Page 41 of Mr. Darcy's Christmas Letters
offered, I will think you wise. However, if you were willing to be foolish instead, I can promise you
that it would be received with the love and care that it deserves.
“If I am willing to be foolish . . . Elizabeth Bennet!” he cried, delighted. “Are you proposing to me?”
She gazed up at him, her eyes a little glossy. Had she been crying over his words? “Do not be ridiculous,” she told him impertinently. “It is not my place to propose to any man.”
He laughed with delight and held up the letter in his hand. “You are, and I have the proof!”
Her adorable face collapsed into a pout. “Give it back, Mr. Darcy.”
“You will never have this letter back. I accept, by the way.”
“I have not asked.”
“You have.” He waved the letter at her, then folded it and put it in his breast pocket.
“Is that the safest place for such a letter?” she inquired pointedly, folding hers and locking it in the wooden box. She glanced at him askance and folded her arms across her chest. One slender eyebrow rose as she stared impishly at him.
He reached for her hands, gently tugging at them until she uncrossed her arms. She did not remove her hands from his. Rather, she trained her eyes on where those hands were joined.
“I have been teasing you, and now I wish to be serious,” he told her. She glanced up at him. “You will think me vain and presumptuous.”
She lifted her chin haughtily. “As if I do not think you those things already.” Her eyes sparkled when she spoke. It gave him courage.
“Very well,” he replied directly. “When I think of you, I do not call you Miss Bennet or even Miss Elizabeth. You are Elizabeth to me, and you have been since Pemberley. In my heart, you are mine.”
An almost unbearable silence descended. He could even hear the clock in the hall. Had he gone too far? Tick. Tick. Tick . . . He could hear his life draining away as he waited for Elizabeth to speak.
“Itispresumptuous, sir,” she said at last.
Darcy closed his eyes in defeat.
“But no more than I, for I consider you mine as well.”
His eyes shot open. “You do?”
She smiled and laughed quietly. “If you will be mine, I will be yours. That is, if you will have me.”
“IfIwill haveyou? What do you think I have been . . . I cannot believe that . . .” Words failed him. This was neither unusual nor unexpected, for powerful emotions often rendered him mute. But Darcy’s feelings could not be contained merely by not speaking of them, and the very staid, very respectable Mr. Darcy of Pemberley in Derbyshire released his joy by embracing the woman he loved, picking her up and swinging her around once, twice, three times.
“Stop!” Elizabeth exclaimed with a squeal. “You are making me dizzy!”
He set her down at once. She swayed a bit but laughed cheerfully at his alarm. When she was steady, he took her again by the hands. “Do you mean it?”
“Why would I say such a thing if I did not?” she asked pertly.
“And you will marry me?” He felt stupid, asking her so many times to confirm it, but this moment had taken a very long time to arrive.
She gazed up into his face, all trace of levity gone. “Yes, Fitzwilliam. I will marry you. I love you.”
Her name escaped him in a whisper. “Elizabeth.” He touched the sides of her face with gentle hands and bent his head. She tipped her face up to meet him, and he brushed his lips lightly against hers.
It was a touch charged with the sort of electricity that he had only felt once before, when a lightning bolt had split an old Spanish oak at Pemberley not five hundred feet away from him, making his hair stand on end. He kissed her again, a little more passionately this time, but not enough to frighten her. Now that she had said yes, they had time for that. They would have time for everything.
“I do hope that means you have something important to ask of me,” Bingley said laconically from some distance away. Darcy did not move to ascertain how far. “She is my sister now, you know.”
Darcy placed a gentle kiss upon Elizabeth’s brow and pulled slowly away. “So you have informed me,” he responded to Bingley. “And to be perfectly clear,thisis the sister I prefer.”
