for it."

"You are not. Nor am I, entirely." Mr Bennet took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes, and when he looked up again his face was quite different: not ironic at all, but tired, and a little sad, and very serious. "She is the best of them. You know that."

"I know it."

"She could have had a steady man in the neighbourhood and never left Hertfordshire. I would have seen her every week. I would have been content with that." He paused. "Do you love her?"

"More than my life," said Darcy.

Mr Bennet looked at him a moment longer. Then he nodded slowly, and put his spectacles back on, and was himself again.

"Then you had better have her," he said. "I could not possibly refuse a man so determined. Go and tell her. And, Mr Darcy—"

Darcy turned at the door.

"If you ever make her unhappy," said Mr Bennet mildly, "I shall not come after you with a pistol. I am too old and too idle. I shall send her mother."

Darcy found Elizabeth in the garden, walking up and down the gravel in the thin winter sunshine, with her hands in her muff and the sapphire on her finger, where anyone might see it. She stopped when she saw him. He did not say anything. He only smiled, and she ran, and he caught her.

Inside the house, behind the parlour window, Mrs Bennet found her voice at last. It could be heard, Lydia reported afterwards with great satisfaction, as far away as Lucas Lodge.

Chapter 6: Letters at Christmas

Longbourn. Tuesday, 3rd December 1811