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"If your feelings are still as they were last April, tell me so at once —"
It was his just deserts for how confoundedly secure he had felt last time, Darcy supposed, that he now felt a double measure of the terror standard to a marriage proposal. Or perhaps this was the standard measure, and his late confidence had simply been further still from warranted, but if that were the case he wondered how a third so many people were married. Had he felt such a powerful need to flee from any other social encounter — where the chance, if he persevered and was almost luckier than he dared hope for, was anything less than to see and to talk to and to know Elizabeth Bennet for the rest of their lives — he would have found some excuse and left.
That was probably no great recommendation of his social skills, but it was true. It felt so, just now, in any case.
"My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever."
For a moment — scarcely more than a heartbeat (or a calm one, it must have been nearly five of Darcy's), but for its duration it seemed to comprehend an eternity — everything was very quiet. Elizabeth's hands fisted tightly in her skirts, she had stopped walking, she would not look at him — all he could see of her face was a lip bitten shut and the corner of a bone-white cheek.
His immediate fear was not of a refusal. Darcy was prepared for that; he had promised himself — promised Elizabeth, in his mind — that he would not address her again until he was sure that he could bear it. That he could have his heart broken again and not argue the point, not behave like a petulant child as he had last time — go back to Netherfield to cry in private then act normally enough that no one need ever know whom she did not tell.
He had attended to her reproofs to the best of his ability. If she rejected him now, it would be because she did not view him in that way, did not love him, did not wish to — it would not be because there was something glaringly wrong with him that could or should be changed (or he was as confident of that as he dared to be).
That would hurt, certainly, but it would not haunt him the way the first proposal still did.
No, what scared him was the thought that he had hurt her. That — despite all his efforts to keep the secret — Elizabeth thought his actions for her sister meant she owed him something, or they had been having a nice walk and now he had spoilt it, or with Miss Bennet and Bingley engaged she felt another refusal would make things awkward for more than themselves.
Then she smiled — a brief glimmer of a thing — and then she spoke.
"Yes!" Despair to delight, so fast it almost gave him whiplash, "That is, no," Somewhat confused despair again, "My feelings are not as they were in April," Cautious optimism, "They, are — that is, I am —"
The patch of Elizabeth's cheek that Darcy could see was by this time very red, having moved through quite a lot of colours as she spoke but never seemed quite at her normal shade. She screamed through her teeth, tugged where she still held her skirt, made an aborted motion as if to look at him.
She took a deep breath in, out, and in again, and on the second exhale said "I love you."
Darcy could not possibly have named the way he felt in that moment, though perhaps the stunned smile beginning to spread across his face and the warm sting behind his eyes should have filled him in. He was not entirely sure that he was breathing. It did not matter. Nothing could possibly matter, just then, except for memorising every inflection Elizabeth had used in saying — what she had just said. (He hardly dared repeat it, even in his mind, in case he had somehow misheard. At very close range. While she was taking great care to enunciate clearly. His expression had officially crossed into 'beam' territory. Darcy did not know the last time he had beamed. He also did not care.)
The only thing (apart from time, or a sudden bear attack) that could have done anything to snap him from this state was Elizabeth continuing to speak.
"So, um, yes — I love you," she seemed to taste the words, she smiled again. Darcy's smile grew still wider; it was beginning to stretch against the physical limitations of his face, almost to hurt, "and I — what you said, before — I hear with gratitude and with — and with very great pleasure."
He placed his hand lightly over one of hers. She dropped her skirt at once, turned her palm into his, grasped it so tightly that it did hurt — for about half a second, before she realised she might be squeezing a bit too tight and loosened her grip, ran a thumb along his knuckles. Darcy could not move his own thumb similarly (apart from a very awkward sort of grazing over a patch of random glove, which he abandoned almost as soon as he had begun it), so he brought his other hand into the picture expressly for the purpose. Possibly as much to balance things out as anything else, Elizabeth shortly thereafter caught their little knot of hands with the one she had remaining, pulled the whole thing up to her lips — she kissed his left thumb and one of her own forefingers, but the awkwardness did not matter. How could it? — weird and brief and through a glove or in any other way, Elizabeth Bennet had just kissed him.
Had either of them any additional hands, undoubtedly they would have continued in this fashion. Darcy rather absurdly wished they did — he wanted to take her hands more, he wanted to keep taking them forever.
Perhaps luckily, they each had only the standard pair, as there were a good many more important things to be said and done than creating an infinite ball of clasped hands.