Page 27 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

She woke in the dark, a long time later, to find the fire down to embers and the room grown cold, and the great red bed very warm, and her husband's arm heavy across her waist.

He was awake. She could tell by his breathing. She turned her head on the pillow and found him watching her in the faint glow from the hearth, and he did not look away, or pretend to be asleep. He only smiled, the slow private smile she had seen for the first time on a garden path in October, which she now understood had been meant for her alone all along.

"Good morrow," he whispered.

"It is still night."

"I do not care. I shall say it every time I wake up beside you. For the rest of my life."

She put her hand flat on his chest, over his heart, and felt it beating, steady and strong, under her palm.

"I wonder," said Elizabeth softly, "what thou and I did, till we loved."

He did not answer. He only drew her closer, and pulled the quilt up round her shoulders, and pressed his lips to her hair. And outside, the snow went on falling over the whole silent white world, closing the road behind them and the road ahead, as if there were nothing anywhere but this one small warm room, and the two of them in it, and all the time in the world.

Chapter 8: Darcy House

Grosvenor Square, London. Tuesday, 3rd March 1812

For a month they had lived in a little white house above the sea, and Elizabeth had been perfectly, stupidly happy.

They had walked on the cliffs in the wind until her cheeks were raw. They had read Cowper aloud by the fire, as Mary had wished, and argued about him, and read Donne, and did not argue about that at all. They had eaten when they were hungry and slept when they were tired, which was not often, and a cook from the village had come in every morning, looked at the state of the breakfast table, and gone out again shaking her head. Nobody called. Nobody knew them. For four weeks Elizabeth had not once been Mrs Darcy of Pemberley. She had only been his.

Now the carriage turned into Grosvenor Square in the grey March afternoon, and she looked out at the tall cold houses with their railings and their shining brass, and felt the white house slip away behind her like a dream on waking.

"That one," said her husband, beside her. "With the blue door."

It was not the largest house in the square. It was only the handsomest, which was worse. Four storeys of pale stone, a fanlight like a spread peacock's tail, a pair of stone lions who looked as though they had never smiled in their lives. On the steps, in two long straight lines, stood what appeared to be the entire population of a small village, in livery.

"Good heavens," said Elizabeth faintly. "Are they all yours?"

"They are all ours." His hand found hers. "There are only two-and-twenty. Mrs Dawes has kept them all in order for fifteen years and will be delighted to go on doing so, if you prefer it. You need not do anything at all today but come in and be warm."

"I shall have to do something. They will all be looking at me."

"They will be looking at you," he agreed. "They have been waiting to look at you since November. Mrs Dawes has had the drawing room turned out three times." He lifted her hand and kissed the back of her glove. "Elizabeth. You faced down my aunt Catherine in a frozen garden with nothing but a sharp tongue. You will not be defeated by two-and-twenty servants and a pair of stone lions."

She laughed, which was what he had intended, and the carriage stopped.

He handed her down. She walked up the steps between the two lines of faces with her chin up and her hand on his arm, smiling, and trying to remember that her mother had always said a smile cost nothing and bought a great deal. A tall grey-haired butler bowed. A small round housekeeper in black silk curtsied, and looked up at her with a pair of shrewd bright eyes, and Elizabeth thought, with sudden relief, oh, she is Mrs Hill, only in London.

"Welcome home, madam," said Mrs Dawes.

Home. Elizabeth opened her mouth to answer. She never did, because at that moment there was a flurry at the top of the stairs inside, and a clatter of feet, and a voice that cried "Elizabeth!" in a most unladylike way, and Georgiana Darcy came flying down the grand staircase two steps at a time with her skirts in her fist and threw herself into her sister's arms in front of all two-and-twenty servants.

There was a stunned pause. Then a small scullery maid at the end of the second row began to giggle, and was frowned at by Pearce, and could not stop, and then a footman caught it, and then half the line was grinning.

"I am so sorry," gasped Georgiana into Elizabeth's shoulder. "I did not mean to. Mrs Annesley said I must stand in the hall and be dignified. I have been standing in the hall being dignified since two o'clock. And then I heard the carriage, and I could not bear it."

"I am very glad you could not," said Elizabeth, holding her tight, and meant it with her whole heart.

Over Georgiana's fair head, she met her husband's eyes. He was not frowning at his sister's want of dignity. He was looking at the two of them, his wife and his sister, clasped together in the doorway of his house, with an expression she had seen on his face only once before: in Longbourn church, when she came up the aisle.

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Darcy waited until Georgiana had been persuaded to go and dress for dinner, and Mrs Dawes had been thanked, and the trunks had gone up, and the house had settled back into its quiet. Then he took Elizabeth's hand and led her up the main staircase himself.

He had been thinking about this moment for three months. He found his heart was beating absurdly fast.