Page 153 of Twice Chosen

Many years after Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy were gone, their granddaughter Margaret found an old journal in Pemberley's library.

It had been pushed behind a row of estate ledgers on a shelf no one had reason to disturb. The cover was worn, the leather faded, and the first several pages contained nothing remarkable: household observations, books Elizabeth meant to read, notes about tenant families, a reminder concerning winter apples, and several complaints about Fitzwilliam refusing to wear a coat.

Margaret smiled.

Family tradition insisted her grandmother had spent most of a century trying to keep her grandfather warm against his will.

She turned another page.

The handwriting changed.

The ink was older.

I saw him tonight.

He was standing beside Charles as he did the first time, except he looked directly at me.

I smiled.

He went pale.

I thought grief had made me mad.

Margaret frowned.

She turned the page.

Below Elizabeth's handwriting was another hand she recognized from old letters.

Fitzwilliam Darcy.

She knew how I take my coffee.

Beneath it Elizabeth had written:

You did not take it that way yet.

Then Darcy:

An unfair test.

Elizabeth:

It worked.

Margaret stared.

The entries did not explain themselves.

She read on.

There were references to apricot preserves, a blue room chimney, a hawthorn, three strokes of a thumb, and a series of rules that made no sense without context.

One entry read:

Rule Five is impossible because my husband has no talent for pretending he does not know me.

Darcy had written beneath it: