Page 75
"Mama's," she whispered when he glanced at it.
"It suits you."
The service began. Thunder interrupted the first address with such enthusiasm that the clergyman paused and glanced at the windows.
Lady Catherine rose.
"They have made their choice," she informed the ceiling. "You may cease advertising your objections."
The rain faltered. It resumed at a more tolerable volume, as though embarrassed to have been addressed before company.
"Thank you, Aunt," Darcy murmured.
"Proceed," she told the clergyman, and sat down.
He did proceed. When he came to Darcy's assent, Darcy began too early, checked himself, and waited until the question had been completed. Elizabeth saw the faint color in his face and loved him for being so impatient to marry her.
"I will," he said.
Elizabeth listened to her own question. No invisible pressure closed her throat. Her hand rested where she had put it, and the answer waited for her to give it.
She had once tried to refuse an assembly and heard her own voice agree. Here were words printed in a book, a room full of people waiting for them, and still she could wait. Darcy looked at her without prompting. She felt the lace against her wrist as she turned toward him.
"I will."
They spoke the appointed vows in turn. Darcy's voice was clear until he reached the promise to love and cherish her; there it roughened slightly. Elizabeth did not look away to spare him. She wanted him to know she had heard.
When her turn came, she spoke to the man before her rather than to the future she had once been handed complete. There would be days she could not foresee. She promised herself for those as well.
The ring resisted at her knuckle. Darcy paused instead of forcing it. Elizabeth turned her hand a little, and it slipped into place. Somewhere behind them Mrs. Bennet made a soft, unmistakable sound into her handkerchief.
The clergyman pronounced them man and wife. The blessing and the remaining prayers followed.
For a moment Elizabeth and Darcy merely looked at one another. Then she smiled, and the solemnity which had sustained him gave way to happiness so unguarded that she felt herself smiling harder in answer.
Outside, the same rain continued. It had failed to prevent a wedding, but was doing excellent work in the garden.
* * *
The breakfast contained no swans. Lady Catherine remarked upon the absence once, then found the strawberry preserves deserving of attention. Mary offered a carefully chosen passage on married life. Elizabeth thanked her; her sister had spent time finding something she thought useful, and kindness did not require awareness of the plot.
Jane rose with a folded paper. Elizabeth glanced at it, and Jane smiled.
"Only a toast. I wrote it down because I wished to say it properly."
She wished them the freedom to be foolish together, the patience to be kind when they were tired, and many mornings on which nothing remarkable happened at all. Bingley lifted his glass. He had brought no chart.
Darcy took Elizabeth's hand beneath the table. She listened to the last of Jane's words without needing to defend the moment from them.
Later, when they were ready to leave, their departure caused all the ordinary confusion a large family could provide without supernatural assistance. Lady Catherine nearly sent a vase to Derbyshire in place of a traveling cushion. Charlotte corrected the exchange. Mrs. Bennet embraced Elizabeth with enough force to disarrange the lace.
"Write when you arrive."
"I shall."
There would be two nights on the road before Pemberley. They had arranged comfortable stops and no race against a chapter ending. Elizabeth settled beside Darcy in the carriage as Longbourn disappeared behind them.
"Are you keeping the weather tables?" she asked.
