This resolve began each morning in the glade by the stream, a place where she could be entirely alone. Fuelled by a grim determination, she continued the painstaking work of truly learning her own magic. Her progress was slow, taxing, and inconsistent, but it was steady.
At first, her efforts were met with the same chaotic failures. Yet she did not allow herself to fall into despair. With each failure, she forced herself to stillness, closing her eyes and shutting out the memory of a roaring blaze and the ghost of a searing flash that had cost so much more.
She learnt to halt the spiral of her fear before it could take hold by deliberately attuning her mind to the steady presence of Darcy’s voice in her memory, with its firm assurance and the simple visuals of his analogies. Holding fast to it, she would take a breath, push aside the turmoil of her own heart, and seek that clear intent he had described.
Slowly, day by day, her will and her power began to align. Thefailures became less explosive, more controlled. A misdirected puff of air instead of a gale. A wobble in the water instead of a geyser. Then came the first, tentative victories. A leaf that trembled on her palm and held steady for a breathless second. A concentric ripple that spread across the stream before vanishing.
Each small success, each moment of hard-won control, was a painful confirmation of a growing suspicion that her own character had been the fundamental failure from the start. All her cleverness, all her wit, and all the discerning judgement she had prided herself on had been employed in the grand and noble cause of being completely wrong.
And so, this was not just practice; it was a form of restitution, a slow reforging of herself into the partner he deserved and the mage England needed.
Following her morning training exercises, she had taken to walking great distances across the vast Pemberley estate, seeking out the scattered tenant farms nestled along its winding streams.
With each visit, she learnt new names, heard new histories – tales of generations who had tilled the land, whose lives were deeply intertwined with Pemberley’s fate. She listened to their worries in the face of the encroaching Blight, and did what little she could to ease the harshness of their lives. These visits filled her with a sense of purpose she had not anticipated.
The late afternoons were then frequently spent with Mrs Reynolds, poring over the meticulously kept household accounts, seeking, with a shared determination, what small economies might be made and what resources might be redirected.
One afternoon, as she was returning to the drawing room, she was startled to find a set of double doors thrown wide, breaking the corridor’s usual monotony of locked rooms.Intrigued, Elizabeth stepped within and drew an astonished breath.
Unable to resist the call of the books, she moved further into the storied silence, her gaze sweeping over the thousands of leather-bound spines. This was not the lesser library of their lessons. This, the main library of Pemberley, was the soul of a family, a grand embodiment of the Darcy legacy, a collection gathered and guarded over generations.
The air seemed different here, rich with the scent of leather and paper. As she wandered further and further into the magnificence, she thought that perhaps within these walls, she could find a volume that could quiet the nightmares of Buxton that still haunted her nights.
Then her hand, trailing along a row of books, stilled. Darcy stood not twenty paces away, standing before a high shelf, his back to her.
A silent retreat was her first thought, but before she could do so, some sound must have reached him. He looked up, his contemplative expression shifting to one of mild surprise. In his hand he held a slim, leather-bound volume, his finger marking a page as if he had just been interrupted in a cherished passage.
“Forgive my intrusion,” she began, feeling the colour rise in her cheeks.
“You are not, nor could you be, intruding,” he replied.
“I was only in search of something to read.”
He glanced down at the volume in his hand, his expression turning pensive. “You may have this one, if you wish. It was a favourite of my mother’s.” Then, in a gesture that seemed to defy his usual reserve, he closed the distance between them and held the book out to her.
She took it, and her gaze fell to the title. A small shock of recognition went through her. It was Thomson’sThe Seasons.
“You mentioned this book to me before,” she said softly.
“I did,” he confirmed. He looked from the book to just past her, a shadow of some deeper sentiment in his eyes, but he seemed to think better of it. With a slight bow, he retreated into formality. “Pray, enjoy the verse. I have matters in my study to attend to.”
He left her then. She stood holding the book of poetry that had been a favourite of his mother’s, and wondered at the bittersweet poignancy of the memory and the surprising pang of his swift departure.
The memory of their exchange in the library lingered with Elizabeth as she went down to dinner. That glimpse she’d had of his private melancholy, of the man beneath the facade, had resonated with something within her. Now, as he sat across from her, her heart constricted to see him so consumed by his burdens.
The colonel, with a soldier’s fortitude, kept up a determinedly bright stream of chatter, and Elizabeth did her best to rally in kind, but her own thoughts kept drifting. A strange ache settled in her chest when she looked at Darcy. She wanted to say something that would make the stern line of his mouth soften, something that would bring a flicker of that surprising humour back into his eyes. This ache was so insistent, so curious, it made her pause, wondering.
It was, she realised, his confession of love and admiration that now cast a new light upon their entire acquaintance. With this altered perspective, a cascade of memories followed, each one re-forming itself in a more generous way.
The grand moments, the great, undeniable acts of his character, were the easiest to see, and each one stood as an indictment of her own harsh judgements. His courage during the fire, his nobility before the Arcane Office, his solicitude for his tenants, and the generosity in his refusal to touch her settlement all served as overwhelming evidence of his worth.
But it was thinking on the smaller moments that truly began to undo her. She replayed the surprising warmth of their moments of easy rapport, the smile he’d offered as he teased her about Cowper, the undisguised admiration in his eyes as he had watched her descend the stairs, and the tender note in his voice when he had handed her the book of poetry. She felt again the perfect, harmonious current that had flowed between their joined hands as he commanded the elements with such effortless skill.
She found herself delighting in his contrasts: his endearing awkwardness in trivial civilities against the passionate fire of his intellect; the exhilarating pleasure of a dry humour capable of answering her sharpest barbs; and the silent challenge that glinted in his eyes, always warring with the reluctant smiles he fought to suppress.
And then, unbidden, came the simpler images: the defined line of his jaw, his long fingers, the low, warm baritone of his voice, and the transformative beauty of his full smile. He was an undeniably handsome man. A fact that felt suddenly, and rather inconveniently, as dangerous as his honour.
Thinking upon all this brought a gentle glow that suffused her entirely, a wonderful and pleasant warmth that coursed through every vein. It was a feeling so disarming that it began to transform into something else entirely.
