Page 59

Her own heart, though far from idle, was less easily defined.

Their last conversation in London had been interrupted.

She had been ready—ready to answer him, to tell him everything.

And sometimes, in quiet moments, she wondered what might have happened had she been given time to speak.

But perhaps it was better that he had not heard it all at once.

He had asked how long—not as a man recalling a life, but as one striving to picture a future he could scarcely name.

The words had cost him. She had seen it in the way he held himself, the careful weight of his voice.

There had been no declaration, no vow—only a question.

But it was enough. In that question, she heard what he could not yet say: that he wished to know her still.

And if he was not yet at Longbourn, it was not from want of will.

She was still turning these thoughts over when the door creaked open and Mary re-entered with a book in hand. She gave Elizabeth a contemplative look, then settled herself near the window with the quiet resolve of one content to be present, yet unobtrusive.

Elizabeth laid down her needlework. The sitting room, though calm, felt suddenly close.

“I believe,” she said, rising with a lightness she did not entirely feel, “I shall take a turn in the garden.”

Jane looked up with a smile, and Elizabeth kissed her brow in passing.

The morning air, still crisp but softened by spring’s first warmth, met Elizabeth like a balm.

She walked without any particular direction, guided only by a desire for solitude.

The garden was a familiar friend—less tidy than the Netherfield grounds, less grand than Pemberley, but no less beloved.

It was in bloom now, shyly at first: crocuses in the beds, daffodils along the borders, and the gentle hum of bees already at work.

As she passed the south hedge, Elizabeth paused.

Beneath the flowering linden tree sat Kitty, still and small, her embroidery lying idle in her lap.

The sight gave Elizabeth pause—not merely because it was rare to find her sister alone, but because of the stillness in her posture.

Lydia’s shadow no longer clung to her heels, and something in Mary’s quiet presence—never insistent, only steady—seemed to have created a hush around Kitty. One she had not known she needed.

Elizabeth stepped closer, her tread soft upon the grass .

Kitty looked up, surprised but not startled. Her fingers toyed with the embroidery silk in her lap. "You’re not usually out here at this hour," she said, voice tentative.

Elizabeth offered a gentle smile. "No—but it seemed a morning worth claiming. May I join you?"

Kitty gave a quick nod, and Elizabeth sat beside her.

They were quiet for a time. The rustling leaves above them filled the silence, broken only by the rhythmic chirping of birds nearby.

"Mary told me you've changed," Kitty said suddenly, still not looking at her.

Elizabeth turned slightly, her brow raised in surprise. "Did she?"

Kitty nodded. "She said you might be more willing to listen now. I didn’t know if that was true. But I hoped… it might be."

Elizabeth’s smile softened, touched by something deeper than amusement. "Then I am very willing, if you would like to speak."

"Lydia was dreadful yesterday," Kitty said at last, her voice low. "On the walk home, she told Nathaniel Pratt I was looking for a husband—and then laughed and said even the baker’s boy would not have me. She said it loud enough for everyone to hear. I nearly dropped my basket, I was so mortified."

Her voice didn’t break—but it wavered.

Elizabeth’s expression hardened, though her tone remained gentle. "That was unkind."

“I told Mary,” Kitty continued. “She didn’t say much. Just said if I wanted to stay home today, I could tell Mama I’d promised to help her.”

“And you did,” Elizabeth said.

Kitty nodded. "It felt… like I had a choice. Even if it was just that."

Elizabeth studied her, heart aching. In her first life, Kitty had only begun to grow after Lydia had married and left home—removing the constant distraction and influence that had long overshadowed her.

Perhaps that separation had been necessary then.

But looking at her now, folded in thought beneath a flowering tree, Elizabeth hesitated.

"You are not without sense, Kitty," she said, reaching to touch her sister’s hand. "You simply haven’t been taught how to use it. That is something entirely different."

Kitty looked down. "It’s hard to apply oneself with Lydia around."

Elizabeth’s smile grew wry. "I cannot disagree with you there. "

They sat in a silence that was companionable and uncertain—the kind that followed the laying down of a heavy thought. The breeze stirred again, shaking loose a few white blossoms that drifted over Kitty’s lap.

Elizabeth watched them settle. "Then we must think of something," she said. "Something that is yours, not hers. A space of your own. A way forward."

Kitty did not answer immediately. But she nodded—just once, as though giving permission to hope.

Elizabeth looked out over the hedgerow, already plotting, though gently. Perhaps she need not go. Perhaps there was another way.

Elizabeth returned to the house slowly, her thoughts still in the garden, still wrapped around the girl she had left beneath the linden tree.

There was much to consider, and more still she could not name.

Kitty’s words echoed softly in her mind—uncertain, searching, full of ache.

Elizabeth had once believed that removing her sister from Lydia’s influence would be the only path to change.

But perhaps there were other ways. Perhaps Mary was showing her the beginning of one.

As she reached her sitting room, she saw the letter waiting—propped upon the escritoire like a quiet sentinel. She recognized her aunt Gardiner’s script at once: even, practical, unhurried. Her fingers closed around the seal with careful anticipation.

She had not expected a miracle. And still, she had hoped.

The contents were as she had guessed: her uncle’s affairs had intervened, necessitating a shorter holiday. The Lakes, long anticipated, would not be reached. Their party would travel no farther north than the Peaks. Derbyshire would be bypassed entirely.

Elizabeth read it through with practiced composure, but her breath caught faintly in her chest. The disappointment was familiar—she had lived it once before—but that did not soften its sting.

Not because she would miss the hills and lakes of Cumberland, but because in her heart, she had nurtured a quiet, persistent dream.

Not of scenery—but of him.

She had agreed to the journey months ago out of civility—what excuse could she have given to refuse it without explanation?

She had not been ready then to speak the truths that lived within her.

Not even to her aunt. Not even to herself.

But in some private corner of her soul, she had dared to imagine that this time, it might be different.

That this journey—this road—might not be one she traveled alone.

That Fitzwilliam might come. That he might choose to walk beside her, not by accident but with intention.

That they might trace again the quiet lanes near Lambton, not in memory, but in present hope.

That she might see Pemberley again—his Pemberley—and see it not as a dream of what was lost, but as the beginning of what might yet be found. That possibility was now set aside.

She folded the letter carefully, her fingers still lingering on the parchment. With a sigh, she reached for her pen and wrote her reply—gracious, affectionate, as her aunt would expect. She made no mention of the disappointment that lingered, like mist at the edge of a spring morning.

Near the close, her thoughts turned to Kitty. She paused, her quill hesitating.

Kitty has grown quieter of late. I wonder if it might not be the sign of something better taking root.

Still, I am uncertain. You always see such things more clearly than I do.

When you visit, perhaps you might look at her—not as a child, but as someone beginning to ask for more than she knows how to name.

She left it at that. Nothing more.

She sealed the letter and set it gently aside. Her eyes drifted to the window, where pale light fell across the garden path. In another life, she would have sent Kitty away without question—believing distance the only cure for directionless girls.

But this time, something gave her pause.

She thought of the day before—Jane rising instinctively to comfort, only to step back when she saw Kitty’s quiet refusal…

and Mary, saying nothing at all, only shifting the tea tray and making space.

And Kitty, uncertain but willing, choosing to sit beside her.

Small things. But not meaningless. Perhaps, Elizabeth thought, the distance Kitty needed was not from Longbourn after all—but from who she had once been.

The sun had climbed higher now, lighting the garden with the gentle brilliance of spring.

Somewhere beyond that hedge, she knew, lay the road to Lambton.

To Pemberley. The place that had once marked the beginning of her new life—and might yet do so again.

Her thoughts lingered there, not with bitterness, but with a tender sort of ache.

She missed it—not the house only, though its beauty remained fixed in her mind, but the sense of being known, of belonging.

The person she had become there. The life she had glimpsed and lost.

Yet she did not feel hopeless. If anything, her hope was steadier now—no longer leaping and soaring as it once had, but walking quietly beside her, a companion she could not name aloud.

When Fitzwilliam came—as she believed he would—there would be time.

Time to speak. Time to decide. And perhaps, when that time came, they might journey to Derbyshire together.

She allowed herself to imagine it, just for a moment: the sound of his voice beside her, the lilt of memory in the familiar hills, the warmth of his hand finding hers .

It was not a certainty, no more than any dream. But it was enough. She turned her gaze toward the fading light in the east, where London lay far beyond her reach, and whispered into the dusk, Will you come tomorrow, Fitzwilliam?