As she confessed, Georgiana had fallen into my arms and wept out her heart.
“All is well, my darling girl,” was all I could say as I stroked her hair. Somehow that sufficed, and she has looked light as a cloud ever since.
As to my parents, not even a year had passed since ourlives were upended. I felt a tendril of hope arise like the warmth of the sun just beginning to show itself over the horizon. I trusted that time would heal even their wounds, and though our family was substantively altered and our past could not be rewritten, we would reconcile all our hurts somehow.
A peewit’s call awakened me from my reverie, and seeing that more than a mile of road lay behind me, I turned to go home—to Pemberley. The stair treads did not creak under my boots, and the door to my room was slightly ajar. Fingers, buttons, shivering—my walking dress fell to the floor. In my shift, a white ghost, I floated silently into my husband’s room and crawled into his bed.
“Elizabeth,” he growled sleepily, “what are you doing?”
“I am warming up. I have been on a long walk.”
He pulled my back into his chest, his arms and legs surrounded me. He kissed my neck, and without warning, we kindled into a raging fire. Our desire for one another had been latent for so long that when unleashed, it burnt white hot, taking us both by surprise for its ferocity.
“Are you well, my love?” he asked contritely some while later, perhaps taken aback by his lack of restraint.
“Hmm. At last you have come to mein that way,” I said with a low chuckle. “Has your resentment cooled, Mr Darcy?”
“No. I harbour a great deal of resentment still. I resent how long I resisted you, how stupid I was?—”
“You know I do not like this kind of talk. I will tell you what you resent. You resent that I have crawled into your life and made an untidy nest in it, that you are surrounded by women, and that our moods are too many and too varied to be comfortable.And,” I said with the feeling of great mischief, “you miss Mr Johnson very much.”
“Yes. Yes, I do. I also miss Mr Waverley. Though, come to think of it, he would have bled you to death had he had the care of you instead of Yardley.”
“But how lucky! You would then have been free to marry your sickly cousin. Poor Mr Darcy. I believe you have always been destined for a sickly wife.”
“My luck is very ill to be sure. Not only do I have a sickly wife, but I have a very chirpy one. Go to sleep.”
“Not until you tell me you love me,” I said as I nestled my back against his chest.
“Do you not already know how much I adore you? It seems so paltry a declaration when speaking of so great a thing. But if you would like to hear me say it?—”
“I would.”
He pulled me closer than ever and whispered in my ear. “You are the sun, the moon—you are the rain, the wind, and the earth to me. You are life itself, and you are more than that. You are dear to me in the simplest ways. I love to speak to you, to look at you, to watch you move from the table to the window, to see you smile with pleasure when I come into the room.” And then, in a stronger voice, he asked, “Are you crying?”
“Just a little,” I said with a sniff, turning my head to search his face. “How could I be so fortunate as to be your wife?”
“There is no accounting for such luck,” he said with a slow smile. “Perhaps you should learn to play cards.” He then kissed my nose before subsiding into the silence of his contentment.
As I, too, closed my eyes, I remembered Lydia, whose thoughtless joke had torn open my life and made me whole. When next I became restless, I thought I would visit her to tell her I had forgiven her and that I loved her still.
Mr Darcy really could see into my skull, or so it seemed to me, because on the very edge of sleep, he murmured, “Remind me, Elizabeth, to settle funds on your youngest sister. I believe I owe her for my happiness.”
