Mrs Fitzwilliam.The name she would have for the rest of her life, whether he came back from Canada or whether he did not, and she would not think about that last part, she was not going to think about that.
The maid curtsied and went. The house was very quiet. It was late, nearing midnight.
She sat for a while longer, listening to the quiet. And then, from somewhere below, the library she thought, or the billiard room perhaps, she heard voices. Low, unhurried. She could not make out the words; they were too far away and too quiet for that. But she could hear the rhythm of it; one voice, then the other, then the first again. Comfortable. Unhurried.
She listened to it for a while, and it was, in some way she could not have explained, exactly the right sound for this house on this night. Then she took herself to bed, and lay in the dark with her hands folded on the counterpane, looking at the ceiling, and tried to think of nothing.
After a while she turned her left hand so she could feel the plain gold ring against her fingers.
She did not sleep for a long time, but she was not unhappy. She was just awake in the dark, in the way of someone who has arrived at the end of a very long day and is now looking quietly at the beginning of everything that comes after.
Darcy had found the decanter of brandy without assistance, which was one of the advantages of having spent quite some time at Netherfield. Bingley had tactfully left them alone, and everyone else had long since retired.
He poured for both of them without asking. Fitzwilliam accepted his glass, turned it in his hands, did not drink immediately.
“She will be all right,” Darcy said.
It was not a question, but Fitzwilliam answered it anyway. “I know.”
A silence. The fire had burned down to embers and neither of them moved to build it up.
“She was glad to see the old general,” Darcy said.
“General Lewes.” The corner of Fitzwilliam’s mouth moved. “A truly good man. He would have stepped up for her, if I had not.”
“The choice you made was the right one,” Darcy said simply.
Fitzwilliam looked back at the fire. He drank. “She is going to be quite remarkable,” he said, in the tone of a man arriving at a conclusion that surprises him slightly. “Given time.”
“Yes,” Darcy said. “She is.”
Another silence, the kind that comes after the important thing has been said.
“Three days,” Fitzwilliam said eventually.
“Three days,” Darcy agreed.
Fitzwilliam turned his glass in his hands again. “Look after her for me.” It was not a request, exactly, nor an order. Something inbetween. Something he didn’t really have to say, and he knew it, but he said it anyway.
“I will.” Darcy looked at him steadily. “Come home, Richard.”
Fitzwilliam met his eyes. He set down his glass. “I intend to,” he said, which was the same thing he had said to Lydia, and he meant it now precisely as he had meant it then. He couldn’t make promises. They were a luxury no soldier could afford. He could only express his intentions, perhaps speak the future into being what he hoped for if he desired it enough.
He hoped so, anyway.
They sat together a little longer, until the fire was quite out, and then they went to bed.
