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Elizabeth swallowed the lump in her throat, the question lodging itself deep in her chest, as Pennyfeather, satisfied that no one intended to enliven the proceedings with an objection, a restraint Elizabeth suspected disappointed Lydia, turned from the congregation to the couple and delivered the second charge with the solemnity of a man pronouncing sentence.

“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it.”

Elizabeth’s grip tightened on the bouquet Jane had pressed into her hands that morning—roses from the Netherfield hothouse, a touch past their prime yet still bravely fragrant. Jane, ever thoughtful, had removed every thorn. As for impediments, Elizabeth could have named several: a heart untouched by love for Mr. Darcy, a marriage arranged to satisfy an uncle’s whim and secure a fortune. She risked a glance at Darcy, whose expression was as steady as quarried stone. If he harbored any impediment, it was only his honor, and for that, she found herself unexpectedly grateful.

The moment passed, and Reverend Pennyfeather’s solemn gaze rested on Darcy.

“Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded Wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will.” Darcy’s voice was low and carried no hesitation, and Elizabeth was aware, with a sharpness that surprised her, that she had been bracing for it and found its absence disorienting. He spoke as though the vow were not a formality but a considered statement, each word weighed and delivered at its proper value.

Could she do the same?

I will make this work, she resolved. If love must be learned, she would learn it; if not, she would master the art of living without it. She pictured him kneeling beside her among the frozen daffodils and obstinate crocuses, and determined she would be that reckless crocus, lifting its head through frost. She would not fail.

And she missed her cue. The reverend had said something about love and obedience, and she only caught the tail end: “keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

The congregation and Darcy waited with bated breath as Darcy took her hand in a gentle squeeze. Then she looked into those solemn eyes—of a man too honorable to take her inheritance, one who risked his reputation to stoop to her side, a woman he did not particularly like, with a family he could not tolerate.

“I will,” she said, and her voice held, and that would have to be enough. Beside her, Jane’s fingers tightened on her elbow—encouragement or farewell, probably both. And she did not wish to think about leaving her sister, the one constant presence since the day she was born and her cradle was placed next to her sister’s bed.

The ring came next—Darcy’s hand slipping it onto her finger, the touch both reverent and calming. It was a plain gold band set with a modest sapphire, the gold worn smooth in places as though it had been on another finger for many years before hers. His thumb passed once over the band, steadying it, before he released her hand.

“With this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship, and with all my worldly Goods I thee endow. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

He had given her his mother’s ring—the woman who planted daffodils because they were the first honest thing after winter. Then she looked away, because the tenderness of the gesture was harder to bear than the vow itself.

“Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”

It was finished. Mr. Pennyfeather declared them man and wife, and the congregation exhaled as one. Mrs. Bennet emitted a sound that hovered between sob and triumph, a note reserved for mothers who have launched a daughter and struck the mark. Lydia whispered to Kitty, who snorted, then disguised it as a cough, while Mary, having read her psalter throughout, closed it with a snap that brooked no argument.

Elizabeth was Mrs. Darcy now. She signed the register one last time with her old name, Elizabeth Rose Bennet, and saw the letters the reverend had prepared. Elizabeth Darcy. Darcy signed next, and when Elizabeth turned from the register, Jane stood with tears trailing down both eyes. Her smile was stiff, the kind that cost dearly to produce. They had shared a bed for twenty years, traded confidences in the dark, argued about novels and made up about breakfast, and this morning Jane had laced Elizabeth’s stays and pinned her hair and said none of what they both knew—that tonight Elizabeth would sleep at a strange inn on the road north, and the bed she left behind at Longbourn would bear only Jane, alone.

“You will write to me,” Jane said.

“Every week. Every day, if he will pay for the postage.”

“I shall miss you terribly.” Jane’s voice cracked on the final word, and Elizabeth felt her own composure begin to fracture along the same fault line.

“And I you. But you will visit. You will come to Pemberley, and I shall show you all the grand rooms I do not know how to manage, and we shall laugh at my failures together.”

“You will not fail.” Jane squeezed her hands with fierce conviction. “You have never failed at anything, Lizzy. You will make this marriage into something beautiful, because that is what you do. You take impossible things, and you make them work.”

Elizabeth longed to believe her. More than anything, she wished to believe she could turn this peculiar arrangement—a marriage of convenience to a man she had scorned three weeks earlier—into something worth having. Yet, standing in the church where she had been christened, on the verge of leaving all she had ever known, uncertainty weighed over her shoulders, and she did not know what to do with it.

“I will try.” Elizabeth pressed Jane’s hand once, released it, and then the congregation surged forward, carrying the moment off in a tide of bonnets and handshakes, Mr. Bennet’s dry clasp, and Mrs. Bennet’s damp embrace.

Mr. Bingley pumped Darcy’s hand with enthusiasm and turned to offer Elizabeth a bow so deep it bordered on ridiculous. “I wish you every happiness, Mrs. Darcy,” he said, and his gaze drifted past her shoulder to Jane, who stood smoothing the ribbon on the bouquet; his expression was so transparent that Elizabeth nearly laughed. She glanced at Darcy. The corner of his mouth moved, and he nudged Bingley toward Jane, practically pushed him the way Mrs. Bennet shoved her daughters toward marriageable men, and Elizabeth could not gape with more joy. Darcy was barely her husband, and he already considered her family his own. Jane would be fine with Bingley, and she satisfied herself that at least one of her sisters would marry for love.

For the next quarter hour, they endured the gauntlet of well-wishers—friends and neighbors who had attended her christening, childhood playmates, and the twenty-four families with whom they dined. Colonel Fitzwilliam came last. He took Elizabeth’s hand, bowed over it, and said, “I wish you very well, Mrs. Darcy.” His gaze lingered, and she could not decide whether his scrutiny was a question or an answer. He released her hand, stepped back, and the moment slipped away like a cloud across the sun.

Elizabeth and her new husband emerged from the church, his hand steady on hers, and the churchyard seemed curiously insubstantial. The March air greeted them with a sting after the nave’s close warmth. Her parents clustered near the gate: her father subdued, her mother radiant, her feather nodding at every acquaintance who had witnessed her triumph. Her sisters giggled, Mary stood apart with a solemn air, and Mr. Collins, mercifully, had returned to Kent without a bride. No young lady in the neighborhood would welcome a man who had so cruelly rejected Miss Mary Bennet, nor aspire to be his fourth selection.

And there, waiting in the lane, was the conveyance that would take her away from it all.

Elizabeth’s first thought was that the carriage was smaller than she had imagined—a traveling chaise, not the grand equipage she had pictured for a man of Darcy’s consequence. Her second, arriving so swiftly it nearly overtook the first, was that the horses did not quite match: one a bay with a white blaze, the other darker and unadorned.

Mrs. Bennet appeared at her elbow with the swiftness of a woman who had been lying in wait. “Is that the traveling carriage, Lizzy?” she whispered, loud enough for the coachman to hear. “Surely Mr. Darcy has a finer one. The lacquer is not even freshly done—one would think a man of his consequence would send the good carriage for his bride.”