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Chapter Thirty-Nine

T he sleigh jostled as it crested the ridge, runners squealing faintly beneath its weight, and Elizabeth Bennet pulled her cloak tighter across her shoulders.

The wind rushed down the valley in sharp, cheerful gusts, blowing snow into eddies that chased the Hartleys’ sleigh like children demanding attention.

Every breath clouded the air. Every tree branch bowed beneath the weight of winter.

It was too beautiful by half.

The Chiswell estate appeared at last—sensible, symmetrical, and half-buried in snow.

Not romantic, precisely, but thoroughly respectable.

The smoke curling from its chimneys was honest, and the wreath on the door still held a few dried berries.

Elizabeth studied the icicles along the eaves as the sleigh came to a crunching halt.

A footman stepped forward to assist. “Welcome to Chiswell Hall, madam,” he said, steadying her as she descended.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth replied, her voice crisp from the cold.

Inside, the air was warm and perfumed faintly with orange peels and pine.

Mrs. Hartley was already exchanging greetings with a tall woman in a russet gown—Lady Chiswell herself, every inch the glorious hostess that her husband’s rank demanded.

Her smile was composed, her earrings sensible, and her memory was reputed to be as sharp as her diamonds.

Which made Elizabeth’s stomach curdle in dread.

“Mrs. Hartley,” she said, inclining her head. “And Mrs. Gardiner. We are so glad you could join us.”

Elizabeth waited half a step behind as introductions were made, but Lady Chiswell’s eyes flicked toward her the moment her name was spoken.

“And Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” the lady said smoothly, holding out a gloved hand. “What a pleasure. Have we met before? Your name is quite familiar.”

Elizabeth accepted the hand without blinking. “I believe we were introduced several years ago. At a charity auction, I think.”

“Ah, yes,” Lady Chiswell said with a thoughtful hum, the corners of her mouth lifting just enough to suggest she remembered exactly. “Of course. You were the young lady with the… novel bidding strategy.”

Elizabeth smiled, cool as the weather. “Only moderately successful, I am afraid.”

“Well,” Lady Chiswell said, stepping back with a gracious sweep of her arm, “you shall find no auctions here—only parlor games and warm cider. Please, come in. We have made every preparation for your comfort.”

The footman who took her cloak did not blink at her name. The maid who carried her trunk upstairs asked only if she would like warm water sent to her room. The gardener’s boy offered a grin as he hurried past with an armload of kindling.

It was heavenly.

London had been cold in other ways.

By the time Elizabeth had shed her gloves and boots and been shown to her guest room—a small but inviting space with a patchwork quilt and a fire already lit—her limbs were thawing. Her heart, less so. But at least it no longer rattled with every turn of thought.

She moved to the window. Below, the garden lay quiet under its snowcoat, the hedges bowed and docile beneath the frost. The world looked softer here. Calmer. There was a stillness in the hills that no scandal could touch.

In the far distance, just beyond the white blur where the hills curved away, she imagined the road to Pemberley—imagined him taking it.

Would he bring his new bride there soon?

Show her the west gallery, the lake, the climbing roses she had once teased him about?

Would the woman admire the marble bust in the hall and pretend not to know the stories that hung in the air like old perfume?

No, surely not. Darcy would do his duty, and just now, his duty was in London. Correcting public opinion. Redeeming the Darcy family reputation and showing off his new bride.

He would not be at that house somewhere over the western horizon, with a warm plume curling lazily to the sky from the hearth. There would be no triumphant couple there yet, canoodling in the library, taking a little sweet wine before bed… so she did not have to imagine it, did she?

Miss Ashford probably never entered a library in her life anyway. Elizabeth pressed her fingertips to the cold windowpane until her breath fogged her view.

The desk stood nearby, a sturdy little thing tucked beside the sill. A proper Derbyshire desk. Unpretentious. Respectable. Infinitely tempting. It held a neat stack of pale stationery and a freshly trimmed quill resting in its holder, as though awaiting a conscience too restless for silence.

She had not meant to write anything ever again. Not after the last time. Not after everything she wrote had come back to burn her. But her fingers itched.

Just a line.

No—better not.

Another breath passed. She stared at nothing until her vision blurred.

She did not mean to pick up the pen. But she did.

And once she had, the words arrived without her permission:

Memo: On the precise ways one might vanish entirely without alarming one's relatives, alerting the neighbors, or attracting further satire.

She paused.

Then added,

Possibly: fake death via sleigh accident, flee to Scotland, become governess. Optional: eye patch.

Her mouth twitched despite herself.

She stared at the page.

Then, with great dignity, she crumpled it and tossed it in the waste bin.

But it was hardly her fault that there was another blank sheet staring up at her beneath the first. She twirled the quill around her fingers, letting her eyes flick toward that window. The one that faced toward the west.

And she wrote.

To Whom It May Concern (which is no one, and let us not pretend otherwise): I have escaped London with all the elegance of a clumsy footnote.

The satire has grown teeth, the gossip a pension.

I am now more infamous than fashionable and less amusing than convenient.

I plan to marry a snowdrift. It is cool, silent, and unlikely to demand explanations.

Kindly forward any inquiries to the hedge on the west lawn. He listens, but never interrupts.

Elizabeth stared at the ink as it dried. Then crumpled this page, too, and tossed it into the waste bin.

The laughter sat hollow in her chest.

She had not written for days. Not truly. Not since the man she should have married met another woman at the altar. Not since she imagined the vows being spoken—not by her—and heard them echo in the space behind her ribs.

She leaned back in the chair.

Darcy was married now. And she… was nearly herself.

At least, in the kind of place where no one knew to doubt it.

29 January

T hey reached Lambton just after three, the lane still thick with slush and the rooftops smoking quietly against the grey. The house his grandmother had described stood exactly where it ought—modest, respectable, stone-framed and tidy.

It was also silent.

Darcy stepped down before the footman had finished descending. He stared up at the door. One window unshuttered. A chimney dark. She could be here. She might open the door.

The knock echoed flatly.

No answer.

A second knock. Longer. Still nothing. The stoop unswept. No boots. No tracks in the snow. The stillness mocked him.

A boy with a bakery satchel passed along the hedge, slowing when he caught sight of the carriage.

“You there,” Darcy called. “This house—do you know the family?”

The boy nodded, chewing. “Mrs. Forster, sir. And her niece and all. Gone, though.”

A beat. The world shifted half a degree.

“Gone?” Darcy asked.

“London, I think?” the boy said uncertainly. “Left yesterday by the southwest road. Took a lot of trunks.”

Darcy stood still, the cold settling deeper now. Not just the weather. Not just the quiet street or the shuttered house. But something final in the air. Heavy. Unforgiving.

She had been here. Close enough to touch!

And he had missed her.

He turned back toward the carriage, legs moving through what felt like mud. The door opened beneath his hand, though he barely registered it.

The dowager looked up from her embroidery with all the serenity of a duchess at a funeral.

“They are not here,” he said, voice raw.

“No?” she replied, tucking a bit of fringe back into place. “And yet you look like a man with a next move.”

“I am,” he said hoarsely.

Richard leaned forward from the opposite seat, coat still unbuttoned, brows furrowed beneath windblown curls. “Gone, then?”

“London,” Darcy muttered.

The colonel winced. “Well. That is inconveniently large.”

Darcy climbed in and shut the door behind him with more force than strictly necessary. “Pemberley,” he told the driver through the glass.

The wheels lurched into motion, snow and gravel hissing beneath them.

For a while, no one spoke.

Darcy stared out the window, but saw nothing. Not the trees. Not the turns in the road. Only the image of a shuttered house and a bakery boy with too much truth in his voice.

She had been here. And now she was not.

He had not guessed wrong. He was just too late.

If she was on her way back to London, the window was closing.

He could not propose by post. He could not beg a vicar from a hundred miles away to take his word for anything.

Even if he found her tomorrow—if she agreed to marry him without hesitation or second thought—he would need three Sundays for the banns. And only one of them remained.

If he missed her now, if he chased her east when he ought to have turned west…

There would be no guardianship left to offer. No way to shield Georgiana. No trust funds. No leverage.

And perhaps, no Elizabeth.

Not because she had refused him—but because he had not reached her in time.

Darcy leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped until the bones protested.

The coach rocked beneath him, the road ahead a smear of frostbitten hedges and gray trees—but he saw none of it.

Only the expression on her face that day in the drawing room, the one that hovered between fury and hope. The one he had broken.

She had come to Derbyshire.

And she had vanished again.

It was too late. For the trust. For the marriage. For all the order he had once believed would save them both.

But he still wanted her.

Even without the clause. Even without a church. Even if every solicitor in London declared it madness. Because without her, he hardly recognized the man in the mirror. He did not like him. He did not trust him.

And he could not live as him—not if there was still a chance to be something better, with her.

31, January

T he fire in the Pemberley study had burned to embers. Darcy sat beside it like a man waiting for a verdict, staring at the last thread of ash as if it might spell her name.

It had been two days. Forty-seven hours, precisely, since they arrived back in Derbyshire to find nothing but shuttered windows and a boy with a bakery satchel.

Richard had “volunteered” to charm the barmaids at every coaching inn within twenty miles. He claimed it was a patriotic duty. Darcy suspected it was mostly an excuse to interrogate people while drinking.

Georgiana had mobilized the maids. Apparently, the Gardiners' footman had ridden twice to Bakewell, which made no sense. Mrs. Reynolds had discreetly questioned half the parish under the pretext of organizing a parish bake sale.

And Darcy… had begun to fold.

She would not have come all this way just to vanish again! She had left London, for a hundred good reasons. She would not return—but many said she had. No note. No trail. No second chance.

He was halfway through drafting the note to his London solicitor—urgent, immediate departure—when the door opened and his grandmother swept in with the air of someone about to declare war.

“Well,” she said, untying her gloves with deliberate relish. “That was unnecessarily festive.”

Darcy stood. “What?”

“Lady Plumleigh,” the dowager said, as if he were a slow child.

“Terrible at whist. Excellent at gossip. Apparently Lady Chiswell is throwing her annual Twelfth Night gathering—delayed this year due to her nephew’s unfortunate spleen or some other excuse.

Invitations went out last week. The guest list is positively crawling with minor gentry, wintering cousins, and—this is the interesting bit—several names from Town.

Including, it seems, a Mr. and Mrs. Hartley. ”

Darcy froze. “Hartley?”

The dowager beamed. “As I said. Positively crawling.”

“Elizabeth might be with them,” he said, barely daring to hope.

“She might. Or she might be halfway to Scotland in a hot air balloon. Who can say? But if she is in Derbyshire, and you do not appear at that party, you will hate yourself until your dying breath. I know because I will remind you.”

Darcy had crossed the room before she finished. “Does Lady Chiswell receive uninvited guests?”

The dowager lifted her brows. “She receives swans. You will manage.”

Darcy rang for the butler. “Have the carriage brought round. I will need a change of clothes. Something—God help me—festive.”

Richard strolled in, one hand full of toasted almonds. “What have I missed?”

“You,” said Darcy, “have a cravat to find.”

Richard blinked. “That sounds like effort.”

“You may either dress for a party or ride back to Lambton in your breeches. Your choice.”

Richard popped an almond into his mouth. “Party it is.”

Darcy turned back to his grandmother. “Thank you.”

She waved one hand as if swatting away sentiment. “Do not thank me. Thank Lady Chiswell’s terrible nephew. And if she does not receive you, break down the door. Just be polite about it.”

He choked on a chuckle. “I will send word as soon as I know—”

“Oh, do not think for a moment you are leaving me behind. I have a turban that demands to be seen.”

Darcy’s mouth twitched. “Then have your maid make haste with your trunks. We leave in a quarter hour.” He was already halfway to the door.