Mr Bennet studied him.
It was not the inspection of a social superior weighing an advantageous match. It was the assessment of a man who had nearly lost his child and would not hazard her twice.
“You appear,” Mr Bennet said slowly, “to be in possession of your full faculties at last.”
“I believe I am.”
“And you do not look as though you are about to expire, despite my daughter’s…” He cleared his throat. “Rathercloseproximity to your person when we were shown into the room.”
“I am not.”
Mr Bennet considered this a moment longer. “Then we must suppose,” he said dryly, “that whatever threatened to consume the countryside has been persuaded to pursue another occupation.”
He turned then to Elizabeth.
“And you?” he asked, and the quiet beneath the question carried far more than the words themselves. “Do you enter this arrangement from inclination?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “From love, Papa.”
Mr Bennet inhaled once, sharply, and for an instant his composure deserted him altogether. He pulled his spectacles from his pocket and held them in his hand, though there was no need to polish them or to put them on.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I shall not oppose what appears already concluded by forces beyond my comprehension.” He extended his hand to Darcy.
Darcy took it.
“You need not ask more, for you have my consent,” Mr Bennet said. “On the condition that you never again require my daughter to wrestle hedgerows on your behalf.”
A faint smile returned to Darcy’s mouth. “I shall endeavour to keep future negotiations free of vegetation. And earthquakes.”
Mr Bennet grunted. “Do not forget fire and the tide… oh, did she not tell you of those?”
Darcy’s eyes narrowed, and he glanced questioningly at Elizabeth. “I expect I will have leisure to hear everything in time.”
Jane crossed to them then, laying her hand lightly upon Elizabeth’s shoulder. “I knew everything was well,” she said quietly. “I knew before we left Dartford that we would find you well and healed and whole. The air changed.”
Darcy glanced toward the window.
It had.
He could not have described how, only that the oppressive strain that had hovered over weeks of dread had lifted. The light beyond the glass seemed clearer, the winter sky no longer pressed low against the city roofs.
Mr Bennet replaced his spectacles in his pocket. “Well,” he said briskly, recovering his usual tone with visible effort, “I presume there will be further explanations forthcoming. Preferably over dinner. And preferably without firearms.”
Elizabeth’s laugh—relieved, unshadowed—filled the room.
Darcy feasted his eyes on her. There was no answering tremor in the walls at the sound of her laughter. No quailing weakness in his limbs. No stirring thorn.
Only her.
And for the first time since that original fracture split the earth surrounding Netherfield, he felt no vigilance in loving her.
Only peace.
Epilogue
Pemberley
Michaelmas, 1817
