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“But you are throwing away your fortune. Everything your uncle saved for you and your family. I cannot… defraud you.”
“You will only defraud me if you lie to me. If you stand there and tell me things you do not feel. If you are obliged to love me because of these. Whether you wish me to stay or go—”
And then he understood. She was untying the knot in his throat that had kept the words from passing his lips—the knot that had shadowed every offering, from hothouse roses to wilted violets, Turkish sweets to a kiss on the brow, sunsets on the balcony to mornings beneath the counterpane.
So he stood, and together they pitched the remaining notes and obligations into the fire.
The fire flared. Elizabeth rested her hand on the mantelpiece, her fingers near the doll’s brocade skirt, her eyes bright as she turned back to him.
“There.” She drew a shaking breath. “You are a free man, Mr. Darcy. Free to let me go without recrimination. Free from this marriage if it was at all compelled by that vaunted honor of yours.”
“But… Elizabeth, your mother and your sisters’ dowries. Your…”
“Is not your concern.” She put a finger to his lips, the firelight catching the tears on her cheeks. “I still have Bexley House and the timber and ships. You don’t have to answer me now—not after the day we had—but I am freeing you so that when you say it—if you say it—I will know it is true. I will know nothing stands between your words and your heart. I will know—”
“That I love you, Elizabeth.” He gathered her in his arms. His hands found her face. Her skin was warm from the fire. Her breath caught, her beautiful eyes swimming with hope. “And that I loved you while you were still writing your uncle about me. When I walked away from our only dance, because you teased me and said I could not dance and converse like other gentlemen. And then I loved you when I appeared at Longbourn and your mother fainted, and when we married, and I couldn’t say it—that I did not gain a fortune, but that I gained you. You, dearest, sweetest Elizabeth.”
And then, because she smirked, possibly because no one had ever called her sweet, he kissed her, and it was beyond sweet, but aching with every tumult of emotion he had pent up since the night he had first noticed those bewitching eyes of hers and realized the desperate, unbearable wanting—the freedom to simply love her.
She made a sound against his mouth, her hands rising to grip the lapels of his coat, and there was nothing but the taste of her, the warmth of the fire, and the soft crackle of the last promissory note turning to ash.
When he finally drew back, his forehead pressed to hers, his breathing ragged, his eyes stinging with tears he did not try to hide. “I love you, Elizabeth. I have always loved you. I do not know how to stop.”
She laughed—a wet, broken sound—and pulled him closer. “Then do not stop. Do not ever stop.”
“I will not.” He kissed her forehead, her temple, the salt track of tears down her cheek. “I will love you forever.”
“Good.” Her hands slid up to his shoulders, and she stepped back, pulling him with her until her legs met the edge of the bed. “Then stay.”
His breath caught. “Elizabeth—”
“Stay.” She sat on the bed and pulled him down over her, her fingers tangling in his hair, her mouth finding his with an urgency that matched his own. “Stay with me tonight, tomorrow, for the rest of our lives. And Fitzwilliam, you dearest voluble charmer, I am warning you. Never, ever walk away from another dance.”
EPILOGUE: BIRTHDAY GIFTS
April 28, Elizabeth’s 21st Birthday, Longbourn
“Six portions,” Mrs. Bennet said, clutching the vellum document to her bosom. “Six! One for each of my girls and one for myself. And to think, all this time, a colossal Bennet fortune was moldering in ships and timber while I had to scrimp and scrape for a new carriage lining.”
“You have suffered magnificently, Mamma,” Elizabeth observed, winking at her friend, Charlotte, who always enjoyed her family’s bustle. “Few women could have maintained such a high pitch of agony for these twenty-odd years.”
“Do not mock me, Lizzy. My nerves have never fully recovered from the entail.”
“And they never shall, Mamma, if posterity has any vote in the matter.”
“But what exactly are those portions?” Lydia demanded from the settee, where she was examining her fingernails with an air of profound fiscal anxiety. “What does mine amount to in actual currency? Real pounds? Because I have had my eye on a pelisse in Ackermann’s Repository, and if Uncle Henry’s generosity does not stretch to French silk and velvet trimming, I shall want to know why he bothered dying at all.”
“French silk, perhaps,” Elizabeth said. “Though it decidedly does not stretch to a matched pair of bays and a high-perch phaeton, which I suspect was your subsequent inquiry.”
“It was not,” Lydia retorted, tossing her curls so hard they nearly dislodged the ostrich feather she had taken to wearing. The one Kitty said she had picked up after Caroline lost hers to the wind.
“Is Lydia’s portion precisely the same as mine?” Kitty leaned forward, her face contorted with sibling grievance. “Because she is one year younger, and I fail to see why she should receive an identical sum when I have had to endure an additional year of Mamma’s lamentations.”
“My lamentations!” Mrs. Bennet dropped the vellum to clutch at her stays. “When I have spent my entire existence managing a house full of ungrateful daughters and a husband who buries himself in a library like an extinct badger! If Kitty gets a groat more than Lydia, I shall go into immediate hysterics.”
“Do wait until after tea, Mamma,” Elizabeth murmured, crossing the room to rescue a biscuit plate from Mary’s elbow. “The distribution is equal to the penny. Uncle Henry trusted me to inherit it all, and I have decided to split my remaining trust into six equal shares. Mr. Sowerby and I settled every paper last week, once Georgiana’s portion was set aside, and it is done as of today. No one gets more or less due to age.”
Mrs. Bennet’s jaw dropped, her hands flying from her stays as she gestured wildly at the ceiling. “Equal! You mean to tell me Lydia, who cannot even spell millinery, gets the exact same sum as me? After I brought every single one of you into this world through hours of unimaginable agony and sleepless nights? If anyone deserves a double share for suffering, it is the mother who birthed the lot!”
