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My dear Charlotte,

I miss you. That is not how letters are supposed to begin, for one is meant to enquire after health and weather and the tiresome business of daily life before descending to anything so vulgar as feeling, but there it is. I miss your conversation, your common sense, and your talent for telling me I am wrong.

Elizabeth held the pen over the inkwell, her gaze diverted to the window. The sky was still undecided about rain, and the tiny splashes of color budded on the early trees. The daffodils waved, and somewhere beneath the hedgerows, the crocuses poked their tiny heads through the frost. Did she wish Charlotte to see Pemberley like this? The picturesque decay? The unused hothouse and the west wing closed for repairs?

Yes, she did, because Derbyshire was cold and lonely, and even the advent of spring did not soften the silence in the vast corridors. She had insulted her husband—shown her pride. It was on par with his “tolerable but not handsome enough” remark. She had shown her disappointment not in the little things, or in the way he tried—the sugared almonds she had not touched since returning from the pavilion, the day-old roses now drooping in the crystal vase—but in that fundamental lack of trust.

She needed an objective observer. A friend who would be honest and give her the measure of her circumstances. She dipped the quill.

Pemberley is not what I expected. I cannot say more than that without saying too much, and you know me well enough to understand what that silence contains. I will say only that Mr. Darcy is a more complicated man than either of us supposed, and that I have already made at least one conversation more painful than it needed to be, and that I find the role of wife no easier to inhabit than I feared.

I wonder whether you might consider a visit, if your mother can spare you. Derbyshire is not so very far, and the roads are tolerable if one does not object to the occasional goose in the hedgerow. I should very much like a familiar face, and yours is the one I need most.

I need sensible conversation, and no one here knows me well enough to provide it. I am expected to take calls from the vicar’s wife and the local gentry, and manage the household, although I have yet to learn my duties.

Write to me. Come to me if you can. I shall have a room prepared for you and shall bore you senseless with complaints about the number of chimneys.

Your affectionate friend,

Elizabeth

She read the letter over once, sanded and folded it. She did not even have a seal and would have to ask Mrs. Reynolds for the Darcy crest. Charlotte would come if she could. Charlotte had always been practical about friendship—willing to travel and inconvenience herself, able to be silent when needed and dispense practical advice when warranted. Elizabeth had not realized, until this very moment, how much she had relied upon Charlotte until she was miles from her.

The third letter required no sentiment at all, and Elizabeth was grateful.

Dear Mr. Sowerby,

I write to inform you that my marriage to Mr. Darcy of Pemberley was solemnized at Meryton Church on the twenty-third of March. The register has been signed and witnessed.

I understand from my late uncle’s will that certain provisions were contingent upon this marriage. I should be grateful if you would execute the necessary arrangements at your earliest convenience and inform me when I may expect the first quarterly disbursement. I would also require a summary of the assets and properties, and any obligations that may require my attention or signature.

Please direct all correspondence to me at Pemberley, Derbyshire. An express to this address will find me directly.

Yours faithfully,

Elizabeth Darcy

She signed the name without hesitation, though the ink was scarcely dry on a surname she had worn for less than a week. She was now yoked to thirty chimneys, an empty hothouse, and a man who had left her with his spine unbending and his parting words echoing in the silence. Thoughts, prejudice, and pride.

Was that what he saw in her? Oh, but he was unjust. She had not married him for his name or his prestige. She was not a Caroline Bingley who wished to elevate herself to mistress of Pemberley. She had only…

Yet if she were honest, she had wished for more than a marriage of convenience. She had glimpsed the man behind the proud exterior, and she hated to admit she had yearned for at least the possibility.

She sanded the last letter, folded it, wrote the direction, and rang Hannah.

The girl appeared with her usual breathless promptness, cap askew, cheeks flushed from whatever task she had been attending to below stairs. “Yes, ma’am? Is there anything you need? Mrs. Reynolds said I should ask if you’d like tea, but I thought perhaps you’d rather have chocolate, because you seemed so cold this morning, and chocolate is warming, my mum always said, though we couldn’t afford it except at Christmas⁠—”

“Hannah.” Elizabeth held up the three folded letters. “I need these to be sent express. Can you arrange it?”

“Express, ma’am?” Hannah’s eyes went round. “All three of them?”

“All three. And I shall need the Darcy seal.”

Hannah’s gaze slid involuntarily toward the connecting door—the heavy door that led directly to Mr. Darcy’s private chambers—and her cheeks, already pink, deepened to something approaching scarlet. “The seal, ma’am. Yes. The master’s seal. It would be in his study, or—or in his chamber, ma’am, on the writing desk, because he keeps one there for correspondence, Mrs. Reynolds says, and the other in the study downstairs, but I don’t know if Mr. Miller has the study key just now, and the chamber⁠—”

She stopped, her hands twisting in her apron.

“I am not permitted in the master’s chamber, ma’am. None of the maids are, except Mrs. Reynolds for the linens, and even she knocks first. But you—you are Mrs. Darcy, ma’am, and the door is not locked, I don’t think, because it’s the adjoining door, you see, for husband and wife, and⁠—”