“I love you,” she said, and it was not the awkward blurt of yesterday, but it was no less honest.
His eyes warmed, and he leaned down to kiss her. “I love you too, Mrs Darcy,” he murmured against her lips.
“What do we do now?” she asked, after a few quite satisfactory moments had passed.
“We live our lives,” Darcy said. “We take care of Georgiana, Anne, Kitty and Lydia. We let the world believe Wickham fell because he was drunk, and we carry the truth between us, and we do not let it poison what we have built.”
Elizabeth leaned against his shoulder. The fire burned. The house settled around them, and for the first time since she had arrived at Pemberley, the settling felt like contentment.
“Your father is at peace,” she said. “Lady Anne was waiting for him. He said her name, just before he went, and his face...” She stopped, because the memory of George’s face in that last moment, the joy on it, was still too raw to describe without crying, and she had cried enough. “He is with her now. After sixteen years, he is with her.”
Darcy was quiet for a few moments, grief and joy warring on his face as he absorbed what she had just said. Then he said, “Good,” and kissed the top of her head. They sat together in the firelight. Pemberley held them. The dead rested. The living carried on.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Threedaysaftertheball, the Bingleys left for Netherfield, taking Lydia with them.
It had been Jane’s idea. Lydia would not go to Longbourn just yet; she was too fragile, and Jane and Elizabeth agreed that Mrs Bennet’s particular brand of hysterical sympathy would do her more harm than good. Netherfield was quieter, Jane was steady, and Lydia needed steady more than she needed anything else. Kitty went with them. She hadn't left Lydia's side in three days,and she wouldn't leave her now. She would rejoin the Darcy party when they went to London for the Season, in the spring.
Elizabeth stood on the front steps of Pemberley and watched the carriage pull away until it finally vanished into the trees.
The Matlocks had left the previous day, Lord Matlock promising to make enquiries about the inquest, which would be a formality, and Lady Matlock promising to write. Anne remained. She would stay at Pemberley with Georgiana until they left for London, and she would have the life her mother had never permitted her to want. Elizabeth intended to make sure of it. Mrs Annesley was returning in a few days from her visit with her sister, and would have the two girls well in hand.
Pemberley was quiet. The house party was over. The ball gowns had been put away, the ballroom floor scrubbed clean of chalk, spilled wine, blood. The musicians' gallery staircase had been inspected by Mrs Reynolds and two carpenters, who pronounced the banister sound, the wood in good repair; they could not account for why a man should have fallen. They recommended a rail be added at the top of the stairs, and Darcy agreed, and that was the end of it.
Elizabeth walked through the house.
She walked slowly, the way she had walked on her first day as mistress of Pemberley, though everything was different now. The entrance hall was quiet, the marble floor clean. Graves was back at his station near the foot of the staircase, livery immaculate, his composure restored. He inclined his head as Elizabeth passed, and she inclined hers back, and neither of them mentioned the ball.
The library was warm. Miss Pardoe was in her chair, reading, as she had been reading for sixty years. She did not look up. Elizabeth had not expected her to. Miss Pardoe had ventured out of the library once, for the ball, and would probably not do so again for another sixty years, and that suited both of them.
The yellow drawing room was still. Sir Roderick slept in his chair, wigged head tilted to one side, exactly as he had been for as long as anyone could remember. Elizabeth paused in the doorway and looked at him. He did not stir. He would not stir, she hoped, ever again. She moved past quietly, and closed the door behind her, gently, and went on.
The long gallery was empty. The November light fell through the tall windows onto the floor where George Darcy had paced, raging, waiting for someone who could hear him. The air was still now. There was no cold spot, no pressure, no restless presence wearing a track in the floorboards. George was gone, and the gallery knew it, and the emptiness was not sad. It was peaceful. It was the peace of a room that has served its purpose and can rest.
Edmund and Charlotte were back. They ran past Elizabeth with cheerful waves, chasing each other through the gallery, their laughter bright and thin in the November air. The gallery was theirs again, and they were making the most of it.
The servants' hall was occupied. Mrs Alcott was berating Graves about the silver after the ball. The polishing had been inadequate, she said. The fish forks were a disgrace. Graves said the fish forks were perfectly acceptable; Mrs Alcott would not know a properly polished fish fork if it materialised in her spectral hand. Mrs Alcott said she had been polishing silversince before Graves was born, which was true, given that she had died during the reign of Queen Anne while he was merely Georgian. Graves said that was precisely the problem: standards had clearly been different in her day. Elizabeth walked past them, smiling. Neither of them noticed, because they were far too busy being furious with each other to pay attention to the living.
Sarah Dunn was dusting. She was on the upstairs landing, dusting behind the clock she insisted the new housemaid never dusted properly, and she looked up when Elizabeth passed and gave her a small, shy wave. Elizabeth waved back.
Elizabeth touched the wall as she walked. The stone was warm beneath her fingers, the warmth of a house at rest: four hundred years of stone, of timber, of the lives that had filled it, settled, content, holding the people within it safe and sound.
She reached her parlour and sat down at her writing desk. The parlour was quiet, and the candle did not flicker. The temperature did not shift. For the first time since she had walked through Pemberley's front door, the house was simply a house: beautiful, old, full of ghosts, and entirely at peace.
She sat for perhaps five minutes, enjoying the silence, before Nana cleared her throat.
Elizabeth looked up. Nana was in her chair. Arms folded. Chin raised. The expression on her face was the one she wore when she had decided it was time to discuss a matter of importance.
"You did quite well," Nana said. "All things considered."
"Thank you, Nana."
"The ball was excellent. The supper was adequate. The chalk pattern was, I will admit, rather fine. The wine incident with Miss Bingley was unfortunate, for her, though I do not regret it. And the business with Sir Roderick was... unforeseeable."
"That is one word for it."
"I have others, but they are not suitable for a lady's parlour." Nana unfolded her arms and folded them again, which meant she was working up to something. Elizabeth waited. Nana was not to be rushed.
