Bamber's "Five Daughters Out at Once" is now an Audiobook Narrated by Stevie Zimmerman!
Darcy wandered the grove for some time, following the thin trail that snaked through it, toward the edge of the property line; when he reached the fence, he spotted her approaching the crest of a hill just beyond. He jumped the fence without regard for the clumsy shambles he made of it, and quickly caught up with her on the narrow path. “Miss Elizabeth! I had hoped I might encounter you this morning.”
Elizabeth’s eyes went wide, but a moment later she broke into unfettered laughter. “Good Heavens! How often my mother lamented my morning routine – if only she had known what a great number of single gentlemen I would encounter as I traverse the countryside! Have you come to remind me of my dismal prospects in matrimony, sir, or do you merely wish to remark upon my petticoats?”
“I….” Darcy glanced down and smiled in spite of himself at the sight of all the mud about the hem of her pale gray grown.
“You would not wish your sister to make such an exhibition, surely?”
“No indeed! But with you, it is only to be expected.”
“Certainly,” she said with an arch look. “You should see me after I have fed the pigs.”
“Forgive me, I did not mean….” Darcy could not ascertain whether she was truly affronted by his awkward response, or if she was merely laughing at his ineptitude.
He closed his eyes and sighed heavily, half expecting her to run from him as she had been wont to do in the earliest days of their acquaintance, but when he opened his eyes again she was still there, her whole face lit with mirth. “I only meant that I know you to be fond of walking – my sister would be mortified to be seen thus, and I would not wish her that unhappiness – you seem almost proud of yourself, or at least you prefer to defy me and dare me to look down on you, but I shall not. I admire your passion for nature, and that you very likely do not care what I think at all. Even your eyes are brightened by the exercise – or by whatever pert opinion you are forming of me.”
Elizabeth grinned widely at him. “My opinion at present is that you have expressed yourself better than I have ever heard you do before, with the exception of our little poetry recital yesterday. We are both prone to say things to one another that we ought not, I think, but at least we can each admit it. I have learned to place a higher value on the conversation of a gentleman grounded in reality.”
He dearly wished to know what had brought on such an insight, but he only offered her his arm and asked, “Will you walk with me?”
“I will,” she replied, taking his arm with a tenuous smile.
Darcy pressed on, for such looks had been exchanged between them the night before as to give him some hope he might begin to rise in her regard. “And shall you tell me who has vexed you this morning? It was not I, which is a novelty.”
“It was your two favorite gentlemen in the county, to be sure,” she said, the wicked gleam in her eye telling him that she meant quite the opposite.
“Mr. Collins – surely not!”
“Yes, he is at Netherfield even now – if we turn back to the manor, we may yet have the pleasure of seeing your aunt’s footmen throw him most indecorously down the front stairs, I daresay.”
He glanced over at her to gauge if she was merely seeking some excuse to be away from him. “Do you wish to turn back?”
“No indeed! I have been wishing myself miles away all morning.”
“As far as Weymouth, perhaps,” he said carefully. She had referred to two gentlemen apparently vexing her, and Darcy had noticed the previous evening that Elizabeth appeared determined to distance herself from the man she had previously been keen to flaunt her affection for. Had they some lovers’ quarrel?
Her answer told him that he was near the truth, for she looked away and said only, “Not at all, Mr. Darcy.”
“Nor I,” he replied. “But then, I have no intention of travelling there with the rest of you on the first of October.”
Elizabeth looked up at him with sad ambivalence. “Perhaps you have the right idea. I begin to doubt whether I should like to be there myself.”
“You astonish me,” Darcy said. “I had supposed you fonder of the plan to travel than anybody.”
“At first I was,” she said with a significant look. “But I began to think there may be some danger in it, even if it did divert me.”
Darcy drew her ever so slightly nearer on his arm, half afraid of what she might say. “What kind of danger?”
“Too much of a good thing – or what I had thought was a good thing,” Elizabeth replied with a little shake of her head. “I may rail at every insult and resent being underestimated, but like my sister Jane, I cannot like too much praise, either.”
“Yes, I know – pictures of perfection make you sick and wicked.” Darcy smiled at the recollection of her that day in the library – it truly would have been a moment of sublime perfection, if only she had known….
Elizabeth laughed and a very becoming blush spread across her cheeks. “A great many things make me wicked, apparently. But I am resolved to do better. I have no wish to be the sort of person whose first object in life is a joke.” She met his eye with a bold expression that bespoke all the significance of her mentioning what he had said at dinner that first night.
Darcy wished, as he ever did in her presence, that he might convey his meaning only with a look; words seemed always to betray him. “I could never have thought that of you, not really. Some others, perhaps, but not you. I ought not to have said it – or any of the other things that I said that night. I did not mean….”
“Did you not?” Elizabeth smirked and gave another self-deprecating laugh before holding her chin comically high as she asked, “Am I not magnificent?”
“You are,” he said at once, flinching from his own stupidity. “Forgive me. I am unaccustomed to such teasing – but I, too, would like to do better.”
Elizabeth kept her gaze on the verdant path ahead of them, but her rosy cheeks betrayed her attempt to hide a smile. “How admirably high-minded we both are,” she observed calmly.
Darcy wished very much that he might jest with her as Mr. Churchill had done – it was the malice and not the mirth, he was sure, that had soured Elizabeth on the connection. “Shall you think yourself quite safe with me, if I agree with this and praise you again?”
“I shall allow it, but you must contain your enthusiasm, sir, and wait a quarter hour at least before you pay me any further compliments.” Her countenance softened as she laughed; her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and then she looked back up at him. “In the meantime, I hope you will allow me to thank you.”
“Once I have recovered from my amazement,” he drawled, delighted that he seemed to be pleasing her. He made a playful bow and a sweeping gesture. “You may proceed directly, madam.”
“While I am overjoyed that you have found your sense of humor, you must give me leave to be quite serious. I must thank you, Mr. Darcy, for what you did for my sisters and I. Our father’s books mean the world to us – more than I can say. Jane and I, especially; we spent so much of our days quite surrounded by them.”
Darcy had not thought it could be possible for her to affect him on a deeper level than when he had marveled at the sight of her cradling the volume of poetry in the library; he now supposed that he ought to accustom himself to her proving him wrong. As she peered up at him now, he recognized something in her eyes that pierced him to his soul, the way she seemed so wildly disappointed in the limitations of mere language to convey her sentiments.
“You must know, I did it all for you,” he replied with gravity, after all the stirring silence such a moment had inspired in him. “I owed you some apology – some olive branch.”
Elizabeth covered a smirk with the tips of her fingers and let out a breathy laugh. “Oh dear – you have reminded me of Mr. Collins. He used such a phrase when I encountered him this morning.”
There was another ponderous lull. “I cannot fault him his impulse,” Darcy said at last. “The desire to rise in the esteem of one you have wronged….” He braved a sideward glance at her and she offered him a dubious smile, as if uncertain which of them he alluded to.
They had traversed a substantial distance by now, the ground a gentle incline for most of the way; Elizabeth gave a gentle tug of her arm in his, and led him to a place not far from the path where the foliage thinned between the trees, and all beyond that was blue sky. They had reached the top of a hill, without Darcy being much aware they were ascending one. He followed her to the clearest part of the summit, and looked out at the sprawling vista laid out before them. He could see for miles – the stone edifice of Netherfield lit gold in the bright morning light, and cheerful green countryside beyond that.
Darcy and Elizabeth stood in a companionable silence for several minutes, and he reveled in how right it felt. A gentle wind whispered in the trees, with birds singing and stirring in the branches above; summer was ending, but something new and warm filled Darcy’s heart. He might have stayed there forever.
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