“No, you are my favourite.” He leant in very close, his fingers rising to graze the spot on her neck just beneath her ear. “I assure you, if there was a cream ice as sweet as this, they would have hundreds lined up outside the door.”
Elizabeth felt a blush heat her face, and she looked down, wholly disconcerted. She found much to enjoy in her husband’s attentions, but she had not yet set her maidenly pretensions so far behind her as to not blush at the reminder of them. Thankfully the server arrived to ask them what they wished to order; in short time the sweets were set on the table before them.
“If they taste half as good as they look…” Elizabeth began.
“It tastes twice as good as it looks,” Saye informed her. “Go on, take a bite.”
She did and was completely and utterly in raptures immediately. “This is quite beyond anything! It is far better than Gunter’s, and I thought Gunter’s sublime. I daresay I could come every day and never grow tired of it.” She took another small bite, determined to make the treat last as long as she could.
“Which is exactly how your now-husband found himself bursting from his waistcoats,” Saye informed her. “That, my dear, is a true story. A button flew off and nearly took my eye out.”
“It was hardly as dramatic as that,” Darcy grumbled.
“Heartbreak,” Saye informed her. “Copious amounts of cream ice are the only cure.”
“You were heartbroken?” Elizabeth looked at her husband in amazement.
“Does it surprise you? The love of my life had just refused my hand. I believed all hope was lost.”
She smiled softly at him. “Such a fool I was.”
“Not at all. When I think of how I was, how I acted, only this time last year, I can hardly abide it myself. I can only be grateful you were as willing to take on a husband in need of improvement as you were a house.”
Saye was already scraping the bottom of his cream ice bowl with his spoon. “Yes, yes, a vast deal of improvement was needed. Darcy here was up with the dawn, off in the forest somewhere making himself sweat and heave like a horse, all for the cause of returning himself to the state you see him in now.”
“It was you!” Elizabeth cried out. “Running up and down the hill…” Her voice faded as she recollected it, how the sight of the muscular man in his shirtsleeves had produced sensations in her that she had not understood at the time but which she now understood very, very well.
“You need not worry,” Darcy told her. “I am firmly ascribed to the creed that all good things must be enjoyed in moderation. You must not fear?—”
“Oh, I do not know,” she said softly. “I certainly enjoyed watching you improve your health, so if you find yourself in any way inclined to undertake your gymnastics again…”
He chuckled. “You would not be opposed?”
“Far, far from it,” she told him warmly.
“I can hardly believe this is real,” he murmured. “That somehow, in some way, from the rubble of my dreadful proposal, we have managed to build this.” He gestured between them with a finger, his eyes full of the love she no longer had any doubt that he felt. “To sithere with you, eating cream ices, with all things felicitous ahead of us… You must pinch me so I know I am not dreaming.”
“I cannot pinch you,” she said softly. “For I have caused you pain too, and I promised myself I would never do it again.”
He lifted his finger to stroke her cheek. “Just a little pinch perhaps,” he teased. “Just so that I know— Blast! Saye! That hurt!”
“Well, you wanted a pinch, did you not?” Saye raised one brow as he reached over and took the remains of Darcy’s abandoned cream ice. “There, you have it.”
Darcy rubbed his arm and glared at his cousin. Elizabeth giggled and then, quite daringly she thought, shoved the rest of her own cream ice across the table towards Saye. “Here you are,” she said. “Pray finish mine as well and take your time with it. I must speak with my husband alone in the carriage.”
She stood, looking over her shoulder at her husband who had remained seated, no doubt surprised by her boldness. “Come, Husband,” she said with a little wink.
They left London with the dawn the next morning. The autumn days were growing shorter, but they were determined to reach Brighton before losing the light. They arrived at the house on Marine Parade to find an astonishingly gratifying sight.
Elizabeth’s house was at last complete. The rotted floorboards had all been replaced and the doors all hung, the walls were sturdy and straight, the newwindows poured what was left of the daylight into the house, and each and every cornice and moulding was firmly affixed in its proper place. Darcy heard his wife gasp over and over again as they walked through the rooms, seeing the wallpaper she had chosen so painstakingly, the furnishings she had ordered…even the books she had had brought down from Longbourn which now graced the library shelves.
“It is really almost perfect, is it not?” She asked him several times, and each time he answered her, “Yes, it is. You will have made your aunt very proud.”
When at last their survey of things was completed, they sat on the tufted velvet sofa in the library. “We will need more books in here,” said Darcy. “I shall have some brought down from Pemberley.”
“Well…it would hardly be necessary, if we mean to sell the place.”
“Do we?” he asked.
“It seems indulgent, does it not, to have yet another house? A house in Derbyshire, a house in town?—”
“And a house by the sea,” he said. “I confess, it will be hard for me to give it up. It is the place you finally fell in love with me. I should like it exceedingly well if we maintained it, but I leave the decision to you. It is your inheritance after all.”
“Then perhaps we should keep it, at least a few years,” she said, her sparkling eyes and smile telling him how much she enjoyed the prospect. “At least until the children come. It will be far more difficult to travel about with children.”
“But children love the sea.”
“Ours might not,” she said, though he knew she did not really believe that anyone could dislike Brighton.
“But perhaps they will.” He leant over and gave her a kiss. “I suppose we must wait and see.”
