Page 154 of Twice Chosen

My wife has no talent for pretending anything.

Elizabeth had answered:

You married me anyway.

Then:

Twice, apparently.

Margaret sat back.

That word appeared more than once.

Twice.

She knew her grandparents had married only once.

Everyone knew the story.

The wealthy Mr. Darcy came to Hertfordshire with Mr. Bingley, unexpectedly behaved like a reasonably civil man despite his fearsome appearance, and became attached to Elizabeth Bennet almost at once.

Family tradition claimed their courtship had been unusual.

Very unusual.

Jane Bingley had once told her eldest granddaughter that Mr. Darcy and Lizzy behaved from the beginning as though they shared private jokes no one else understood.

Charles Bingley had insisted Darcy knew which chair Elizabeth would choose before she entered a room.

Mrs. Gardiner had famously remarked after a London concert that the pair behaved like people who had already been married for years.

At the time everyone laughed.

Margaret no longer did.

She continued reading.

One page had been written much later in Elizabeth's life.

There are things one may spend a lifetime regretting if one imagines regret is the same as love.

It is not.

Love asks something harder.

Notice them while they are still here.

Below, in Darcy's hand:

She has been correcting me for more than fifty years.

Elizabeth had added:

Twice.

Margaret's fingers rested upon the page.

She thought of family stories that had never quite made sense.