Page 30 of Searching for Elizabeth (A Pride and Prejudice Variation)

—the next morning—

Elizabeth Darcy—oh, how well that sounds—felt nothing but bliss as she drank chocolate and nibbled on a scone. She had had no notion that the marriage bed could be so pleasurable; indeed, she had not known that such heights of pleasure were even possible.

She adored gazing into William’s eyes as he drank coffee and ate a more hardy breakfast. He said, “I am afraid I have an hour’s worth of work I must do. Is there anything I can get you or do for you before I sit down with my correspondence?”

Lizzy felt as if she had been pulled back into the not-always-so-blissful real world with his question. Of course, she loved the real world; she knew she had things she could do, wanted to do, as well. It was only an hour.

“No, Will, you need not worry about me. I plan to work on my latest story; but I can bear the interruption when you have accomplished your work, so please do come to me.”

They grinned at one another, and their flushed cheeks indicated, perhaps, that they were both cheered by memories of their fourth coupling within the past twelve hours.

William leaned toward her and whispered, “I will come to you, and come in you, if you promise to come for me.”

Lizzy closed her eyes and said, “Oh, dear, Will. What has become of us?”

William said, “All I know of the topic, my darling, is that being married becomes you.”

She groaned, he grinned again, and they separated for an hour.

Lizzy strode to the lovely room her new husband had ordered converted into her own personal study. There was a bookshelf with her five published writings looking lonely on the top shelf, but the other two shelves were a bit more than half full with books Wiliam had selected for her: Shakespeare and Jonathan Swift, Ann Radcliffe and Frances Burney, Walter Scott and Arthur Murphy, Plato and Adam Smith, and many others. His note, penned in his remarkably even and flowing hand, still sat on the top of the bookshelf: “For my dearest Elizabeth, please re-arrange and fill these shelves with any and all volumes you desire. We have an account at Hatchards.”

Next to the bookshelf was a well-appointed desk with drawers, small shelves, and pigeonholes. At the moment, her travel desk rested on top of this desk, and Lizzy was pleased to remove her various lists and rough drafts and arrange them in the cubbies.

Of course, after she stowed her travel desk, Lizzy got out the story she had been working on. This is what she had planned to do, what she had told Will she wanted to do….

But instead of thinking about how her main character, a young girl named Amelia, could get through the fire swamp alive, Lizzy began to think about her sister Mary, who was now just one sister versus the world, and that seemed a very hard thing.

She had of course left Mary the key for Blackthorn Cottage. The two sisters and William had cleaned and tidied the cottage, and there was no sign of Wickham’s attack or brief occupation. Mary could…

Lizzy was not at all sure that Mary actually could, would, or even should continue to use the cottage as a refuge from their mother’s criticism. First of all, the secret of the existence of the dwelling had gotten out, even though she had tried to make sure it did not. As far as she knew, nobody had searched for or found the cottage, but it felt like much less of a refuge, being known to exist.

Also, although they had worked to eradicate all the evidence of Wickham’s incursion, the fact that it had happened had made the cottage feel considerably less safe.

Lizzy toyed with a quill, her mind miles away. She wondered if…she wished…

And into that far-away moment, William’s voice spoke from the doorway. It seemed to Lizzy as if he was somehow privy to her thoughts: “Elizabeth, I believe that we should whisk Mary off to Pemberley when we go. It would be wonderful for you and Georgiana, and it would be even more wonderful for Mary.”

Lizzy launched herself at her dear husband, clenched his torso in his arms, and said, “I have wished that very thing! Yes, yes, I believe that is exactly what we should do!”

William said, “You know you could have made the suggestion to me, right? Pemberley and Darcy House are your homes, too. You may invite anyone you wish, and you need not wait and hope I will come up with the idea myself.”

“Well, I guess I know that. It is something for me to get used to.”

William kissed Lizzy’s temple, then her forehead.

Tenderly, she looked at him and said, “You are the best of men.”

“I am sure that I am not,”

he whispered back.

“But you make me want to be; you make me better.”

His kisses had wandered to her jawline, her neck, and finally her mouth.

After a passionate interlude, Lizzy pointed out that she must pen a message asking Mary to join them; William suggested that they could pick her up as they rode to Pemberley, adding, “I will send Robby with the message; he can sleep at the inn and then return with her reply tomorrow.”

She wrote the letter while he made arrangements with his trusted messenger, and then they discussed a chilly walk in Hyde Park.

“Would that be exercise before our exercise?”

Lizzy asked.

William chuckled and said, “I think that, if we take such a walk, we shall have to be very careful to warm up adequately afterwards.”

Thus motivated, they hurried to add layers to their clothing and eagerly spilled out of their grand home and through the gates of the park. Lizzy was surprised to see that parts of the Serpentine had frozen over, since there was only a tiny crust of frost on the ground, and no snow.

William cautioned her that it was not safe to skate on—despite the fact that a young man was doing just that.

“Every year someone takes a chance and ends up in the icy water. It is a foolish risk to take, although thankfully, most who fall in do not die.”

Lizzy, feeling quite cold despite her double layer of gloves said, “How could anyone live through the long trek home, to get warm, if they were wet?”

Her husband pointed out the Royal Humane Society receiving house, built especially to help those who nearly drowned or froze.

“It is close enough to save most people.”

After a long pause, William added, “When it is much safer, when the entire Serpentine is covered with thick ice, there are booths and many more people skating and watching. I have only seen it thus a few times in my life, because I prefer to be at Pemberley, where our lake and ponds freeze early and much more safely.”

“I am sure I will prefer that, as well,”

Lizzy said.

“I think watching people can be enjoyable in small doses but—”

she waved her hand at the people strolling the park paths—“this is too large a dose.”

They were walking briskly, which helped them stay warm, but William suggested that they head back to the house.

“I could not agree more, Will.”

As they had supposed, it was quite delightful to warm up from their excursion.

* * * *

The next few days of their honeymoon were spent mostly at home, and mostly with the sort of private exploration and play most readily associated with the word honeymoon. William managed to spend a bit of time every day working on the most crucial estate and investment matters, and Lizzy teased him that he was unable to take a break from his work for even a day.

“Honestly, William,”

she said, “I have heard all my life that rich men are idle, and I am not sure my father has ever done as much work on any day as you have whilst honeymooning.”

William took a short break from reading a report about his small estate in Ireland, and he moved swiftly around his desk and crushed Lizzy in a fervent kiss.

“I have so many answers to your impertinence, wife of mine, but let me start by saying that I am still playing catch-up from that time when you were missing, and I was searching for my dearest love.”

“Oh!”

she said. “You…”

“At first, I could not even eat or sleep, let alone work. I spent my time doing the thing I do best, by which I mean riding and walking for hours and hours, seeking any sign of you, any trace of a cottage, of any sign of foul play.”

He chuckled.

“The other things I did was to talk with and listen to strangers. Worse yet, I actually lied to them, telling a likely sounding excuse for why I was asking about Elizabeth Bennet. I dreaded the idea that I might spread rumors, but I thought that someone would have seen you or heard about you or….Oh, and I also set my valet the task of gathering gossip, and I spent an unpleasant chunk of time listening to every single bit of gossip he could report.”

William kissed Lizzy again before murmuring against her lips, “I was really quite desperate.”

“You must have been desperate. Talking to strangers? Dissembling? Gossip? Good lord!”

“My further points,”

Darcy said with a comically stern look, “my points about my diligence, as compared to rich men, on the one hand, and your father, on the other, are as follows: I am not necessarily a typical example of rich men in general, but many a gentleman who idles away his days ends up being considerably less rich, and my belief is that this will be more and more true as time goes on. Money will not always be as tied to land as it has been; industry will be key, and those who are not making changes as the world transitions will find themselves the poorer for their lack of action. And the last phrase, lack of action, brings me to your father: he is not rich, but I believe it is fair to say that he is too idle. He did not know where you were, and yet he did not search for you. There is no excuse for that degree of inaction.”

He searched her face, certain that she already knew about her father’s lack of effort to search for her, given the things she had said since her banishment. He had never spelled it out to her, until now, but her face indicated that, as he had guessed, she well knew it.

Lizzy said, “You will be a much better father, William. My relationship with my mother was always fraught, but I was devastated when she threw me out of the house, without a care for where I would go or what would become of me. But when my father, who I always thought loved me best of all, went along with her, my heart broke.”

“Oh, Lizzy, I am so very, very sorry that he broke your heart. I bleed for you, for all of it—your mother’s behavior as well as your father’s.”

“I am almost glad that my father broke my heart, Will.”

Lizzie pondered a bit more and then nodded decisively.

“Longbourn had always been so difficult, even when my father seemed to favor me, and if he had not broken my heart in two, I am not sure I would have recognized you for what you are. Now, I recognize the quantity and quality of your love; it is a much greater love, a less selfish and capricious love. I now recognize your unparalleled goodness. You have mended my broken heart and made it so much stronger.”

That settled it. William could not work a moment more; he swept her into his arms and carried her up to the master suite for an entirely different sort of activity.