Page 108 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

She reached the dais, and curtseyed, all the way down. One, two, three.

"Mrs Darcy," said the Queen.

Her voice was quiet and rather hoarse, with a faint foreign accent that nearly fifty years in England had never quite rubbed away. Elizabeth lifted her eyes. The Queen was looking down at her with those shrewd dark eyes, and her plain old face was perfectly grave. But there was something at the corner of her mouth.

"I have been reading," said the Queen, "about a wager."

Elizabeth, in the depths of her curtsey, felt her face go scarlet from her plumes to her bodice.

"Yes, ma'am," she said faintly.

"I have been married for fifty years," said the Queen. "I should not have taken it either."

And she smiled. It was a small, dry, tired, entirely genuine smile, and it went all the way up into her eyes, and then she inclined her head, and Elizabeth understood that she was dismissed.

She rose from her curtsey. She walked backwards down the long crimson room. Three steps, kick the train, three more. She did not tread on it once.

She did not remember doing any of it.

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Darcy was waiting at the door of the Presence Chamber when she came out, and she walked straight into his arms, hoop and plumes and train and all, in front of half the peerage of England, and he held her.

"What did she say?" he said into her feathers. "I saw her speak to you. I saw her smile. Elizabeth, what did she say?"

Elizabeth told him.

He did not answer. He only held her tighter, and she felt him begin to shake, and understood, after a moment, that he was laughing: silently, helplessly, into her plumes, in the middle of St James's Palace, the way he had been trying not to laugh at the top of his aunt's staircase a fortnight ago.

"Fifty years," he said at last, when he could. "And she would not have taken it either."

"She said so."

"Then it is settled," said Darcy. "By royal authority. Nobody in England will ever take it now."

They came out of the Palace at a little after five into the long gold June afternoon, all five of them, into the noise and the crowds and the carriages, and the air of St James's Street smelt, after the Presence Chamber, as sweet as a hayfield.

On the steps, a lady in lilac came up to them, very pink, and curtseyed. It was Lady Sandridge. She had stood behind the Queen's chair all afternoon, and she had seen everything, and she wished, she said, to beg Mrs Darcy's pardon, and Miss Darcy's, with all her heart, for having ever listened to a single word. She had been very foolish. She had been very wrong. She hoped Mrs Darcy would forgive her.

"There is nothing to forgive, ma'am," said Elizabeth. "You were only deceived. So were we all."

Lady Sandridge went away looking as though she had been handed a gift she did not deserve. Behind her, Lady Catherine sniffed very loudly and said that Maria Sandridge had not been so polite to anybody since the year 'eighty-one, and that it was a great pity nobody had thought to set down the date.

Richard was waiting beside the carriage, in regimentals, having come straight from Horse Guards. He had a letter in his hand, and a curious expression on his face.

"From Portsmouth," he said, and gave it to Darcy. "It came by the afternoon mail. I thought you would want it today."

Darcy read it. It was very short: an official note from an officer of the Adjutant-General's department, with the compliments of the Earl of Matlock, informing Mr Darcy that the transport Indefatigable had sailed from Spithead on the morning of the third of June for New South Wales, with a draft of recruits for the regiment of foot there stationed, among them one Private G. Wickham.

He read it twice. Then he folded it, and stood for a moment in the June sunshine on the steps of St James's, looking at nothing.

Elizabeth watched his face. She thought of a boy on a hearthrug with an atlas, who had always wanted to be the explorer.

"He has gone, then," she said quietly.

"Yes." Darcy put the letter in his coat. "Sixteen thousand miles. With a sergeant's eye on him, and his debts paid, and a clean slate on the other side of the world." He was quiet a moment. "I hope he makes something of it. I find I do."

Georgiana, beside him, had heard. She did not say anything. She only put her gloved hand through her brother's arm, and stood close against his side, and looked out at the crowds in the street; and after a moment he put his hand over hers.