Page 118 of Twice Chosen

Mrs. Reynolds smiled. "Very sensible, ma'am."

Elizabeth nearly laughed.

Darcy found her later in the long gallery staring at a portrait of his mother.

"Mrs. Reynolds thinks I am sensible."

He came beside her. "A serious misunderstanding."

Elizabeth elbowed him.

Darcy smiled. "She likes you."

"She liked me before."

"She will again."

Elizabeth looked at the portraits. "I know. I only had not expected to miss being known by the house."

Darcy understood. He slipped his hand into hers.

"Pemberley is not the walls," he said.

Elizabeth glanced at him. "That sounds suspiciously sentimental."

"Do not tell anyone."

"Your reputation would be ruined."

His thumb moved three times over her fingers.

I am here.

The grief found them most sharply in the nursery.

Elizabeth did not mean to go there. She followed a corridor one morning without thinking and found herself standing before a room that had not yet been prepared for children.

Empty.

In memory Anne's bed had once stood beneath the window. Thomas had hidden a broken cricket bat behind the wardrobe. Henry had carved his initials beneath a sill at age nine and blamed a visiting cousin. Margaret had refused to sleep without a ridiculous stuffed rabbit long after she was old enough to know better.

None of them existed here.

Darcy found Elizabeth standing in the center of the room.

He stopped at the threshold.

"Anne had the window bed," Elizabeth whispered.

"I know."

"Thomas hated the yellow wallpaper."

"He said it made the room look ill."

A tear slid down Elizabeth's cheek.

Darcy crossed the room.