Page 114 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

Elizabeth laughed. Then she was quiet for a while, with her cheek against his coat.

"I shall make the coachman stop," she said. "At the top of the rise."

"I know you will."

"And I shall say it. There."

He put his lips against her hair.

"And I shall hear you," said Fitzwilliam Darcy. "And I shall know exactly what you mean."

Outside, over the chimneys of Grosvenor Square, the sun came up.

Chapter 30: Home

Pemberley. Monday, 22nd June 1812

They came up through the wood at a little before seven in the evening, on the third day out of London, in the long gold light of midsummer.

It was not like the first time. The first time it had been April, and raining, and the trees had dripped on the roof like a hundred small drums, and she had been frightened and alone and a hundred and fifty miles from him. Now the beeches were in full leaf, a green so deep and so bright that the light coming down through them was green too, like light under water, and the air through the open window smelt of warm earth and bracken and honeysuckle. Georgiana was asleep against her shoulder. Anne was awake in the opposite corner, in one shawl, with her face turned to the window, looking at every tree as though she meant to remember it. And her husband was riding beside the carriage on his bay mare, as he had ridden beside it all the way from Grosvenor Square, and every few minutes he looked in at the window, and every time he looked in, she was already looking out at him.

Half a mile of trees. She had counted it the first time, without knowing she was counting.

The road turned at the top of the rise, very suddenly, and the wood fell away on the left.

"John," said Elizabeth. "Stop, please."

The coach stopped.

She did not wait for James to let down the step. She opened the door herself, and got down onto the verge, in the long grass, in her grey travelling dress, and stood at the edge of the wood, and looked.

There it was. On the other side of the valley, with the hill behind it and the water in front. In the evening sun the whole long front of the house had gone the colour of the inside of a shell, pink and gold and grey, and every window was full of light. The lake lay below it like a sheet of beaten gold. There were swans on it. The beeches in the park stood round it in great round green heads, very still, and beyond them the hills went up and away, fold after fold, blue and then paler blue, to the edge of the sky.

She heard the bay mare come up behind her, and stop, and his boots land on the grass, and his step. She did not turn round. He came and stood beside her, very close, and did not say anything either.

They stood there together at the top of the rise, in the long evening light, looking across the valley at the house.

After a while, she felt his hand find hers.

"There," said Elizabeth.

She did not say anything else. She did not need to. She felt his fingers tighten round hers, and then his whole hand, and heard him draw a long breath, and let it out again, very slowly, the way a man does when he has set down something he has been carrying for a very long way.

Behind them in the coach, Georgiana had woken, and was leaning out of the window, and saying nothing. Anne, beside her, had put her thin hand on Georgiana's arm. Up on the box, John Coachman, who had driven old Mr Darcy and Lady Anne up this road and stopped at this turn more times than he could count, had taken off his hat and was holding it against his chest, and looking very hard at his horses' ears.

"My mother," said Darcy at last, very low, "used to say that, just there. Every time. I never knew what she meant."

"You told me. In your letter."

"I know what she meant now." He turned his head and looked down at her. "She was not saying it to the house."

"No," said Elizabeth. "I know she was not."

She looked up at him, in the gold light at the edge of the wood. The last time she had stood on this spot she had been alone, in the rain, and he had been a hundred and fifty miles away. The time before that, she had watched it from the window seat all night, and he had come over the rise at dawn on a stumbling horse, and she had run down the drive barefoot to meet him.

She did not need to run now. He was here. He was going to be here, beside her, at the top of this rise, for the rest of her life.

She thought that she had never in her life been so happy. And then she thought of a thing she had not told him yet, that she had been carrying for a fortnight, quietly, like a secret candle, and she thought: no. Not yet. But soon. Very soon. By the lake.