The Colonel excused himself a moment later, muttering something about ensuring the path back to Darcy’s rooms was clear, though Elizabeth could see the slight curve at the corner of his mouth. He was giving them a moment.
Darcy remained where he was, his eyes half-lowered. Elizabeth reached for the teacup he had not finished, set it aside, and knelt quietly to adjust the blanket over his lap. Her hand brushed his as she did so.
He looked at her then. “Your aunt and uncle are not at all what I expected.”
She smiled. “They are our favourite relations. Equal to Jane and Mr. Bingley in affection—though perhaps superior in conversation.”
Darcy gave a low laugh. “Then I hope they visit often.”
“They do,” she said. “Or rather—they will.”
He met her gaze, steady now, and said nothing. But the look in his eyes made her breath catch.
After resting, Mr. Darcy insisted on sitting with Elizabeth again that afternoon. The Colonel remained nearby, seated in the corner with a book open on his lap, offering no intrusion beyond the occasional turn of a page. Darcy and Elizabeth spoke softly, not with urgency, but with that ease which only comes when too much has already been endured. They spoke of their shared pasts—what had occurred, and what had not. Of memories that belonged to them both, and those that belonged to only one. They did not speak of the future, though it hovered between them—half-remembered, half-dreamed. It was not the right time.
The days passed in quiet rhythm. After that first gathering in the sitting room, a new pattern emerged—soft-footed and unspoken, but quickly understood by them all.
Each morning, they shared tea together. Mr. Darcy, though still somewhat pale, sat with greater strength and a steadier gaze. The Colonel often took up a place near the fire, his long legs stretched out with practiced indolence, while Mr. Gardiner lingered over a volume of estate maps that had somehow made their way onto the sideboard. Mrs. Gardiner stitched or read, and Elizabeth—Elizabeth watched.
And in the afternoons, he would ask for her.
Not formally. Never so much as a direct request. But Mrs. Reynolds would find her with a quiet message, or the Colonel would appear with a nod and say, “He is up to conversation, if you are.”
She always was.
They sat in the sitting room again, often beside the fire, always with a chaperone somewhere in the corner—Mrs. Gardiner with her needle, or the Colonel pretending to read while surreptitiously feeding scraps to the terrier Mrs. Reynolds had taken in—one he claimed not to like.”.
Elizabeth and Darcy spoke of everything. Not only of the life they had lived, but of the one only she remembered—and the one he had dreamed. He did not flinch when she spoke of James. He did not falter when she confessed her fear that she had changed too much, that she had come back too knowing, too determined, too altered to be the woman he once could have loved.
“I never loved that woman,” he said quietly one evening, when Mrs. Gardiner had nodded off in her corner. “I never truly knew her. But the person before me now… she holds my heart.”
Elizabeth drew in a slow breath. She meant to reply—had meant to for days—but no words came. Her chest ached with feeling too large for speech.
Still, neither of them spoke of the future directly. Not yet. The desire was there—rising between them with every glance, every silence—but the moment had not come.
And so the days slipped on.
On the morning of the Gardiners’ second-to-last day at Pemberley, Dr. Wentworth arrived once more with his usual brisk nod and scuffed shoes, and announced, with the authority of one well-practiced in managing proud patients, that Mr. Darcy might, at last, go downstairs for as long as he pleased—provided he took no walks longer than the hall and sat down whenever ordered.
Darcy bore the instructions with amusement, but Elizabeth noticed the way his hand clenched slightly on the arm of the chair.
He was nervous.
He did not show it. Not in any way others might detect. But she knew. She had spent too many hours reading the smallest changes in his face—the careful economy of gesture that came only when something mattered.
After luncheon, they all sat out in the garden. The Colonel vanished with a conveniently vague remark about needing to consult with Mrs. Reynolds. Mrs. Gardiner, with a rather more deliberate smile, remarked that she had promised to write to her children and feared she had put it off too long. Mr. Gardiner, at least, had the decency to pretend he believed her.
Elizabeth could not speak. Her voice would not come. She wanted him to propose. She wanted to begin their life—truly begin it. But she had once feared that moving too quickly, marrying too soon, might shift the path too far from what she remembered. That James might not be.
But so much had changed.
Jane and Mary had told her to have faith. When she wavered, they reminded her to believe in Fitzwilliam—and they had been right. Whatever happened now, she knew it would be all right. She was tired of waiting. And she dared to hope he might be, too.
Darcy looked at her, then turned away slightly, as though needing the steadiness of the view beyond the windows before he could begin.
“I have thought,” he said, “of a hundred ways to say what I feel. I have had a lifetime to consider the words—two, if we are being precise. But in the end, I no longer care if they are perfect. Only that they are true.”
Elizabeth turned toward him, her breath caught in her throat.
