Darcy brushed her forehead with his lips. It was not the first time he had done so, and the intimacy of it no longer surprised her but made her happy.
His voice was low and impossibly tender. “I promise I shall write you many more like the second if only you will burn the first.”
Elizabeth leaned her head on his shoulder. “Very well. If it bothers you that much, I shall burn the first letter.”
He released a deep, bone-rattling sigh, and Elizabeth’s heart ached for him. “I shall fetch it now, and we will burn it together.”
“Thank you, love” was all he said.
Elizabeth examined herself in the glass. The blue silk dress she had meant to wear to dinner at Pemberley suited her very wellindeed as a wedding gown. All it had required was a bit of the silk Mr. Darcy had gifted Jane on the occasion of her marriage so that Kerr could add long sleeves. Kerr had come to Longbourn last night in order to prepare Elizabeth for the wedding, and the young woman bobbed up and down on her toes, she was so pleased with her work.
“Oh, Miss Bennet,” Kerr said with a pleased sigh. “You do look a picture.”
“It is the dress,” Elizabeth said modestly, admiring it. “I am so happy to finally have an occasion grand enough to wear it.”
“Elizabeth?” Kitty’s voice floated through the door. “May we come in?”
“Yes, do,” Elizabeth called.
Kitty walked in and stopped abruptly. Mary ran into her from the back.
“Why are you stopping?” Mary asked peevishly. She stepped around Kitty. “Oh.”
Both her sisters stared at her. Elizabeth knew it was the dress, but there was something else about her this morning that had made her gawk at her own reflection. She was not just pretty today. She was glorious, and it had to do as much with the way she felt inside as the extraordinary care that had been taken with her toilette.
“We brought you this,” Kitty said, and thrust a small bouquet of dried flowers at Elizabeth. It was tied together, quite cleverly, with ivy.
“Ivy is for wedded love and fidelity,” Mary said earnestly.
“And there are dried primroses, for everlasting love and devotion,” Kitty added. “Plus all the herbs. Mrs. Hill helped us.”
“I am sorry there will not be flowers at the dinner, like you had for Jane,” Mary added. “I am afraid that when we asked, no one had any left.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I shall not require them, Mary. It was so sweet of you two to make me a bouquet.”
“You love flowers.” Kitty shook the ones in her hand a little, and Elizabeth took them. “It would not be right for you not to even have a few to hold.”
Elizabeth’s eyes stung with unshed tears. “Do not make me cry. Fitzwilliam might turn and run away if he were to see it.” He would not, for he had seen her weep before when he came to visit her in Lambton.
Her sisters were plainly unconvinced. “He adores you, Lizzy,” Kitty said. “It was all Mamma could do to get him out of the house last night.”
Even Mary giggled at that.
“I did not want him to go,” Elizabeth admitted. “And I cannot wait to meet him this morning. Is everyone ready?”
“Mamma is downstairs ordering the servants about, even though the dinner is not until tomorrow,” Mary informed her. “They will be only too happy to have her leave for church.”
Elizabeth smiled widely. “Then to church we shall go.”
Blue. Her dress was blue. But not only one shade of the hue, for it shimmered lighter, darker, and sometimes almost green in the light of a grey, snowy Christmas Eve morning. It reminded Darcy of the sea and its unfathomable depths. Elizabeth was like a water nymph rising from the waves, and he was the fortunate man to whom she was travelling. He could not take his eyes from her.
Never had he been so grateful that he had not discarded the common license tucked into his writing case. For after so many months of suspense, a prompt wedding to Elizabeth was the onlyreasonable conclusion. He smiled at his bride as she walked on the arm of her father, drawing ever closer.
“Good morning, Mr. Darcy,” she said quietly, once her father had given her over to his care.
“Good morning, love,” he replied, for he would never call her Miss Bennet again.
Her countenance lit up at the endearment.
