Darcy lifted his eyebrows. “Your contributions, humble?” He shook his head and said, “You are the architect of everything marvellous about our little corner of the world. Other people make contributions;youare the foundation, the cornerstone, the braces and beams and load-bearing walls of honesty, of love, of charity, of goodness.”
At that moment, Thomas and Alexander burst into the room, soon followed by the baby of the family, little Annie. Elizabeth saw Nurse just outside the door and nodded to her, a signal that she was welcome to sit and rest while the children were with their parents.
“Tell them!” Thomas said.
Alexander looked down at his scuffed shoes and muttered, “I knocked a table over, in the courtyard, and a pot broke.”
Elizabeth beckoned to him, and he immediately went to her and, as she gently pulled his hand, the five-year-old boy sat on her lap. A sob escaped his lips, but Darcy saw that the boy shook his tears back, straightened his back, and looked his mother in the eyes.
“Did you mean to knock the table over?” she asked kindly.
“‘Course not.”
“Did you mean to break the pot?”
“No.”
“Then, I gather it was an accident?”
“Yes. I meant to kick the ball through the gate opening. It would have been a goal.”
Darcy’s eyes flew wide. He had assumed that the table had been knocked over with some rough-and-tumble play, with Alexander knocking into the portable furniture.
“You kicked the ball hard enough to knock a table over?” he asked.
“Yes.” His son shot a glance at Darcy and smiled a little with the admission.
Darcy saw Elizabeth’s mouth quirk into a smile, as well, but she quashed the expression and went back to being the caring, serious parent. She said, “I admire that you admitted your mistake, and I hope that you wish to tell Mr Abraham that you are sorry to have broken a pot.”
“Yes, mother, I will. And, Mama, I am very, very sorry.”
“I know you are.” Elizabeth kissed his forehead and sent him on his way.
Thomas, two years older, said, “You would have been so proud, Papa. He is able to kick the ball so hard now.”
Darcy said, “That is wonderful, but I believe that means that you will have to begin to play in the grass field, instead of so close to the house. We cannot have you kicking the ball into windows, can we?”
“No, sir, yes, sir.” Thomas ran off after his brother, and little Annie toddled after them, repeating, “No, sir, yes, sir, no, sir, yes, sir.”
Darcy got up and checked to make certain that Nurse had followed the three children. When he returned, he said, “I am as proud of all three of them as a father could possibly be. I knowthat I have been working hard not to be the proud, disagreeable fellow I once was, but now I have to admit defeat on the proud bit—I have relapsed into a much higher level of pride than you or I could ever have imagined before Thomas’s birth.”
“I promise to forgive you your pride if you forgive me mine.”
“Perhaps pride in one’s children is not improper pride at all,” Darcy said with a wink.
Elizabeth laughed and said, “As long as you have it under good regulation….”
“Indeed.” Darcy pulled her up from the chair and swept her into one of his ardent kisses. After a decade of marriage, three live births, and one miscarriage, he was as enamoured of Elizabeth as he ever had been. He was not one to wait for special moments—times of grief or of celebration—to show his love, nor did he only show his ardency in the privacy of their bedchambers. No, he had lived without Elizabeth for more than two and a half decades, and he had lived without the hope of Elizabeth, once he finally knew her, and knew he loved her, for thirty-two days and four hours. He took advantage of many moments, day or night, at home or out, to express how very much he still loved her.
Epilogue
TWO
Darcy and Elizabethwere the honoured guests at a jubilee celebration forThe Peak Report.
At two and fifty years of age, Darcy still garnered gazes and blushes even from young women, and although, as always, he assumed such attention was a result of his wealth—for, indeed, with his interest in so many inventions and businesses, his wealth had grown enormously over the past few decades—Elizabeth was always whispering embarrassing things about this lady eyeing his backside or that noblewoman raving about his hair being as thick and dark as it ever was.
Therefore, in a crowd, he was likely to be blushing more often than not, and that certainly was the case on this grand occasion, when his valet had insisted on his new navy coat and a particularly elaborate cravat.
