Page 52

A LOSS IS A WIN

“ M rs Darcy, you look enchanting in your hood. Must you wear anything else?”

“I believe I must, Mr Darcy. It is close to an hour’s drive from Pemberley to Matlock.

” Elizabeth gathered the red folds of her domino and leant over to kiss his nose.

“I have had enough of your covetous looks. You have what you wanted,” she added warmly as she entwined their hands. “I am yours, and you are mine.”

It was true, rendered formal and done. She smiled—her face should ache from so much happiness—as the memories of the past two days flitted through her mind.

The nearly wild carriage ride to Pemberley, with Robbins and Darcy’s manservant doing their best to ignore Darcy’s visible impatience; her brief, wholly embarrassing meetings with Mrs Reynolds and the vicar; and the short, sweet ceremony that united them as man and wife.

And then these precious hours spent alone exploring, mapping, and claiming one another.

She would meet the servants as their mistress when they returned in June.

For now, Elizabeth was a new wife, a new lover, and nothing else could be required of her.

“Red Riding Hood and the Huntsman...pray do you not prefer me to be your wolf?”

“You would give leave to everyone to tease you? I think not.” Elizabeth glanced at Robbins climbing into the second, smaller carriage before she stepped into their own.

Darcy took a basket and warmed blanket from a footman then climbed in next to her.

Elizabeth gave her husband an appraising look.

“What is this? You cannot be the wolf to my Red Riding Hood, so you would dress as my grandmother instead? Should we ask Mrs Reynolds to find you a shawl to complete the ensemble?”

Darcy chuckled and proceeded to spread the blanket across their laps, leisurely tucking it around Elizabeth’s hips and feet. “I shall dress as you command. I am certain nothing I wear will outshine Saye. Nor should it. He will be in some magnificent get-up, a turban or crown upon his head.”

“Not so outré , as I believe he may wish to match with Lilly.”

“For his sake, I hope her wish is the same. He has proposed to her as many times as I have proposed to you, and has not received the happy answer he assumed would be easy to win. ”

“Has he not?” Her lips quirked, repressing any comparison between memories of the tousled-haired, half-dressed man who had claimed her for a lifetime and his perfectly coiffed, impeccably natty—and titled—cousin.

Every man had flaws and vulnerabilities; it was showing them, softening themselves, that could earn a lady’s trust and win her heart.

Darcy had greater depths and gravitas than she had yet seen in Saye, but it was not she who must see those qualities; it was Lilly who needed it.

“Saye is a man of no small confidence?—”

“Conceit,” replied Darcy as he rapped on the carriage roof to begin their journey.

“Yes, your cousin is proud, but so is Lilly. She deserves a proposal of love, from his truest self.”

“Unrequited love is difficult enough—it cannot be long hidden behind a mask.” His words prompted Elizabeth to sigh and lean her head against his shoulder. “Saye knows what he is about.”

“As do you,” she whispered, “and thus, you have been my husband more than a full day.”

“Has it been full?” He gave her a mischievous smile and slid his hand underneath the blanket. “I think we must fill up more of this day.”

Elizabeth put a hand on his chest. “You may not undo Robbins’s hours of work. I am to be the innocent Red Riding Hood, and not even my mask would disguise the effects of being thoroughly kissed and ravaged. ”

“You have only proven yourself more enticing, my dear lady of the woods.”

“We must arrive looking respectable. It is enough that your servants?—”

“ Our servants.”

“—must think us the madcap master and mistress of Pemberley, arriving in haste and disappearing behind closed doors for the entirety of our brief visit.”

“I do not pay my servants to gossip. If we must be alliterative, they will think us markedly in love to mizzle off from Matlock and marry.” Darcy’s silly grin turned earnest when he asked whether it was the servants or the guests at Matlock she most considered.

They planned no grand announcement of the nuptials, only a quiet whisper to their closest friends and relations there.

Elizabeth returned his smile. “Everyone there will see that I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. My father will see I am happier even than Jane—she only smiles, while I laugh. And it is with you that I laugh, and he will have to accept your position as paramount in my heart. Whatever lessons he hoped you and I would learn through distance, while unnecessary?—”

“As well as petty and cruel.”

“—are ones he will be forced to learn now that Longbourn is no longer my home.”

Darcy’s nod affirmed his agreement.

“I am not the sentimental lady that Jane is, nor one who collects keepsakes of ribbons and cards like Kitty. I spent my final days at Longbourn wishing only to leave there, to be married to you. My wishes have come to happy fruition. I have left my home to join yours and will only see it again through the eyes of a wife. My former home. Forgive my slow-dawning recognition.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Never.”

“Of course, in my letters, I shall assure my mother, as often as needed, that Mr Darcy sends all the love in the world that he can spare from me.”

“There will be none to spare! None for her nor anyone else, except, of course, Georgiana.”

She held up her hand and began counting on her fingers. “And my sisters—most of them. And the Gardiners. And your horse and dogs.”

“’Tis a good thing I have an enormous heart.” He exhaled heavily, prompting Elizabeth to giggle. “And a very large estate,” he added, smirking as her eyes widened, “into which the two of us might escape when our families descend upon us.”

It was just above an hour later, the moon full in the night sky, that the Pemberley party descended from their carriages.

Darcy and Elizabeth watched their servants—sworn to secrecy about their short disappearance—move off towards the kitchens for a warm meal.

The music swelled from Matlock’s ballroom yet was nearly drowned out by the hum of voices and laughter.

Clearly Saye and Lady Aurelia had invited everyone within thirty miles, he thought, completely uncaring about the crush of the crowd.

“With the smiles we are wearing, it will be the work of a moment until we are found out,” said Elizabeth.

“I have long anticipated being found out.”

“Then we had best join the party. We have been missing these past two days, and I wish to dance with my husband before supper.”

“I should have carried you off that very night. Instead, I am pleased at how joyfully you have been received. Not surprised, of course,” he added as he caught her bemused smile.

“Only you could charm Sir Phineas, and confound Saye with your intelligent advice about pleasing a woman by being the man she believes you should be.”

“Let us hope he listened to the advice you gave him.”

“My cousin is a skilled actor. Like his brother, he does not wish for a constant display of his kindness and decency.” Darcy sighed at her expectant expression.

“I shall not walk away when Fitzwilliam approaches me. I shall accept his apologies, as well as his congratulations, when I reveal to him our news.” Taking note of her pleased smile, he shrugged.

“He remains my closest friend and relation, and I wish to be the one to inform him.”

“I am glad, and though I prefer that you remain the happiest man in the world, he might have news to impart to you as well.”

His puzzlement disappeared under the warmth of a kiss, cut short when Elizabeth’s stomach rumbled. She gave him a rueful look and laughed. “‘Tis your fault! Cook’s basket went unopened.”

He joined in her laughter. “We were too well-occupied to eat, dear wife.”

“Sarah!”

Elizabeth smiled as Miss Bentley disappeared down the corridor. “Well, we enter changed from who we were when we were last here, and I suspect we shall find our friends changed as well.”

“Apparently.”

She held her red silk mask to her face as Darcy tied the ribbons to hold it in place.

Then he lowered his own mask, a gleaming black shield with a thick gold brow as its only ornamentation.

Elizabeth placed her arm in his as they walked through the velvet draping the grand hall, past harlequins holding feathered staffs or juggling, and potted shrubs carved to resemble cats and cherubs, and entered the cacophonous ballroom.

Some sort of commotion had occurred—Darcy led Elizabeth around at least one trampled mask and what appeared to be a leopard’s tail—pausing the music long enough for them to join the other dancing couples.

He saw Fitzwilliam’s solid frame gripping tightly to some sort of iridescent Medusa and beyond them, espied two cats, one of them clearly Saye; no mask could hide his satisfied hauteur.

As he swept Elizabeth in their direction, they were found out—undoubtedly due to Darcy’s height or his bride’s happy glow—and commanded to join their host and the small coterie of the house party standing nearby, awaiting supper.

Saye, of course, had the first word. “There you are at last.” He flicked a cursory glance over them both. “I must say I expected you were seeking to build my anticipation and had imagined something extraordinary, but you arrive as a lovelorn crow and a redbird.”

“I am not a crow,” replied Darcy with no small amount of indignation. He despised masquerades, but Elizabeth was enchanted by them.

A man in a green feathered mask—Clarke, he suspected—barked a rattling laugh. “Of course you are not, but you did fly off and abandon us, Darcy. Just as Anderson did.”