Page 21 of A Promise Made

“I do not know. My father tried to follow up with an investigation of the physician. On the day of the accident, he was so grateful to the man—after all, a broken femur takes a lot of physical strength to set correctly—and the fact that I do not walk with a limp proves that the man did a good job. But my father felt that, as painful as my injury was, treatment could have waited an hour while the physician completed the task he had undertaken. At any rate, the physician had died a year before my father’s attempt to investigate, so we have to rely on guesswork. My father’s theory was that the physician had indications that the injured youth—me—was the heir of a wealthy family, and that he was motivated by money.”

“I imagine your father was correct.”

“Assigning blame does not do much to help victims,” Mr Darcy continued. “My father was not one to dwell on who was at fault in a terrible situation. Once he finally learnt of your family’s loss, my father took full responsibility for the tragedy. He meant to help you himself, but not long after he decided to help, he took ill, began to recover, succumbed again, and died.”

“I am sorry for the timing, but I am much more sorry that you lost your father so quickly, and far too soon.”

“Nothing my father wished to do and that I have worked to do could right the wrong—nothing could bring back your brother—but my father said that the Darcys could and would do something to help. He left it to me to decide exactly what I could do.”

“I have long thought that you are the best man I know,” Lizzy told him. “But I gather that your father was a wonderful man, as well.”

“Miss Elizabeth….”

Mr Darcy looked deeply into Lizzy’s eyes, and she wondered what he was going to ask. “Yes?” she asked, pleased that her voice still sounded firm.

“I was going to say that I believe the secrecy should be lifted from this topic, and I was going to ask you if I should talk to your parents about doing so.”

Lizzy felt a momentary pang. She was honest enough with herself to admit that she had hoped for Mr Darcy to completely change the subject and ask an entirely different sort of question.

“But then,” Mr Darcy went on, “I looked into your eyes—your extraordinary eyes—and I realised that, as important as that is, I would rather ask if I may call on you.”

“Yes.”

“As a man calls on a woman, I mean,” he explained.

“Yes, I would like that,” Lizzy repeated.

“It…it is the first step of courtship, and I have honourable intentions…. So I am assuming, or, actually, I mean that I am hoping that we will decide that we suit in person as well as we have working together on Longbourn’s affairs, from a distance, and that we will marry.”

“Yes, I understand. Yes, I hope for those things, as well. Yes and yes and yes.”

Mr Darcy leant to the side, gently bumping Lizzy’s shoulder with his own, and he whispered, “Thank you.”

Lizzy beamed at him. “Also, yes, I hope you will talk to my mother and father about ending the secrecy. I feel I should talk to them alongside you.”

“I will call on you this afternoon, and if your father is in, we will speak to him about your discovery of the grave. Do you wish to tell him as if you were just riding and walking, merely exploring on your own, and you stumbled upon it?”

“Hmmm,” Lizzy said. “Some clever dissembling without outright lying? That sounds advisable.”

“I offer the suggestion because you said you have been unable to speak of the discovery to your father, not necessarily because it is the best solution. I give you leave to decide what is best.”

“I already know what is best,” she said, turning towards him and taking his face in her hands, “and it is you.”

If Lizzy could have added together all the blushes Mr Darcy had ever blushed, he approached that combined brightness at her compliment. He turned his reddened face swiftly so that he could kiss the palm of one of her hands.

She made a soft sound that might have qualified, if it had been louder, as a squeal.

“Miss Elizabeth, I liked you when I first came to Longbourn, even though you were a little spitfire. Of course, you were quite young then, and I only felt brotherly towards you, but one would assume that our friendship would surely have been imperilled by your theorising—was I a dissolute gambler or a traitor to the Crown? Was I the heir of Longbourn, in disguise, or a man playing at philanthropy because his riches and servants had made his life too lacklustre?”

Lizzy held up a finger and offered, “I also speculated that you were my half brother, or—a different speculation, wholly separate in my mind—that you were in love with Jane.”

“Oh, dear. At any rate, you were in turns sceptical, charming, negative, knowledgeable, inquisitive, adorable, troublesome, and clever—and all of that was five years ago, before I realised through your letters that you were also creative and reasonable, honest and helpful, humorous and caring. I cannot say that you are the best of women, because to me it is as if you are the only woman.”

She was not sure she understood. She cocked her head to once side to gain a slightly different perspective, and she allowed him to continue:

“I love my sister, of course,” Mr Darcy said. “And such familial love is and will be extended to other girls and women in the family. But the pressure has been on me for the past three years to seek a woman as a woman, as my bride, my partner, my wife. And although I allowed other ladies to be introduced to me, and although I danced with some of them, nobody has interested me even close to the way that you do.”

“That was the most romantic thing any man has ever said to any woman. I know this to be true because you called me troublesome, and yet I am still melting inside.”