"I happen to ride that way most mornings," he said.
"I know," Elizabeth rose. "I had observed that you seemed to have forgotten the path of late."
Darcy rose as well. For a moment neither spoke. The fire burned quietly in the room, whilst beyond the open door came the faint sounds of the household going about its business.
"Then all is forgiven, Mr Darcy," she said.
"Thank you, Miss Elizabeth."
Mr Bennet was informed shortly thereafter that the conversation had concluded, and with evident satisfaction invited Mr Darcy to his study for the long-delayed game of chess, an invitation which was accepted without hesitation. Elizabeth left the gentlemen to it and went in search of Jane.
She was smiling before she reached the stairs, and she could not remember when last the world had seemed so much in its proper place.
EPILOGUE
Summer 1812
Pemberly
From the day he apologised and throughout the greater part of December 1811, Mr Darcy called at Longbourn no fewer than three times a week. He sometimes came in company with Bingley, who required very little encouragement to call at Longbourn. More often Darcy brought Georgiana, whose friendship with Elizabeth resumed as though it had never been interrupted, which, in all the ways that mattered, it had not.
Darcy and Elizabeth also met upon Oakham Mount almost every morning until the winter weather made it impracticable. Neither ever remarked upon the regularity of it.
December brought Mr Collins's wedding to Charlotte, a quiet affair in Meryton which the neighbourhood attended with varying degrees of goodwill. Elizabeth attended with her family and wished Charlotte every happiness that could reasonably be found in the situation. Mrs Bennet spoke frequently of the injustice of Longbourn one day passing into the hands of the new couple, but found considerable consolation in the belief that her two eldest daughters were now receiving the attentions of the two most eligible gentlemen in Hertfordshire.
On Christmas Day, in the Longbourn drawing room, Mr Bingley asked Jane to marry him. Jane said yes, and Bingley looked as though he had been given the finest gift he had ever received, which was exactly right.
On New Year's Eve, in the garden at Longbourn, amidst the cold and quiet of the year's last evening, Mr Darcy asked Elizabeth to marry him.
She accepted before he had quite finished asking.
Mr Bennet shook Darcy's hand and informed him that he was the only man of his acquaintance to whom he would willingly entrust Elizabeth, before retreating to his library. Mrs Bennet very nearly swooned with delight. The neighbourhood heard of the engagement almost immediately and continued hearing of it for some time afterwards, particularly Mrs Lucas, whom Mrs Bennet had considered a rival ever since Charlotte's marriage to Mr Collins.
Georgiana, when she finally received the news, shed a few tears and then declared that she had known since the ball at Lucas Lodge that her brother was in love.
Some weeks before the wedding, a rumour began circulating through Meryton that Miss Elizabeth Bennet did not hear particularly well. Elizabeth suspected Miss Bingley as its source, though it was never confirmed. She did not trouble herself greatly about it. The neighbourhood had always talked and always would, and its opinion of her hearing interested her considerably less than it once might have done. She was soon to be Mrs Darcy. That was of far greater consequence.
On the morning of the double wedding in February 1812, a letter arrived from Rosings Park.
Darcy brought it to Elizabeth before the ceremony. He said nothing as he handed it to her, merely watched her face as she read. Lady Catherine's hand was firm and her opinion entirely unambiguous. The union was beneath the Darcy name. Miss Elizabeth Bennet was nobody, possessed nothing, and would prove a source of lasting regret. Lady Catherine washed her hands of the entire affair.
Elizabeth folded the letter and returned it to him.
"You did not have to show me this," she said.
"I know." He smiled as he took her hand. "But we agreed there should be no further secrets."
She looked at him for a moment.
Then she rose onto her toes and kissed his cheek before reminding him that they had better not keep the vicar waiting.
The Bingleys remained at Netherfield whilst the Darcys returned to Pemberley a week after their wedding. Georgiana stayed with them for a two weeks before returning to London, where the Season was already well underway.
On a particularly beautiful evening during their first spring at Pemberley, Darcy found Elizabeth in the garden, seated upon a bench beside the rose bed with an open book in her lap that she was not reading.
He sat beside her. The roses were in full bloom, exactly as Georgiana had promised, and the evening light stretched across the gardens in long bands of gold.
"Georgiana writes that she enjoyed the recent balls enormously," Elizabeth said, lifting her face to her husband's. "She danced four sets at the last ball and was introduced to a Colonel somebody whose name she cannot properly remember, though she assures me his dancing was above average. She also speaks rather favourably of a Mr Hamilton. It appears he calls with some frequency."
