“No, I should like that very much.” Indeed, she was happy to stay out of Lady Catherine’s way for as long as possible. “Where shall we walk?”
“Any path you choose but that one,” he replied, nodding at the oneleading to Rosings. She grinned at their like minds, and then, curious to discover what changes the different season had wrought on one of her favourite haunts, set out in the direction of the grove that lined the park.
In truth, Darcy was not in a humour for walking, talking, or indeed anything but ordering his trunks packed and departing forthwith. It seemed every time he came to this cursed place, he must wrestle with violently conflicting notions of affection and duty and without much history of success. He had hoped some time alone with Elizabeth would improve his humour, and indeed, it did until he recognised her chosen destination. Then, with the remembrance of her unbearable rejection growing more vivid with every step, his spirits grew gloomier than ever.
“How went your discussions?” Elizabeth enquired.
“Well enough. Montgomery has the capital to save Rosings, provided it is managed carefully.” Darcy fixed his eyes upon the gate at which he had handed Elizabeth his letter last April.
“Will you help him, despite your aunt’s behaviour?”
“I shall.”
This pleased her, he could tell. Would that she had knownthenhe was not devoid of all proper feeling!
“You are not happy,” she said gently. “I am sorry the visit has not started well.”
“It is not that which troubles me at the present moment,” he admitted, smiling ruefully at his own foolishness.
She stopped walking and turned to him, all anxiety. “Then what does?”
“It is this place. My memories of it are inexpressibly painful to me.”
She lifted a hand to his cheek, and though her next words were teasing, her voice was as soft as her touch. “Oh, Fitzwilliam, you dear, silly man! I thought all that was forgotten?”
“Forgetting is not my forte, as well you know. I left this place believing I had lost you forever.”
“Yes, you do have a penchant for losing me, I have noticed.”
He choked out a surprised burst of laughter. “Would that I had knownthenhow I should come to be the constant object of your wit,teasing devil of a woman!” He pulled her closer, then one arm at a time took hold of the front edges of his greatcoat and wrapped them around her, cocooning her against his chest. “What would you have said had someone told you after thatnight you would be back here half a year on, wife to me and increasing with my child?”
She looked up at him dubiously. “If that isallI had been told, I think I would have been justified in being excessively alarmed.”
His smile faltered. She was perfectly right, of course, yet it made hearing it no less painful, for it served as further proof of how she had despised him at the time. She saw it, God love her. She saw it and immediately redressed the injury.
“Though, had I been told how blissfully happy you would have made me in that half a year, how wonderful it would be to be held the way you hold me and kissed the way you kiss me, how honoured I should feel to be carrying the child of the best man I have ever known, had I been told howverydearly I should have come to love you, I believe I might have been more sanguine about it.”
It frightened him how fiercely he loved her. It had then, and it did still. He made no attempt to find the words to express it, however; he doubted any existed sufficiently profound. Instead, he took her by the hand and drew her to the nearest tree, from which he plucked one of the last remaining leaves. Silently, he pressed a tender kiss to her brow and the leaf into her hand, closing her fingers around it.
“Fitzwilliam?”
“Yes?”
“Kiss me. The way you do.”
Wednesday 7 October 1812, Hertfordshire
“Oh, Sister, I cannot recall ever seeing her so withdrawn, not even when Mr Bingley went away last autumn.”
“Is she very distressed? What did she say?”
“Very little—only that it is certain she is not with child. Her courses arrived on Sunday.”
Mrs Philips shook her head sadly. “Well, she is not the first woman to be mistaken about such a thing.”
“It breaks my heart to think how her hopes have been dashed.”
“And yours, my dear.”
