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Chapter?VI

It was the scent of ripening pears that announced August’s close.

Even before dawn Elizabeth could taste autumn in the air—cooler, spiced faintly with woodsmoke from cottage hearths outside the Crescent.

The orchard bent under the weight of treasure: russets that blushed bronze, Blenheim oranges veined like marbled parchment, and plump Comice pears whose skins freckled overnight.

Mrs?Winter declared that the harvest must begin the very morning Georgiana arrived for her promised visit.

So, while Darcy rode to meet his sister’s coach, Elizabeth and the widow arrayed trugs beneath the boughs, setting out ladders that now bore both the scarlet ribbon of their pact and Darcy’s neatly chiselled plaque.

A breeze shuffled through leaves just beginning to yellow, scattering shadows like starlings across the grass.

Elizabeth inhaled, steadying the flutter that always came before seeing Georgiana—a pleasure edged with nerves, as though hosting a younger sister she wished desperately to impress.

The carriage rattled up the Crescent before noon.

When the door opened, Georgiana stepped down wrapped in a travelling cloak trimmed with dove-grey velvet.

She had grown thinner in the heat but her eyes were bright, and at the sight of Elizabeth she broke into a smile so wide it crinkled the freckles newly dusted across her nose.

“Miss?Bennet!” she called, dropping a curtsy and then abandoning ceremony entirely to clasp Elizabeth’s hands. “I bring letters—and a terrible curiosity to see this infamous ladder.”

Darcy’s own greeting to Elizabeth was quieter but no less warm. He lifted his hat, and the lingering look they shared—a flicker of mutual remembrance beneath the shadow of the brim—carried more intimacy than any spoken welcome.

By the time luncheon finished, seed-sorting had overtaken the greenhouse tables.

Mrs?Winter produced tins of drying poppy pods, basil heads, and marigold pompons; Georgiana, delighted, volunteered to separate chaff from kernels.

Darcy teased that she would sneeze herself sick; she retorted that his grumbling masked envy of her nimble fingers.

The banter felt easy, a family melody Elizabeth had seldom heard in the grandeur of Pemberley’s halls.

As the others bent to their tasks, Darcy drew Elizabeth aside to the potting bench.

“I found something,” he said, sliding a folded sheet from his coat.

The outer face was blotched by time, but her name, Miss?E.

Bennet , remained legible. “Discovered in the false bottom of my writing desk. I must have thrust it there in March and forgotten.”

She unfolded it cautiously. Inside lay a copy of the apology he had once believed lost—the words he had pressed upon her at Rosings now written in a lighter hand, amended, perhaps improved.

Margins held notations in faint pencil: too proud?

soften here. She felt her pulse quicken at the nakedness of revision.

“I had meant to send it after—after your visit to Pemberley,” he said, voice low. “To offer again what your generosity had already half-forgiven. When I could not find it, I assumed negligence. It seems I hid it from myself.”

Their eyes met. Elizabeth folded the letter, returning it. “Then perhaps you were not ready to let those words go. But I no longer need an apology on paper.”

“What do you need?” he asked—simple, sincere.

“Only that you keep speaking.”

She saw relief soften him, but before either could say more Georgiana appeared, cheeks dusted with seed-fluff. “Fitzwilliam, you’ve abandoned your share of the poppies. Miss?Bennet is already leagues ahead.”

Darcy slipped the letter away. “Then I must earn redemption by toil.” He touched the brim of an invisible hat to Elizabeth—a private salute—before joining his sister.

Throughout the afternoon the rhythm of harvest stitched them together.

Darcy handed up pears from a lower rung while Georgiana, declared official ribbon guardian, monitored Mrs?Winter’s ascent.

Elizabeth settled into a branch crook, trimming stems and dropping fruit into Darcy’s waiting trug.

With every exchange they built another spar of quiet understanding—an acknowledgment that words once buried could still sprout when conditions turned kind.

When the sun sank, the orchard smelled of bruised fruit and new-cut grass.

Mrs?Winter, flushed with victory and sticky with juice, insisted on mulled cider brewed over a small brazier behind the greenhouse.

Flames licked copper, and Georgiana coaxed music from a travel harp she had secreted in the carriage—soft chords that clung to the cooling air.

Steam curled between lantern light as Darcy passed Elizabeth a mug. “Georgiana tells me you plan to bring your father some of these russets.”

“He praises any apple he does not pick himself,” she quipped, then sobered. “He is stronger, but quiet evenings suit him. Fresh fruit, and a story of heroic ladders, will cheer him.”

Darcy’s glance slid to Georgiana—now laughing with Mrs?Winter—and returned. “You bring cheer,” he said. “To more souls than you realise.”

The compliment, offered without flourish, left Elizabeth suddenly aware of the night’s hush. Cicadas had faded; in their stead a distant church bell counted the hour. She sipped cider to steady nerves.

Georgiana struck a final chord and folded her hands. “I vote we read fortunes in apple skins,” she declared. “Miss?Bennet, will you show me the country trick?”

They peeled apples by the brazier’s glow, flinging curls over shoulders to land in shapes that might—or might not—resemble initials.

Georgiana squealed when hers formed something suspiciously like a B .

Mrs?Winter forewarned her that any omen could be argued into happiness if one had wit enough.

Darcy’s peel snapped too soon, and he professed himself doomed; Elizabeth’s, cast with a flick, fell at her feet in a curve unmistakably like a D .

Heat that had nothing to do with fire rose in her cheeks.

Later, when Mrs?Winter and Georgiana retired, Darcy lingered to bank the brazier. Embers pulsed red; the orchard lay silver under a waxing moon. Elizabeth gathered plates, but he touched her sleeve.

“There is more I wish to tell you—about why I came to Bath.” His tone bore none of the old hesitation.

“I told Bingley I sought quiet. Truthfully, I sought discipline. After my mother died, Pemberley’s gardens fell to disorder until she was only a memory pressed in herbarium pages.

Bath offered a place to rebuild her methods before facing them at home. ”

Elizabeth set the plates down. “And Number?Nine?”

“I walked past as the property came for sale. Mrs?Winter’s roses spilled through the railings like a summons.

I bought the west wing and half the garden on impulse, thinking I could practise tending something that did not already carry my family’s weight.

It felt cowardly at first—running here rather than restoring Pemberley.

Yet Mrs?Winter welcomed my uncertainty as if it were compost she could turn.

” He smiled, self-mocking but grateful. “And then you arrived.”

The moon edged from a cloud, lighting the plaque on the ladder, the ribbon shivering in a faint breeze. Elizabeth reached out, pressing her fingers lightly over his on the ladder rail.

“Perhaps,” she said, “we all needed one garden before the next.”

He turned his hand to clasp hers fully. “Will you think me rash if I say that, since you came, the work ahead no longer daunts me?”

“I will think you honest. And I will be glad.”

Silence settled, but it felt like soil—dark, alive, full of promise. Together they watched the embers dim, neither hurrying to break the moment.

When at last Elizabeth climbed the stairs to her room, she paused by the window. Beneath, the ladder leaned quietly against the apple tree. Darcy had hung the lantern on a branch and left it glowing, a gentle beacon over baskets brimming with fruit.

She opened her notebook, intending a few lines before sleep; instead she wrote pages, words tumbling like seeds scattering into furrows: about courage borrowed from widow and sister, about letters lost and found, about a harvest shared before its sweetness was certain.

She closed with a single uncertain sentence— I think I have begun to hope in earnest.

Outside, the lantern flickered once, then steadied, haloing the ladder and the bright red ribbon, until eventually the moon climbed high enough to shoulder the keeping of their small, hard-won light.