She crossed the room and took her mother’s hands. They were trembling. Mrs Bennet had known about Elizabeth’s gift since Elizabeth was five years old and had greeted a woman at the market who had been dead for a fortnight. The screaming, Mrs Bennet’s, had lasted the better part of an afternoon. In the years since, her mother had dealt with the knowledge in the only way she knew how: by refusing to discuss it, by pretending it did not exist, by building a wall of noise, nerves, and relentless chatter so high and so thick that the terrifying truth about her second daughter could not possibly be seen over it.
It had not been courage, but it had been, in its own frantic, fluttering way, a kind of love.
“I will be careful, Mama,” Elizabeth said steadily. “I always am.”
Mrs Bennet nodded, rapid and jerky, and then pulled her hands free to dab at her eyes. “Well! That is settled, then. Now, the flowers, Hill, I expressly said white roses, not; oh, never mind, they will do, they will do.” And she was gone, her voice trailing behind her, already onto another grievance, haranguing someone about the arrangement of the carriages.
Elizabeth let out a breath. In the mirror, she saw herself: dark hair pinned and curled, the new cream silk gown her motherhad insisted on with Brussels lace at the collar and cuffs, pearl earrings her mother had loaned her. Great-Aunt Irene said they had been in the Bennet family since before even her time. Her own clear, watchful eyes looked back at her.
She was leaving Longbourn. She was leaving her parents and the ghosts who had been her companions, part of her extended family, since childhood. She was going to a house she had visited only briefly, to a life she could barely imagine, with a man she loved and had not told the truth.
The thought sat in her chest like a stone, familiar and heavy. She had carried it through the engagement, through the preparations, through every tender moment with Darcy when the words had risen to her lips and she had swallowed them back down. I see dead people. I have always seen them. They are as real to me as you are, and I have never told a living soul outside my family. Even Charlotte, the closest friend I have ever had, does not know.
Not today. Today was for joy, for the beginning of things. She would tell him. She would. Just not today.
Her father appeared in the doorway, his expression carefully arranged into mild amusement, as though escorting a daughter to her wedding were a task of no more consequence than selecting a book from the library shelf.
“Well, Lizzy,” he said. “Are you ready to make a very proud man even more insufferably pleased with himself?”
“Papa.” She took his arm, and felt the faintest tremor in it. “Shall we?”
Mr Bennet patted her hand where it rested on his sleeve. “We shall.” He paused for a beat. “Though I reserve the right to claim you back if he proves unsatisfactory. I have it on good authority that Longbourn cannot function without at least one sensible person in residence, and your mother has already informed me that I do not qualify.”
Elizabeth laughed, and the sound was bright enough almost to dislodge the stone in her chest. Almost.
The church at Longbourn was small, plain, and old, its stone walls steeped in centuries of prayer, gossip, and the slight feeling of damp that afflicted every building in Hertfordshire between September and May. The Bennets had been christened, married, and buried here for as long as anyone could remember, and a good deal longer than that, as Elizabeth well knew.
She knew because they had told her.
The resident church ghosts were among her oldest acquaintances. Old Reverend Hackett, who had presided over the parish in the reign of King George the Second and still considered the current incumbent a dangerous radical for having once preached a sermon on charity. Mrs Turnbull, a farmer’s wife who had died in the pew during a particularly tedious Easter sermon in 1742 and had simply never got up. Young Thomas Briggs, dead at fourteen of a fever, who hadbeen sweet on Elizabeth since she was twelve and still blushed, or performed whatever ghostly equivalent of blushing was available to him, whenever she walked in.
They were all present this morning. None of them could leave, of course, but Elizabeth knew they would not have missed her wedding even if they could have been elsewhere. Like the ghosts of Longbourn, they loved her, and they had been talking about little else for weeks.
Elizabeth entered the church on her father’s arm, Jane on his other side, and immediately felt the familiar press of spectral attention; a prickling along her skin, a subtle shift in the air, as though the room held more people than the eye could count. Which, of course, it did, though only she could see them.
Jane glanced across at her, serene and radiant in a way that only Jane could manage, and squeezed their father’s arm. Mr Bennet, escorting two daughters at once, looked as though he could not decide whether to be proud or upset, that he was losing the only two daughters with whom he considered he could have sensible conversation.
The living congregation was impressive enough. The pews were full: the Lucases, the Phillipses, the Longs, the Gouldings, the Hursts, and many other locals Elizabeth had known her whole life, all beaming proudly at her. Lady Matlock sat in the front pew beside Lord Matlock, her posture flawless, her expression gracious, her hat architectural. Elizabeth had been nervous about meeting them, but the earl and countess had proved so warm, so genuinely kind, that her anxiety had melted within a quarter of an hour. Georgiana was with them, her expression one of pure delight.
Caroline Bingley sat with the Hursts in the row behind; her gown was of such aggressive elegance that it seemed designed less to celebrate the occasion than to register a formal protest against it. Her smile was fixed, brittle, and did not reach her eyes. Kitty and Mary sat together with Mrs Bennet, Kitty’s eyes drifting rather more often than was strictly necessary toward Colonel Fitzwilliam, handsome in his red coat.
At the altar, two grooms waited. Bingley was beaming so broadly that he looked in danger of levitating from sheer happiness, bouncing slightly on his heels as though the effort of standing still were almost more than his good nature could bear.
And there was Darcy.
Elizabeth’s breath caught. Not dramatically, not visibly, but in the small, private way that had become habitual whenever she saw him unexpectedly. He stood straight, his dark coat immaculate, his hands clasped behind his back. He was watching the door, and the look on his face was so openly, unguardedly hopeful that Elizabeth felt her heart turn over. He looked like a man who was not entirely certain this was really happening, and was bracing himself against the possibility that it might not.
Then he saw her, and his whole face changed.
She had seen Darcy smile before; rare, swift smiles that transformed his features and vanished before anyone could properly appreciate them. But this was something else. This was joy, unmasked and undefended, directed entirely at her. For a moment Elizabeth forgot about ghosts, secrets, the stone in her chest, and simply walked toward him.
“Took your time,” murmured Old Reverend Hackett from his customary position near the baptismal font. “The tall one’s been sweating like a sinner at Judgement Day. The ginger one’s been grinning like a fool since he arrived.”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together hard.
“Ooh, but he is handsome,” sighed Mrs Turnbull, drifting closer for a better look at Darcy. “Those shoulders! That jawline! I had a cousin who had a jawline like that, though he was considerably shorter and had a terrible squint.”
Elizabeth fixed her gaze on Darcy’s cravat and thought desperately about arithmetic.
