Page 144 of Twice Chosen

The danger passed.

Later Elizabeth said, "Charles saved you."

"I shall never recover."

They burned the notebook that night.

Some evidence did not need to survive them.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The Lives Between

Years passed again.

Different years.

They did not unfold according to memory, and eventually that became a comfort rather than a loss.

Clara grew into a thoughtful girl who loved horses but disliked crowds. At eight she informed Darcy that she intended to manage Pemberley one day and appeared personally offended when told inheritance customs might complicate the plan.

Elizabeth, overhearing, said, "Your father enjoys complications. Ask him."

Darcy gave his wife a look.

Clara put both hands on his desk. "Can I learn anyway?"

Darcy looked at his daughter and remembered Georgiana asking, decades ago and another lifetime away, whether a girl ought to understand estate accounts.

He had once laughed gently and told her she need not trouble herself.

This time he pulled out a chair. "Yes. Sit."

Clara learned.

Two years after Clara came Matthew, a solemn boy with Elizabeth's eyes and Darcy's tendency to distrust strangers. He adored Bingley and followed him around Netherfield with a wooden fishing rod. Bingley, delighted by this devotion, taught the child several techniques Darcy considered irresponsible.

"He is four," Darcy said after discovering Matthew standing knee-deep in a stream.

Bingley looked offended. "He is nearly five."

Elizabeth laughed so hard she had to sit down.

Eleanor arrived three years later and seemed born in motion. By six she had escaped a nursery, climbed a low roof, hidden in a linen cupboard during a visit from Lady Catherine, and convinced Lydia to teach her a dance Mrs. Reynolds described as unsuitable for any child possessing ankles.

Darcy privately believed Eleanor might be punishment for every worry he had ever caused his own parents.

Elizabeth considered this justice.

Their first children did not return.

They did not speak of that every day.

But they remembered birthdays.

On Anne's birthday, Elizabeth placed flowers in the chapel at Pemberley.

On Thomas's, Darcy rode alone for an hour and returned to find Elizabeth waiting on the terrace.