Chapter 1

« He will come, he will not, he will come, he will not, he… »

It was then, at this precise moment. She was tearing off the petals of a daisy, doing unconsciously this most childish game while aimlessly wandering in Longbourn garden. It was then that Elizabeth Bennet knew, for sure, that she was in love with Fitzwilliam Darcy. As if her mind had needed to rest and drift alone after the maddening hours and days of self-imposed rational thinking and questioning, to finally find the answer. And it was not even that – an answer – it was an evidence.

All of a sudden, she wanted his hand, lightly rested on the small of her back. Not to support or guide her, but to accompany her. She felt, though not very articulately, that this has been his most wondrous gift since Hunsford: he had respected her and even apart most of that time, they had grown together. They both had revealed themselves in this chaotic relationship, and that was the beauty of it. She hadn't meant to change him. He had changed because she was able to make him see parts of himself he had ignored for years. As for herself, she had grown to acknowledge for the first time the complexity of the world. That didn't destroyed her confidence but placed it elsewhere. Maybe – she thought, amused – that will give a gentleness to her dry wit. She felt more herself than she had ever been, and that was because of him.

She looked at the landscape outside of the sheltered garden of Longbourn. The meadows, the fields, the brooks, the old trees and the dense hedgerows, full of birds twittering in the sprightliness of this early morning. She felt so much at her right place and in harmony that her lungs seemed too narrow to breathe.

But then, as suddenly as this insight had come to her, triggered by the quietness of the morning, the calm given by the automaticity of her walk and the rhythmic tearing off of the petals, profound anguish gripped her heart. Should he come… does that mean he still loves her? Will he propose again? She understood then the hell he must have lived in for months and it humbled her.