Page 119 of Twice Chosen

"If we have children--"

"They will be themselves," he said.

Elizabeth turned into him.

They never promised the same four would return. That would have been comforting and false.

They held each other instead.

It was the first great price of choosing differently.

They learned to carry it.

The first year of marriage also taught Darcy and Elizabeth that knowing each other's old habits could become a kind of laziness. Darcy sometimes assumed Elizabeth's reaction before she had one. Elizabeth occasionally answered questions he had not asked because she remembered what he used to think.

Their first serious quarrel began over a tenant family.

Darcy wished to postpone repairs to a cottage until spring because the stonework required dry weather. Elizabeth remembered that in their first life a child in that cottage became ill during winter and immediately insisted the family be moved.

Darcy refused.

"You know what happens," she said after the steward left.

"I know what happened."

"That is the same thing."

"No. It is not. The family living there now is different. The child you remember has not been born."

Elizabeth went still.

Darcy regretted the bluntness immediately, but not the point.

"We agreed," he continued more gently, "not to treat memory as prophecy."

"And if someone becomes ill?"

"Then we act. We can inspect the cottage now, provide extra coal, and arrange temporary rooms if the walls worsen. But we cannot uproot people because of ghosts."

Elizabeth's eyes filled.

"That was cruel."

Darcy closed his eyes. "Yes."

He did not defend himself.

They went to bed angry.

That too was familiar.

The next morning Darcy apologized for the word ghosts. Elizabeth apologized for attempting to govern a family from a remembered future.

They inspected the cottage together.

The winter passed without illness.

Afterward Elizabeth said, "I disliked that quarrel."