“Do not.” Charlotte's voice was gentle but firm. “Do not pity me, Lizzy. We are not all made for grand passion. I am twenty-seven. If Mr. Collins offers security and a home of my own, I will not refuse him on the grounds that he is ridiculous, because the alternative to a ridiculous husband is no husband at all, and I find I prefer ridiculousness to dependence.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to argue. But she could see in Charlotte's eyes the same clear-sighted pragmatism she had always admired, and she understood that Charlotte was not settling out of despair.
“Will you be all right?” she asked instead.
“I will have a house. A garden. Rooms of my own. And Mr. Collins is easily managed, Lizzy. He wants someone to approve of him, and I am very good at approving.”
The house had beenquiet for an hour before Jane spoke.
She sat on her bed, knees drawn to her chest, her candle still burning on the nightstand between them. Elizabeth had known she was waiting. Jane always waited until the house settled, until the last creak of floorboards announced their mother's retirement, before she said the things that mattered.
“Tell me everything,” Jane said.
So Elizabeth told her. Not the intimate details. Not the things that belonged to the cottage and the firelight and the private geography of Fitzwilliam's body. But the rest of it. The storm. The glass conservatory. And the conversation about the painter. The blankets and the cold and the careful distance that narrowed by inches until it was no distance at all. The kiss. The panic. And then the rescue. The truth about his parents and hers, the mirror wounds, the recognition that they wanted the same thing and had been running from it for opposite reasons.
Jane listened with her hands pressed to her mouth and her eyes wide and bright in the candlelight. When Elizabeth finished, the silence held for a long moment.
“You love him,” Jane said.
“Yes. I love him.”
“Then I am happy for you.” Jane's face broke into the radiant smile that was her most beautiful quality. “I am so happy for you, Lizzy.”
She reached for Elizabeth's hands, and they sat together on the bed the way they had since they were children.
“He looked at you today,” Jane said. “When you came back from the library. As though you were the only person in the room.” She paused. “Mr. Bingley has been different these past two days.Since the search. Since he watched Mr. Darcy step forward and claim you. I think it gave him courage, Lizzy. Watching your Mr. Darcy refuse to be afraid.”
“He is not my Mr. Darcy yet. Not officially.”
“He has been your Mr. Darcy since the moment he rode into a storm for you.” Jane leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Elizabeth's forehead. “Sleep well, Lizzy. You have earned it.”
Jane slipped from the room, taking the candle with her. Elizabeth lay in the darkness and listened to the old house settle around her.
She pressed her face into the coat she had not returned.
Four days. Five at most.
She closed her eyes and did not sleep for a very long time.
16
DAY
Mr. Darcy returnedon the fifth day.
The thaw had turned Hertfordshire into a muddy mess. Most of the snow had gone, reduced to gray slush in the lanes and stubborn patches in the shadows of walls and hedgerows, and the ground squelched underfoot wherever Elizabeth walked. She was at the front of the house, escaping her mother's latest revision of the breakfast menu, when she heard the hoofbeats.
Before she turned, she knew it was him because her body had apparently developed the ability to distinguish the sound of his horse from every other horse in Hertfordshire.
Mr. Darcy was coming up the drive at a pace that suggested he had been riding hard, his coat splashed with mud from the roads, his cravat loosened, his hair disordered by wind. Atlas was dark with sweat. Darcy himself looked like a man who had slept very little and ridden very fast and would do worse things than either if it meant arriving an hour sooner.
He swung down from the horse before it had stopped, handed the reins to the startled groom, and crossed the yard to where she stood.
They looked at each other.
Five days. Five days of letters that said everything and nothing, of lying awake in separate beds in separate counties, of the particular torture of knowing exactly what the other person's skin felt like and being unable to touch it.
“You have it?” she asked.
