Page 149 of Colour My World
He studied her a moment. “You would have made her an excellent elder sister.”
“I still might.”She stared into his eyes.Ask me. I will say yes.
He turned toward the house, released her hand, and touched his temple. Elizabeth followed his gaze. Her family were pressed against the large window: Jane with both hands over her mouth, Mary with a small smile. Kitty and Lydia bouncing at the corners, and their mother clapping as though at a pantomime. Mrs Hill stood with the tea tray and nodded with uncharacteristic vigour.
Elizabeth turned back. Darcy was down on his knee. She could almost smell the roses that stirred around his shoulders.
“My heart was yours before I understood it. It shall remain so, if you will do me the honour, here even before your family, of becoming my wife?”
She ought to have felt overwhelmed. Instead, she felt certain. The moment had come, and it was simple.“Yes.”
He rose and would have kissed her, but she checked him with her hand. “Not before my family.”
“We are engaged.”
Her lips curved. “Engaged, yes—but not wed. I have my character to maintain.”
His laugh was genuine and unguarded. She walked him to the stable, where he mounted Goliath and turned toward the lane. “I shall return. Soon.”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “Bring a wreath. Or Lady Catherine might bolt the gates.”
He laughed again and trotted down the lane.
Her father joined her at the gate. She watched Darcy vanish around the treefall. “He said he had not been a brother in some time.”
After a pause, he asked, “Did you tell him?”
“No.” Elizabeth turned to her father. “And I do not intend to.”
“You may wish to reconsider. A marriage begun with concealment seldom travels a straight road.”
She watched the empty lane. “He holds me in regard for what he knows. I will not ask him to believe in what he cannot see.”
Chapter 53
Rosings Park, December 1811
Frost clung to the hedgerows in delicate filigree. The long drive bordered by evergreens bound in scarlet ribbon. The sky hung low and pewter-grey above the house, but every window glowed gold with candlelight. Smoke rose in gentle streams from the eastern chimneys. The scent of yew and burning oak reached the carriage as it slowed before the front steps.
Darcy stepped down, snow brushing his greatcoat, his boots muffled against gravel still crusted with ice. He removed his gloves, shook the cold from his shoulders, and turned towards the door. Before he could lift the knocker, it opened.
The butler—tall, gaunt, and eternally displeased—blinked at him as though Darcy had tracked mud across the Queen’s carpet. “Mr Darcy,” he said, with all the warmth of an empty urn.
“I believe I am expected.”
The butler inclined his head. “This way, sir.”
Inside, the entrance hall stood dressed in formality. Garlands looped the staircase. Holly berries punctuated sprays of ivy along the mantels. A spray of mistletoe dangled above the drawing room door, no doubt unnoticed or ignored by Lady Catherine.
The butler led him down the corridor with all the solemnity of a judge passing sentence.
“Her Ladyship is within.”
The drawing room smelled faintly of cinnamon and beeswax. Firelight gilded the edges of the Aubusson carpet. A silver vase stood on the sideboard, filled with holly. Above the hearth hung a portrait of Sir Lewis de Bourgh in the scarlet robes of a King's Counsel, his expression forever fixed in a look of milddisapproval.
Lady Catherine stood beneath it, bearing a striking resemblance to her husband, whose portrait loomed above her.
“You are not expected.”
