The ancient trellis complained with every shift of her weight, threatening collapse but somehow enduring.Descent became its own peculiar torture—arms quaking, fingers locked in painful curves around wood made treacherous by frost.When her foot skidded off the crossbar (not once but twice), she found herself clinging to thick wisteria stems like salvation itself, her pulse wild in her throat.And then—oh, the relief of it—her boots found purchase on solid ground, the lawn's frozen surface breaking into tiny shards beneath her weight.
The smell down here was much better.Just winter—honest, brutal winter that asked nothing of her except endurance.
She walked without direction, needing only movement.The garden lay dormant, rose bushes reduced to thorny skeletons, herb beds covered in straw.Everything dead or sleeping.She understood the appeal.
At the far edge of the property, where the formal gardens gave way to rough meadow, Elizabeth stopped.The sun crept above the horizon, painting the frost gold.
Was it truly over?This biological betrayal that had reduced her to an animal?
Her body said yes.Her mind wasn't certain it would ever recover.
The morning air cut sharp as glass, cold, perfect.Elizabeth breathed it in deeply, feeling it burn her lungs in the most wonderful way.She was alive.She'd survived.Each step towards the road pulled at muscles still weak from her ordeal, but the simple act of walking—of choosing her own direction—felt like freedom itself.
She'd thought herself trapped at Netherfield, but that had been mere inconvenience compared to this: two days locked in her childhood room, and her composure had dissolved like sugar in rain.She was finally regaining it.
She stopped at the property's edge where the lane curved past Longbourn's gates.The frost crunched beneath her boots.Ice crystals hung from bare branches like little chandeliers, catching the early light.Elizabeth tilted her face to the sky, letting the cold wash over her cheeks, her closed eyelids, the bridge of her nose.
Don't think of him.
But how could she not?His hands had known exactly where to touch, how to ease the burning without stealing what remained of her pride.He'd held her through the worst of it, given her what she needed while somehow preserving that essential part of herself that remained Elizabeth, not just omega.Even when she'd begged—God, how she'd begged—he'd protected her from her own biology's betrayal.
The shame of it all sat heavy in her chest, but beneath it, something else stirred.Gratitude, perhaps.Or understanding.Jane had spoken true—there'd been no real choice for either of them.Biology had trapped them both in its teeth.He'd simply...managed it better than she had.
Elizabeth wrapped her arms around herself, not against the cold but for comfort.The heat had passed.She'd emerge from this changed but not broken.She had to believe that.
Hoofbeats echoed down the lane, steady and measured.A rider approached—a gentleman on a bay thoroughbred whose breeding showed in every line.Elizabeth's heart seized.Even at fifty yards, she knew those shoulders, that seat, the particular way he held the reins.
Darcy.
He rode towards Longbourn as if the devil himself gave chase, though his mount moved at a controlled canter.Why now?To demand her silence about what had passed between them?To confess all to her father and force a marriage neither wanted?
Elizabeth's spine straightened by degrees.She'd cried herself empty these past days, wrung out every tear until nothing remained but this strange, hollow calm.Her soul felt tissue-thin, liable to tear at the slightest pressure, but she'd survived worse than whatever conversation approached on horseback.
She had to be strong enough.There was no other option.
Darcy spotted her and pulled up hard, his horse dancing sideways at the sudden check.He dismounted in one fluid motion, though he gripped the stirrup leather afterwards, steadying himself for just a heartbeat.He looped the reins over his arm as he approached, each step deliberate, careful, as if she might bolt like a deer if he moved too quickly.
His shirt gaped open at the collar where buttons had been missed or forgotten entirely.The hollows of his cheeks seemed deeper, and when he blinked, it lasted a fraction too long—the slow blink of someone running on willpower alone.Three days' worth of stubble shadowed his jaw—she'd never seen him anything less than perfectly shaved.
He looked terrible.Properly terrible, not the romantic notion of it.His face had gone gaunt, shadows carved beneath his cheekbones like he hadn't eaten in days.The circles under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights, and his coat—usually immaculate—hung askew.But his gaze when it found hers… she couldn't think about any of that.
"Elizabeth."
The single word came out raw, scraped from somewhere deep in his chest.
"You're well?"
She nodded, forcing her expression into something approaching neutral.Her fingers twisted in her skirts, but she kept her voice level.
"I am.Thank you."
A pause.She should leave it there, but something in his haggard face compelled her to add:
"And you, sir?"
"I need to speak with you."His voice carried an urgency that made her stomach twist."I've come to—Elizabeth, I must ask—" He stopped, drew in a breath that seemed to cost him."I'm asking for your hand.Again.I'm asking you to marry me."
Her heart cracked down the middle, a clean break she felt in her bones.Elizabeth held up a hand, stopping him before he could continue this terrible charade.
