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After all, he knew people who had married having spent far less time together than he had with Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

"Excellent," he said. "Tradition would dictate we marry in your parish, of course, and I do not know when you had planned to return."

"Soon," she said. As they passed a small fountain, she continued, "Before your proposal, I had intended to leave very soon, I must admit."

"You miss your family," he said.

"Yes, I suppose I do," she said. "But also there are things which must be done. Things which must be organised."

Knowing, of course, that the Collinses could decide they wished them to vacate Longbourn at any point, he nodded. "Of course. I can help with that once we are married."

"Thank you," she said, and he was pleased that her pride did not stop her from accepting this help that he wished to give.

He would not want to live with her family, that was for certain, and ideally they would not spend too much time with her mother or her youngest sisters. But that did not mean he did not wish to improve their situation. Especially if it would make Elizabeth happy.

Would it be inappropriate to declare his love again, he wondered, because the words were on his lips. And yet it felt hard to say them.

But he had asked her to marry him because he loved her, because he wanted to make a life with her.

He hoped she understood that.

"Well," he said, "if perhaps you wish to return in the next few days, and I accompanied you – with a chaperone, of course," he added quickly, "then we could get the banns read and be married within a month."

In some ways, a month sounded like an awfully long time, for whenever Fitzwilliam Darcy had wanted something, he had wanted it now. But then, he supposed a month was really not all that long when he would be changing his life so substantially.

Would he know how to be a husband? he wondered as he waited for her answer.

He had lived alone or with Georgiana for a great number of years. He hoped he could become accustomed to someone else in his space.

But then, Pemberley was a large house. It wasn’t as if they needed to live on top of one another. Not if they didn’t wish to.

◆◆◆

Married within a month.

Goodness. That was quicker than she had thought.

For a moment, she felt a slight panic at the idea of leaving everything she had ever known to live with, to belong to, a man that she barely knew. A man whose actions she had very recently found deplorable.

But she took a moment to gather her thoughts before she answered.

He had immediately offered to help with the situation with her family, and if she could see her mother settled somewhere happily and her sisters provided for, well, that would go a long way to ensuring her own happiness.

She did not want to live with her mother forever, she knew that.

In fact, she wasn’t sure how much longer they could live together without her saying something she might one day regret, for it was hard to endlessly hear her mother telling her what she had done wrong.

And her younger sisters... Although she loved them very much, she was content to see them on a far less regular basis than every day.

Jane. Ah, Jane. Yes, she would be a great loss. Her closest friend, her confidant.

And yet, even with everything that had happened with Bingley, Elizabeth was well aware that her sister would one day marry. And probably in the not too distant future, as her mother always said, she couldn’t be so beautiful for nothing.

And so, if Elizabeth did not move away, it would be Jane doing so.

"Yes, that would be agreeable," she said eventually. "If you do not mind coming back to Meryton."

He shook his head. "I only wish to make things easier for you," he said, and once again she was surprised by his words, for it seemed like there was genuine affection in them.