“She is wonderful, William,” Georgiana whispered to her brother, though it was loud enough for Elizabeth to hear.
“Yes,” her brother replied. “She is.”
Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam made their farewells with proper formality. Then they were gone, and Elizabeth was alone with her aunt, uncle, and father.
“Well,” Aunt Gardiner said, beginning to fuss with the tea things. “That was quite a morning. I shall speak to Cook about the midday meal.”
She disappeared towards the kitchen. Uncle Gardiner retreated to his study, murmuring something about correspondence. Papa’s eyes drifted closed, his breathing evening into genuine sleep.
Elizabeth sat very still, suddenly aware of how quiet the room had become.
On the small table beside where Mr. Darcy had sat with his tea, she noticed something that had not been there before. A saucer with the cup set aside, and upon it, a single dried pea.
The truth settled over her like the shawl around her shoulders, warm and inescapable and utterly terrifying.
He had become dear to her. Very dear.
The fire crackled. Papa snored softly. The afternoon light slanted through the windows, warm and golden.
And Elizabeth sat with her hand closed tight around a single dried pea, wondering what on earth she was going to do about Mr. Darcy.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Darcy left Gracechurch Street with a peculiar sensation of having mislaid something of consequence.
It was not, he assured himself, his hat, which was upon his head. It was not his gloves, which were, as required, covering his hands. It was not even his composure, though that had taken a severe knock and had not yet returned to its usual solidity.
It was, most unreasonably, his peace.
Georgiana had listened with shining eyes to Elizabeth’s account of danger and deliverance and had looked at Darcy with awe.
Elizabeth herself had contrived to amuse them with the story of her trials. She had softened what might have frightened his sister; she had managed to praise him, though she had rather made a show of that; she had smiled, and the smile had done something to him that he had no name for and no defence against.
Now, after returning Georgiana to Matlock House, he sat upright in his carriage and tried to arrange his thoughts.
He had rescued a princess. Well, he had helped her rescue herself.
Darcy arrived home, handed his coat, gloves, and hat to the butler, and then stood before the fire in his study for some minutes without moving.
At last he lit the Argand lamp, sat at his desk, took up a pen, and stared at a blank sheet of paper.
If he were a sensible man, he would write to his steward. He would write to his solicitor. He would write to his uncle and thank him for his concern and inform him, with gratitude and firmness, that the world contained baronies enough without Mr. Darcy of Pemberley being obliged to accept one.
Instead, his mind supplied him with an entirely different sort of correspondence: an image of a small table in a parlour on Gracechurch Street, a saucer with its cup set aside, and upon it a single dried pea.
He had not, when he had sat in that chair and rolled the dried pea between his thumb and forefinger, listening to Elizabeth speak, meant to deliberately leave a token of sentiment as if he were a schoolboy. He had risen, bowed, and departed as any gentleman might do.
If a pea had been left upon the table, it had been by accident.
He dipped his pen. Ink gathered at the point. The page remained empty.
After a quarter of an hour of this, he pushed the paper away, rose, and began to pace.
A gentleman could not propose to a princess.
He could not. It would be presumption, it would be folly, it would be cruel. To offer her his name and his home was to keep her from a part of her family she wished to know. To ask her to give up a crown for Derbyshire was absurd.
His duty was clear. Pemberley needed him. Georgiana needed him. His tenants depended upon his stewardship, not his romantic fancies. A sensible man would acknowledge that some things were simply impossible, no matter how desperately one might wish them otherwise. A sensibleman would not ask a princess to tie herself to an English gentleman with nothing more to offer than an estate in the north and a heart that had already proven itself capable of the grossest misjudgement.