An Unequalled Affection

Part 25

"Do you think she suspects anything?" Elizabeth asked, hurriedly playing her move and, in her excitement, knocking one of Mr Darcy's pieces over.

"I doubt it," her opponent said, with a wry smile. "But I should appreciate it if you might concentrate on our game long enough that you do not destroy a third of my attack like that." He straightened his pieces and surveyed the board, frowning. "There. Now...I cannot remember what move I had planned to make. I swear it is altogether more difficult to play against you than against Richard. He, at least, had some strategy that could be understood."

"I have a strategy," Lizzy pouted, waiting until he had made his move so that she might have her turn, and laughing when it made him lean back in his chair in despair. "I like to construct a pattern of white and black."

"You are toying with me," Darcy observed, with an indulgent smile.

"Only a little." Lizzy knocked her pieces over. "So I shall surrender the game, for you are the only one of us playing it properly." Drawing a breath, she hugged her arms around herself. "I am too excited to concentrate on chess."

"So I see," Darcy remarked, leaning over to return all of the pieces to their starting places. "It was a foolish suggestion of mine, only I did not think it pleasant enough to risk a walk." As if to underscore the wisdom of his suggestion, there was a loud crack of thunder and a curtain of rain fell noisily against the glass.

"No." Lizzy frowned. "And I suppose you are stuck with me, now, until the weather breaks or at least eases enough for me to get home."

"We shall take the carriage." Darcy waved off her concerns with a smile. "But I am happy for you to remain here just as long as you wish for in the interim."

Lizzy did not reply straight away and Darcy swallowed, feeling that this was the very moment he had been waiting for, hoping for, longing for in all these long days. He had woken and gone to sleep - when he managed to sleep at all - with but one question on his mind: to ask Elizabeth Bennet to marry him. She had to know that this was where he saw their future. They had spoken of it often enough, although always obliquely and as if it were not quite real. Some vague, imagined future when anything might be possible. In the late watches of the night he could not help but wonder if he misunderstood her altogether, fearing she saw him as nothing more than a friend. Yet, no. They were surely more than friends. They had spoken to each other and acted with a familiarity that was far beyond mere friendship.

"How about forever?" he asked, his attention ostensibly fixed on the chess pieces he continued to straighten. He knew he would struggle to speak his hopes aloud if he was forced to look at her whilst he did so.

"What?" Lizzy's question was scarcely a whisper, and the doubt in it forced Darcy to look up, to meet her gaze and see such love and affection there that it suddenly became nothing at all to ask her to marry him.

"Why not stay forever? Not here, of course, but with me. By my side. Marry me, Elizabeth. Won't you be my wife?"

She said nothing for a full minute, long enough that Darcy's doubts began to crowd in on him, his worst fears tormenting him that he had somehow mistaken her affections, mistaken her.

"Do you mean it?" Her question was so quiet he did not catch it at first and when he made sense of it he smiled, giving way to laughter.

"Do I mean it? Of course. Have you ever imagined I could care for anyone the way I care for you? You are my whole heart, Lizzy, my life and my heart and my hope and my future. All of it is bound up with you and I can scarcely imagine a day of it - a single hour of it - without you beside me. Marry me, Lizzy."

The name was too small, too simple to belong to her, and yet it was the sweetest sound he could think of, the very thing that seemed to communicate how desperately true his words were.

"Yes," she said, just as simply. "I was beginning to think you would never ask."