Page 59 of The Winter of Our Discontent (Pride and Prejudice Variations #1)

ELIZABETH DARCY

For the first time in months, the predawn light caused the blood to rise in my body. What joy! Slipping out of bed, dressing as silently as possible so as not to wake my husband, whose ears were perpetually on the prick even as he slept in the adjacent room, I made my escape.

Freedom! The air was brisk still, and I was not yet so very vigorous, but I ambled down the sloped lawn and went down the spinney road, past the meadow where the peewits would soon wake and call to me.

Life had come whole again, no longer split in two.

I was fully alive. I was myself. There lived within me a core of well-being, a melting kind of love for everything I had been given, for everyone I met.

This must have been the life force shining in me after my hours spent hovering over the black void.

I reflected upon my sister Jane, whose beauty had again begun to show itself after her months of heartbreak.

She was, for the first time in her life, in the throes of a passionate attraction.

Her object, a most elegant and capable man—our own Mr Yardley—struggled mightily not to notice my sister.

But of course, he could not keep his eyes from finding her again and again.

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s wound had been stubborn, and since our doctor had come every day to dress it, he was often a guest at our table, as he had been last night.

After dinner, Mr Yardley sat across from Jane, and I had watched with complacency as they suffered the agony of their unsatisfied craving for one another.

While they partook of this painful longing, my sister Mary and I sat together and listened to Kitty sing.

My middle sister never felt fully at home at Longbourn, and sadly, she had never earned a rightful place in the ranks of my sisters.

I meant to make amends for all the times I wished her to be elsewhere, and I hoped Mary would feel well loved here.

Service to the school and to the curate’s poor relief satisfied her urges to be useful, and she had begun to look quite pretty with the aid of Wilson’s genius.

But honesty did not allow me to believe my attentions meant so terribly much to her.

No. The cure for Mary had been Mr Darcy’s attention.

He always spoke to her with kind respect, and she looked upon him almost reverentially, as though she were marvelling, “I have a brother!”

The protection, the shelter, safety, and freedom we felt in this man’s world filled a hole we had not known existed. We had only ever known our father as a representative of men, and only now, by comparison, did we feel most potently what had been missing.

Kitty, who looked upon Mr Darcy with even more awe than Mary and was quite shy of him still, had finished her song, blushed charmingly, and dipped a playful curtsey before she rushed to Mrs Annesley.

In that lady’s steadiness, she had found what she needed most. Between Mrs Reynolds and Georgiana’s companion, there had arisen a sort of competition for Kitty’s mentorship.

They instructed her on everything because she had been eager to learn, and I was delighted to see her being taught to meet the world more skilfully.

And then there was my precious Georgiana.

I loved her as thoroughly as I did my own sisters but also as I would my sweetest, truest friend.

When at my most beleaguered, she had defended and befriended me, and her support alone had at times sustained me.

She had sat next to Mr Darcy while Kitty sang, and though they were quiet as always, they looked upon my sisters and me with such warmth and satisfaction that we could never fall into feelings of indebtedness.

Having sought me out after church on Sunday, Georgiana had haltingly shared the great unspoken secret I had sensed but not understood.

The nefarious Mr Wickham who defaced books took advantage of her loneliness and tried to elope with her for the purpose of having her fortune.

Compassion had crashed through me like a great wave—not only for her, but for her brother.

No wonder he hated me so thoroughly! A fortune hunter had wounded his sister, and there sat I across the table from him at dinner, a fortune huntress by all appearances, who had ruined him.

As she confessed, Georgiana had fallen into my arms and wept out her heart.

“All is well, my darling girl,” was all I could say as I stroked her hair. Somehow that sufficed, and she has looked light as a cloud ever since.

As to my parents, not even a year had passed since our lives were upended.

I felt a tendril of hope arise like the warmth of the sun just beginning to show itself over the horizon.

I trusted that time would heal even their wounds, and though our family was substantively altered and our past could not be rewritten, we would reconcile all our hurts somehow.

A peewit’s call awakened me from my reverie, and seeing that more than a mile of road lay behind me, I turned to go home—to Pemberley.

The stair treads did not creak under my boots, and the door to my room was slightly ajar.

Fingers, buttons, shivering—my walking dress fell to the floor.

In my shift, a white ghost, I floated silently into my husband’s room and crawled into his bed.

“Elizabeth,” he growled sleepily, “what are you doing?”

“I am warming up. I have been on a long walk.”

He pulled my back into his chest, his arms and legs surrounded me. He kissed my neck, and without warning, we kindled into a raging fire. Our desire for one another had been latent for so long that when unleashed, it burnt white hot, taking us both by surprise for its ferocity.

“Are you well, my love?” he asked contritely some while later, perhaps taken aback by his lack of restraint.

“Hmm. At last you have come to me in that way ,” I said with a low chuckle. “Has your resentment cooled, Mr Darcy?”

“No. I harbour a great deal of resentment still. I resent how long I resisted you, how stupid I was?—”

“You know I do not like this kind of talk. I will tell you what you resent. You resent that I have crawled into your life and made an untidy nest in it, that you are surrounded by women, and that our moods are too many and too varied to be comfortable. And ,” I said with the feeling of great mischief, “you miss Mr Johnson very much. ”

“Yes. Yes, I do. I also miss Mr Waverley. Though, come to think of it, he would have bled you to death had he had the care of you instead of Yardley.”

“But how lucky! You would then have been free to marry your sickly cousin. Poor Mr Darcy. I believe you have always been destined for a sickly wife.”

“My luck is very ill to be sure. Not only do I have a sickly wife, but I have a very chirpy one. Go to sleep.”

“Not until you tell me you love me,” I said as I nestled my back against his chest.

“Do you not already know how much I adore you? It seems so paltry a declaration when speaking of so great a thing. But if you would like to hear me say it?—”

“I would.”

He pulled me closer than ever and whispered in my ear.

“You are the sun, the moon—you are the rain, the wind, and the earth to me. You are life itself, and you are more than that. You are dear to me in the simplest ways. I love to speak to you, to look at you, to watch you move from the table to the window, to see you smile with pleasure when I come into the room.” And then, in a stronger voice, he asked, “Are you crying?”

“Just a little,” I said with a sniff, turning my head to search his face. “How could I be so fortunate as to be your wife?”

“There is no accounting for such luck,” he said with a slow smile. “Perhaps you should learn to play cards.” He then kissed my nose before subsiding into the silence of his contentment.

As I, too, closed my eyes, I remembered Lydia, whose thoughtless joke had torn open my life and made me whole. When next I became restless, I thought I would visit her to tell her I had forgiven her and that I loved her still .

Mr Darcy really could see into my skull, or so it seemed to me, because on the very edge of sleep, he murmured, “Remind me, Elizabeth, to settle funds on your youngest sister. I believe I owe her for my happiness.”