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“I would not ask you to forget.” His voice was rougher than she had expected. “I love you. I have made a poor use of that fact. I should like the opportunity to do better, without requiring you to pretend that the poor use was necessary.”

She kissed him then, briefly, because if she tried to answer at once she would cry. Afterwards they stood together on the path until she could tell him that she meant to return to London when the practical arrangements were made. They would make them together. He agreed, and for the first time the agreement felt like the beginning of something she wanted rather than the end of a dispute she had survived.

* * *

They left Ashbourne a week later. Elizabeth wrote to its owner concerning the remaining term and the household arrangements, leaving the matter with Gardiner to conclude properly. She did not abandon a borrowed house merely because she had finished needing it. The accounts were checked, the servants told what would follow and her belongings packed at her own direction.

Darcy arrived to accompany her on the journey after she had finished those tasks. He found her sitting on the moved bench, with a foolish reluctance to leave it. She told him he was not to buy it, procure another like it or have it transported to London at an expense which would make the gardener despise them both.

“I had not proposed any of those things.”

“I am giving you the benefit of a timely warning.”

Darcy sat beside her for a little while. They said nothing important. When she rose, he followed her back to the house, and she closed the garden gate herself.

The journey had the ordinary inconveniences of travel: a delay in changing horses, a meal neither particularly liked and a cushion which Elizabeth rearranged until Darcy offered her his without comment. They spoke, slept for short intervals and disagreed over which of them had misplaced the small volume she had packed for the road. It was found beside Elizabeth, who admitted responsibility with a dignity Darcy had the grace not to applaud.

By the time they reached Grosvenor Square, she was tired enough to be grateful for every lamp in the hall. The house was familiar, but she entered it beside her husband rather than following an arrangement he had made while she was elsewhere. Her travelling things went where she directed. The butler asked whether any correspondence should be brought to her sitting-room. She said yes, and he turned to give the instruction without looking to Darcy.

She noticed. Darcy only asked whether she wished to eat before resting, and accepted the simpler meal she proposed instead of summoning half the household to celebrate her return.

Later they went upstairs together. There had been no condition placed upon the evening. Her decision to share their home had been spoken at Ashbourne, confirmed in letters and enacted by a journey; she had nothing left to prove by inviting him closer. She wanted to, and he was smiling at her with a happiness which made her own less fragile.

“This time I have brought the trunk,” she said.

“I observed it.” He took her hand and kissed her, then rested his forehead against hers. “I am endeavouring not to behave as if the house has been restored to me.”

“It has acquired a very opinionated occupant.”

Darcy laughed. She let go of his hand and went to sit on the edge of the bed.

In her own room at Grosvenor Square the bed was wide and the sheets cool. The night outside was thick with London heat. Elizabeth looked at her husband, still standing where she had left him, and found that she was smiling for no reason she could have defended.

“Come here,” she said. “I have no intention of conducting this conversation across the carpet.”

He came. She stood and undressed him without haste. He undressed her in turn. When she was bare she pushed him back onto the bed and climbed over him, her knees on either side of his hips, and looked down at him in the lamplight.

“I have wanted to do this,” she said, “since Ashbourne.”

“Then you must not let me prevent you.”

She bent and kissed him, long and slow, and felt his hands come up to her waist, then hesitate. She took them and put them on her breasts. He made a low sound and filled his palms with her, his thumbs circling until she arched into his touch. A drop of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades and he followed it with his fingertips down the length of her spine.

She reached down and took hold of him. He was hot and hard in her hand. She stroked him until his head fell back on the pillow and his jaw went tight. It was a pleasure to watch him lose his composure and know that she had done it. Then she rose up on her knees and sank down onto him, slowly, taking all of him. They both stopped breathing at the same time.

She rode him at her own pace. She found the angle that made her gasp and kept it, and he held her hips and let her, watching her with an expression so open that she had to close her eyes against it. When she opened them again he was looking yet. He sat up beneath her and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her breast, her throat, her mouth. She clung to his shoulders, moving against him, faster, chasing it, until her breath came in short cries and the tension that had wound through her snapped all at once and left her shuddering against his chest. She cried out his name without any thought for the servants at all.

He rolled her beneath him while she was still trembling. He moved in her, deep and steady, his forehead against hers. “Elizabeth,” he said. “Elizabeth.” As if it were the only word left to him. She locked her ankles behind his back and held him there until he shuddered and spent himself inside her, and then lay heavy and spent on her breast, his heart hammering against her own.

The lamp burned down. The sheets were damp and tangled about their legs. Through the open window came the sound of a late carriage in the square, and it occurred to her, distantly, that it was going somewhere she had no need to be.

Afterwards there was time to talk without watching the hour for a carriage. Elizabeth told him that she was happy. Darcy was silent so long that she raised her head to look at him.

“I am trying to find a reply which does not sound like a man taking possession of something,” he said.

“Say it badly. I shall know what you mean.”

“Then I am happy,” he said, “and I should like to remain so on your terms.” When she grew sleepy, she let the conversation cease unfinished, certain that an ordinary morning would allow them to begin another.