18. In which Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam have a much ...

Though Elizabeth felt as if she was in the midst of a very localized earthquake, the ball continued on. She heard the crowds migrating from ballroom to dining room.  Their voices were dim and indistinct; she could not pick out any individual voice among them. She remained on the raised terrace outside the ballroom.

Mechanically, Elizabeth unclasped the diamond bracelet at her left wrist and let it cascade into the palm of her right hand. She put it on the bannister of the terrace and peeled off her glove. ‘Fitzwilliam’ stood out, bold as ever, curling over the blue-green branches of veins at her wrist, like the iron gate before a garden. Every letter was familiar; she could recall with perfect clarity waking up at dawn when she turned sixteen, tearing at the button on the cuff of her night rail and thrusting her wrist at the still sleeping Jane, and exclaiming, “Jane, Jane, what does it say?” She had felt a creeping confusion take hold of her as Jane sleepily opened an eye and said, “Fitzwilliam, dearest.” Elizabeth had then felt a brief and rare flare of jealousy, that of course all would come easy to Jane and be odd and confusing for her, before being overwhelmed by doubt that Jane had read correctly— Elizabeth had then pushed her sleeve up to her elbow and stared at her wrist herself. It seemed impossible to her now that the ‘Fitzwilliam’ at her wrist should ever have been strange and unfamiliar, nothing more than a quote out of context. But then each loop and line had seemed so new, so fresh... she had traced each stroke with her eyes, so concerned with each part she had not taken in the whole.

Other memories overlaid this— putting on her first evening bracelet, a gift from her father, and feeling childishly worried that the ‘Fitzwilliam’ might rub off on the back of the inlaid enamel— her first ball, as she pressed the stones of her garnet bracelet against her gloved left wrist, trying to eavesdrop on every conversation in the hopes of hearing a ‘Fitzwilliam’ mentioned— baring her wrist to Charlotte, all those years ago at Huntsford, and first hearing of Colonel Fitzwilliam—

And from there she was overwhelmed with memories of her husband. Colonel Fitzwilliam kneeling in the dirt of the lane, hands shaking as he pulled off his glove to reveal the ‘Bennet’ on his wrist, and the reverence with which he’d touched the buttons of her glove before undoing it— the kiss he had pressed to her soulmark upon seeing it— his habit, first begun in the coach from Rosings to London, of sliding his fingertips against the edge of her soulmark, when they were in public, but he wanted her too badly to be still— baring their wrists before the altar, the gold braid at the end of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s sleeve winking at her, as if in reassurance, as if to say, ‘it still says Bennet; he is still your soulmate’— later that evening, resting her head on her husband’s bare chest, pressing, with a sort of self-conscious symbolism, her mark against the steady beating of his heart, as he stroked her loose hair, and they lay in the tumbled sheets of the marriage bed— how Colonel Fitzwilliam had woken her the next morning with a kiss and clasped a diamond bracelet (the very one she had just taken off) about her bare left wrist—

—and from there came the worse memories, of Colonel Fitzwilliam kissing her mark as he left for Hougoumont, with his final, hoarse, “Te amo, my dear Bennet,” and her own tremulous, “Te amo, my dear Fitzwilliam,” in response— running into the sickroom, grasping his left hand, feeling the pulse under her own name, the colonel’s pressing her hand, then, when his strength was gone, his fingers trailing over her mark—

Elizabeth furiously scrubbed her cheeks with the gloved palm of her right hand.

Darcy himself had said once that he feared, in showing someone a text of great meaning, that the other person would see all he had brought to it, not merely what was written—

And all the meaning she had attached to her mark, all the repercussions of the grandest choice she had made as a result of it— a choice she had been happy to make, a choice she had valued— did that now change? Did it mean less? Was it somehow a choice to be less proud of, because she had not known other choices existed?

Elizabeth recalled Honoria saying to her at Matlock the summer previous, “you cannot settle for yourself two contradictory notions: one, that soulmarks do not necessarily refer to the one person, ever, in the world, who will make you happy, and two, that if this is necessarily so, it means the person and relationship you are mourning was not what you thought it was. If the first is true, it does not necessarily mean the second is also true. Perhaps you chose to marry my brother based on a logical fallacy, but that does not lessen what you had.”

‘No,’ she thought determinedly, ‘this does not change that I was happily married to a man I loved and who loved me in return. I do not and cannot regret the years I was married to Colonel Fitzwilliam. Knowing Darcy bears my name on his wrist does not change that.’

Then, in a sort of wild and undirected fury, Elizabeth thought, ‘In fact, it changes nothing!’

The absurdity of this was too much even for her— it changed everything— nearly everything— so much of her life and her understanding of it and of herself—

This was too distressing; she shifted her gaze up to her wedding ring, worn and scratched from years of continuous wear, of scrabbling campaigns, of stillroom mishaps. Since Colonel Fitzwilliam had first slid it on her finger, Elizabeth had taken it off only to clean it; and she had not done so since the Battle of Waterloo.

She felt that she could not make sense of anything— and yet, everything that she had not understood about Darcy was beginning to become comprehensible— other memories began to crowd in, ones she had not thought to include in the narrative she had constructed and unconsciously carried about with her, attached to her mark—

There came an “Elizabeth?” from inside the ballroom.

It was Georgiana— Elizabeth knew this because the very familiar voice of Kitty called out a, “Lizzy, where are you?” in echo— but the sound of her Christian name sent a jolt through her, just like the time she had gone to a salon in Paris, where, when everyone joined hands, the hostess touched an electric eel and its current passed through them all. Just like then, her first instinct was to jump back; she knocked her bracelet off the balustrade.

Of course! It was of a piece with the rest of the evening. Elizabeth grabbed her glove and stalked down the steps, and began hunting in the gravel for it. She was almost relieved to have something to do, and was disappointed with how easily she found the bracelet. The perturbation of her mind was still very great; she felt almost concussed with the weight of such a realization, and could not yet think through the shock to see more than the vaguest outlines of all she now knew.

Elizabeth pulled on her glove and fussed with the clasp of her bracelet as she scanned the deserted terrace with all its flickering Chinese lanterns. The light shone softly through the colored rice paper. She did not wish to be seen— the gradiated darkness of the garden beyond called to her, the shadows of the hedges seemed like outspread arms waiting to embrace her; she plunged into these. Elizabeth wished she had not let Kitty and Georgiana talk her into wearing white— not only so that she would be less easily spotted slipping away from the ball, but because she wanted the comfort of mourning, the outer confirmation of the narrative Elizabeth had spent most of her life constructing and maintaining, the one her society and her in-laws particularly had insisted she shape—

But no, that was overly-simplistic. Honoria had first brought up the idea that it was nonsense to think a person could only find romantic love once, with one person, and before that Marjorie had pointed out that the Fitzwilliam notion of soulmarks was nonsensical, even in its seemingly perfect incarnation: the marriage of Earl Spencer’s eldest daughter, Lady Marjorie Spencer, to the Earl of Matlock’s eldest son, Julian Fitzwilliam, the Viscount Stornoway. Though Marjorie had seemed to appreciate Stornoway more after the whole Glenarvon debacle, she still would have laughed until she cried if anyone told her that she was put on earth specifically to marry Lord Stornoway. It was so limiting a narrative.

Elizabeth recalled all the moments in which she had revealed her mark to friends, intentionally or not, as a marker of intimacy— Jane at dawn on her sixteenth birthday, and her parents and other sisters during breakfast; the Gardiners that Christmas; Charlotte at Hunsford, during Elizabeth’s first visit to Kent; Mrs. Kirke and Colonel Dunne while assisting in the medical tents after Salamanca; Mary Crawford, after a costume ball, when they'd both had too much to drink; Wellington after Waterloo, when he had promised to break with propriety and escort her to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s funeral; Marjorie on the beach on the edge of the Matlock estate; Honoria and Georgiana in her room, the day after; Colonel Pascal in London— and people seldom mentioned showing their marks to their friends, when they talked of revealing their marks. Or at least, she never talked of revealing her mark to friends, or even thought of it. It occurred to Elizabeth that even the powder wagon incident, one of her favorite stories to tell about herself, never came consciously to her mind when she thought of her mark. And yet her mark had been the lynchpin of her success. The attacking French officers had seen her expensive clothes and seen her mark and heard her accent and assumed certain things about her— that she was a British lady who believed that the name on one's wrist was one’s Perfectly Godly Match—

Elizabeth became conscious of the fact that her thin dancing slippers had not been designed for such outdoor activity. They had been soaked through from the evening dew. She hesitated and looked about herself. She had been in this part of the hedge before, surely— it was only the new context that made it seem unfamiliar and frightening.

Closing her eyes did a certain amount of good but only a certain amount. It felt impossible to get her bearings when she was this turned about. For one tremulous moment she thought herself lost. But how could she truly be lost at Pemberley? And, Elizabeth thought, with a spurt of inappropriate humor, as Anne de Bourgh had pointed out, Pemberley had once been a hunting lodge, in the era of some Henry or other. The land was still mostly wood and parklands, and the formal gardens were not so very extensive as all that.

A couple of turns, chosen at random, let her into dead ends; she backtracked, feeling foolish, and eventually came across the fountain at the heart of the shrubbery.

This was good enough. Her shoes were now very wet and it was unpleasant to walk. Elizabeth sat on the ledge of the fountain and looked up at Pemberley. Its windows blazed with light above the tops of the hedges. She folded her arms and tucked her hands under her armpits so that she wouldn’t be tempted to stare at her soulmark.

It was about then she realized she’d lost her bracelet again.

Elizabeth swore like a gunner whose canon had gotten bogged down in a muddy retreat back to Portugal, but she wasn’t ready to head back. How could she face anyone, let alone Darcy? What could she say? What would she say?

“Hello Darcy, I finally understand why you behaved so strangely to me when we first knew each other— you’ve been in love with me nearly the whole of our acquaintance and I did not realize it until ten minutes ago !”

No, that would never do. Too panicked, too disjointed, and frankly absurd to boot. Well, first drafts were always terrible. She tried again:

“Forgive my absence, but I just realized I was the soulmate who married someone else who has been making you miserable these five years or so. I hope it will not be a problem that I am living in your house.”

That was worse. Perhaps a description of the evening so far:

“I beg pardon for being late to supper, but I realized I was in love with you and then realized we were possibly a match within the space of one conversation with Lady Catherine. I have no idea how to reconcile these two pieces of information with all I have previously thought about my life. Do you have any advice? Oh yes, and please do pass the roast chicken.”

Yes, and why not reveal it all to the neighborhood! Darcy would love that. Clearly she’d have to get him alone. Elizabeth tried again:

“Mr. Darcy, you will never guess where I have been and what I have been thinking! Indeed, I apparently cannot guess at any of your emotions, for I did not even consider we might be a match until this evening, and I do not know how to understand that, given the fact that I was happily married to a man I believed to be my match for three years. In my defense, you gave me absolutely no hints as towards your true feelings to me, or ever spoke of your love—”

Though there she stopped and groaned and put her head in her gloved hands. He had told her, in a manner of speaking, but in such a way she had immediately discounted it. For God’s sake! How could she have been expected to realize he had thought they were a match by him angrily telling her his first name in the middle of an argument? Had Darcy ever tried to flirt with her, or hint at his mark before that point? And conventional wisdom held that one recognized (or at least suspected) one’s soulmate upon a first meeting— and when they had first met, Darcy had considered her tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt him, and she had thought him proud and disagreeable.

And all the things he had said to her, about her birth, her breeding, her background— all the reasons he had listed as ones that meant she could not be the match to a man of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s standing— oh God, were they the reasons he had not spoken or flirted with her then? Socially speaking, they had not been much of a match— indeed, Elizabeth often, privately thought the only reason some of her in-laws had welcomed her as they did was because their only requirement for Colonel Fitzwilliam’s match was that she be a gentle woman. For Darcy, with presumably an ‘Elizabeth’ on his wrist, an acceptable female name, of course they were going to have higher standards. Of course Darcy would have absorbed these— and of course Darcy was going to be skittish as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs at the idea of being a match with someone his family would not like.

Elizabeth pushed her curls away from her temples and thought, ‘And this all came after he danced attendance on Miss Elliot the Ineligible, and then after Wickham tried to elope with Georgiana— of course he would be overly wary about finding a match. He had been wrong before, and had seen how the system failed. And he would never have said anything to me after I made it clear I was in love with his cousin instead. Richard and I were a match; I shall not be convinced out of that— but if Darcy and I are also a match—’

There were some daisies growing about the base of the fountain. Elizabeth absently tore some up and then plucked the petals, just to have some kind of an outlet for the nervous energy fluttering through her, and tossed them one by one into the basin of the fountain. Unbidden, the childish rhyme came to her: ‘he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me—’

The exercise was unsuitable on several fronts. She sought no glimmer of the future, but clarification of the past; nor did she particularly believe in augury or any other kind of fortune telling. The future was not set; it was the result of past and present choices. But her choices— she did not repine of her choices— how could she, when she had not even known there were other choices she could have made?

Elizabeth tore the last petal to shreds. She squeezed her eyes shut and against a sudden rush of tears. All she had known, or thought she had known, had been overturned in a moment. The judgement she had so highly prized, the quick mind she had so valued, had caused her to go leaping merrily off a cliff. Darcy, in love with Elizabeth Elliot! How could she have ever thought so? She contented herself with the knowledge that she had not been too far off the mark— Darcy had still been trying to force a match based off his soulmark and his understanding of what his social equal must be— but how terribly wrong she had been! Elizabeth had always prided herself on being witty and clever— how had she missed that Darcy bore her own name on her wrist? How had she so failed to understand—

Elizabeth flung her handful of petal pieces at the surface of the water, and forced herself to open her eyes. Her reflection stared back at her, murky and unclear; with a darker, dimmer shape beyond. She blinked, surreptitiously wiped away a tear, and the shape gained familiarity and clarity. Darcy was coming up behind her.

She whirled about and said, stupidly, “Darcy! I thought I had hidden away very effectively— how on earth did you find me?”

Darcy held up her diamond bracelet. It dangled down from his gloved hand, sparkling dimly against the darkness as if he had caught up the Milky Way. Elizabeth was abruptly reminded of Cinderella, her bracelet flying off as she waved goodbye to the prince, as she fled the ball— but French fairy tales reminded her of Colonel Fitzwilliam— her husband, the person she had declared to all the world as her soulmate—

She turned away and viciously threw the stem of her daisy into the fountain. The reflection of herself and Mr. Darcy shivered away into incoherence.

“I take it,” said Darcy, “that your interview with Lady Catherine was unpleasant.”

“However did you guess?”

“What did she say to you?”

“Nonsense,” she replied, “but nonsense with a grain of truth. It might irritate me enough to turn it into a pearl of wisdom. We shall have to wait and see.”

Elizabeth could already tell that she was not striking the right tone; her voice was too sharp, her posture too defensive, and she could not bring herself to look at Darcy.

Darcy sat down beside her and awkwardly gestured with the bracelet, as if to offer to help her put it back on, but the last thing Elizabeth wanted was to hold out her left wrist to him— she had a momentary, absurd thought, that she would prefer to gnaw off her left wrist, as some animals did, when caught in traps— and so instead she hugged her elbows to her chest and turned entirely away from him. Darcy cleared his throat and stuck the bracelet in the pocket of his coat.

The silence between them, which was usually comfortable, was tense. It became more so by the second.

“Is there—” Darcy began; then hesitated, as Elizabeth looked determinedly away “— is there anything I can do for your present relief? I am not sure I have ever seen you like this before.”

“I have never felt like this before, in all honesty,” said Elizabeth. “Usually I find it extremely easy to talk of all I think and feel, but I cannot even begin—”

Oh for God’s sake— she was beginning to tear up again.

“What did she say to you?” Darcy asked, in the commanding tones he generally used when having to act as Master of Pemberley.

It may have worked on everyone else, but it wasn’t going to work on Elizabeth; indeed, it made her less inclined to obey and the pettishness and irritations felt quite dried her tears. “Darcy, it really was not much worse than what her daughter said. Neither member of the Rosings family has a high opinion of the rest of us— I wish I could laugh carelessly and say, ‘what is that to me?’ as I used to do, but ever since the colonel died, I cannot keep my temper with Lady Catherine. Be glad I had no pottery of yours to smash, as I did at Matlock. I merely decapitated some of your daisies.”

Darcy said, “Be that as it may, I will not stand idly by when you are insulted, any more than you would while I am.”

“Stop being so good,” demanded Elizabeth, and tried to make it teasing; but it came out rather exasperated. “I can hold my own, Darcy. And it’s not— it’s hardly— I do not—” she hardly knew what she was saying, tossed out half-phrases, meaninglessly, trying to fill up the chasm of silence, but what could be said? What phrase could bridge the sudden distance between them— could possibly get Elizabeth over the shock, embarrassment, and panic of knowing all Darcy had spent years concealing? She steered her mind towards less dangerous subjects, hoping Darcy might be fobbed off with: “Lady Catherine was only more honest than she usually is, in detailing most exactly what my position is within the family— or what she thinks it is. I am the solution to a problem that no longer exists and I have therefore outlived my utility. Anne’s opinion of me was worse, though her opinion of me was roughly equal with her opinion of Marjorie. I suppose I ought to be flattered, held on the same, low plane as the daughter of Earl Spencer.”  

Darcy was for a moment speechless; Elizabeth glanced at the surface of the water and saw that he was pale and struggling with himself. She saw the strain and anger in his expression and knew how little he liked how to speak when in the grip of strong emotion— or perhaps, how little able he was to speak in such circumstances— and was glad to wait until he regained his composure, or at least the appearance of it.

“Anyone who observed you and Richard together knew it was a true match,” said Darcy, in a tone of forced calm. “How Lady Catherine could have decided that your marriage was simply a solution to a problem— ”

“Everyone?” asked Elizabeth, incredulous. “Darcy, do not tell me you honestly believed Richard and I were a true match.” Before he could guess that she had guessed she hastily pressed on, “I know it was a very long time ago, but when you found out Richard thought we might be a match, you came over to Huntsford and laid out all the reasons we were not—”

“I was wrong,” said Darcy. “On more fronts than one.”

“On others you were quite right,” said Elizabeth, unwillingly.

“If you refer to Mr. Wickham—”

“He misrepresented you to me so thoroughly,” said Elizabeth, just realizing the true extent of it. “Oh god, Darcy— however could I have believed him? I am so ashamed of what I thought of you— of what I believed—” A wave of mortification threatened to drown her. “Oh, what I believed! Darcy, I don't know how you could ever forgive me, let alone think well of me.”

Though she could not entirely raise her eyes to him, she could tell he was looking at her with sympathy and concern; she saw him out of the corner of her eye and by his reflection in the still water, littered with daisy petals. They were fragile little barques, poised so delicately on the surface of the water. One good jostle and they might be sunk forever.

“Darcy,” she said impulsively, “do you really believe we have it right in England, that there’s only one match for you, ever, in the world, and you are doomed to unhappiness forever if you do not find it?”

“Not exactly,” Darcy said, cautiously. “I think our national philosophy does not leave enough space for the individual and the choices we make. Of all those who match the names on our wrists, we have to choose whom is most likely to be compatible with us, and pursue further acquaintance. If the other person does not agree that you are a match, then—”

“Then?” asked Elizabeth, her voice strained.

“Then,” said Darcy, looking at her oddly, “you realize that putting such an emphasis on one person as the source of all happiness is a limiting narrative that does not reflect the reality of the world. For even those that are a perfect match have friends and family, and generally are happy to have them, and draw happiness from interacting with them.” After a moment he asked, “Is it something you believe, Elizabeth?”

The sound of her Christian name on his lips struck her with painful force, like an arrow from a longbow, and lodged just under her breastbone.

“I did,” said Elizabeth, in some confusion. “I do— but it— I don’t think… that is, I do not doubt that Colonel Fitzwilliam and I were a match, but I do not think we were match simply because our wrists happened to have the last names of the other. We were compatible in terms of personality— character, tastes, preferences, values— I told my father, after he met Colonel Fitzwilliam for the first time, that I viewed our wrists matching more as a bridge over the chasm of rank between our two families than anything else.”

“Is that how you still view it?”

“I… I do view it as a matter of choice yes, and our wrists were convenient excuses against the obstacles of unequal rank and fortune, circumstances that mattered because they did to his family, not because they really mattered to him or to me.”

“ Your family , too,” said Darcy. “You are a Fitzwilliam as much as I am; nothing Lady Catherine can say will change that, when all the rest of us hold you as one of our own.”

Why on earth did Darcy have to be everything good and kind? Despite her own shock and confusion, she recalled again that she loved him and why she loved him— and this was why. For all the cool formality with which he ordinarily spoke, there was real feeling behind it. He was a good, kind man at heart, and for those he truly loved he would do anything.

After a moment he asked, “But you cannot tell me your being a match with Richard bore no weight at all on your choice to marry.”

“Would I have chosen him despite my mark, you mean? I don't— I suppose if I had been born into a different society, but— oh! I know you, I know you will argue for the individual over the general, but when the individual is shaped by the general, by society, and must take part in society, then how can one make a neat separation between the two? I was twenty, I had never been in love before, and everything aligned as I had always been told it would by my mother, by my neighbors, by books, songs, stories, poems, plays.... Good God, I was even skeptical of the English take on soulmarks. I had daily proof in my parents, at the folly of such a system, but it worked for me so why should I think critically of it? By adhering to ideas I had been brought up to believe were right, I was the gainer— and I have put myself through more difficult mental contortions to keep hold of a first impression of something or someone.” All the worst of these were centered about Darcy. She felt compelled to explain, at least in part, “And it was Richard; he had the same... or at least a very similar way of interacting with the world. Courtesy was to him, as it is to me, the highest virtue. It was not just easy, but right, to try and enter into the concerns and feelings of everyone around us.” Then, fearing she had offended Darcy thereby, for he had little skill in matching the spirits of those about him, unless he had known them for a long time, she added, “But I suppose I shew myself as very superficial in this. I did not have to work at understanding Richard, since we had similar ways of interacting with the world, and I held myself to be clever when it was sheer luck. All was easy with him. I do not think that makes is greater or lesser than a relationship I had to work at, it just makes it… different. And I have spent the past year wrestling with the idea that even knowing all that, even happy as I was— he was not my only chance at happiness. I do not wish to be alone forever. I came to the conclusion that I could perhaps be happy—indeed very happy—loving someone not my match, as long as that person was someone I esteemed and respected, whose friendship I valued, with whom I might be compatible, but….”

There was silence again between them, but the tension was not out of awkwardness, but out of the knowledge that they were now approaching a conversation they both knew they must have, but had spent some time avoiding.

Elizabeth said, in a low, strained voice, “Darcy, I have never been so confused in my life as I am this evening.”

Darcy somewhat automatically tried to take her into his arms, but Elizabeth panicked; and in the middle of this, there were noises in the gardens and sudden calls of “Mrs. Fitzwilliam!” and “Mr. Darcy!” Elizabeth overset herself, and fell into the fountain.

“Elizabeth!” exclaimed Darcy.

Elizabeth replied with a stream of profanity of which she was not proud, but which were words enough to adequately convey her feelings for everything that had happened that evening. Darcy was deeply embarrassed. This fortunately caused him to freeze in place for long enough that Elizabeth could find her footing and wave away his attempts to be of use. She braced her hands on the edge of the stone ledge and awkwardly hauled herself out. She felt like a landed trout when she emerged, and lay in a sodden heap of silk, as several servants came up and immediately began apologizing for so startling her that she had fallen into the fountain. But really, it was very necessary to find them; the mine at Barmote had exploded earlier that evening. A messenger had just come with the news. All the guests who lived in or near Barmote were already preparing to depart, and Colonels Dunne and Pascal had asked to see the housekeeper, for linens to take as bandages.

Darcy settled his evening coat about Elizabeth’s shoulders and said, “Yes, thank you for coming to find me; let us go through the servants’ quarters, and supply the doctors with what they need.”

Elizabeth spotted Colonel Dunne inspecting a couple of barrels of vinegar in the kitchen and unthinkingly and immediately asked him what she could best do to assist him.

Colonel Dunne looked askance at her— bedraggled, wet hair losing its curl (one tendril was plastered against her cheek), diamond necklace askew, her obviously soaking wet gown, the skirt and petticoat clinging trippingly to her legs, Darcy’s evening coat draped over the whole, the sleeves of which quite swallowed her hands and hung down to her knees— and decided there wasn't time to ask questions. “Might I look about the stillroom?”

“Of course, I shall take you there myself—”

“Elizabeth, do you really think—” Darcy began.  

“This way,” said Elizabeth, shaking out her sodden skirts and rushing onto the stillroom. She knew almost better than Mrs. Reynolds where everything was kept, and rushed about, moving chairs about and clambering up on them for various poultices and ingredients for draughts. Within about ten minutes Colonel Dunne had his arms full and rushed out, calling over his shoulder, “And if you have any lavender, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I would be greatly obliged, for I think there must be a number of burns—”

Elizabeth turned frowningly about the stillroom, trying to recall where the last of the lavender was; it was still too early for her to have harvested any from Pemberley’s gardens herself. Darcy had been quickly and efficiently organizing staff during this, and Elizabeth fancied he had briefly gone upstairs to attend to his guests as well, for she heard his familiar step on the staircase that led from the main part of the house to the still room. She checked the impulse to turn towards him. Elizabeth felt a little less unsettled to have something familiar and useful to do in the face of a crisis, but she dared not meet his eyes; her composure was a brittle, fragile thing, that would break very easily.

“Elizabeth,” said Darcy, much astonished. “I thought your maid would have come to you by now. What are you doing?”

“Looking for lavender,” said Elizabeth, opening up a cabinet. “Colonel Dunne needs it.”

“As of course the apothecary at Barmote has no supplies, and the Lambton Hospital opened without anything in it.”

“There is a crisis, there are people injured, Colonel Dunne has asked me to do something,” said Elizabeth, emerging with a jar of dried lavender buds. “It is habit—”

“You are not on campaign,” said Darcy, taking the jar from her and signaling to a servant. “You are not abroad and you are not without servants. Let one of them get Colonel Dunne what he requires. You are soaked through. No one expects you to ferry medicines in this state.” He himself had acquired a second evening coat while Elizabeth had been rushing about the stillroom.

“It is what was often expected of Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” she said, frustrated. She tried to push her wet and dripping hair from her face and slapped herself in the face with the sleeve of Darcy’s coat instead. “And I very much miss being Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

Darcy looked at her in exasperation tinged with affection. “And have you been pretending to be someone else all evening, or have I been misidentifying you for far longer?”

“I have been the Widow Fitzwilliam this year and more,” she replied, “a weak creature who bursts into tears at the slightest provocation, who— who panics at the scent of smoke, who is perfectly useless and gets everything wrong—”

Darcy caught her by the shoulders, and said, in alarm and concern, “Elizabeth, did Lady Catherine tell you all this? That is so false a portrait of you, I do not recognize you in it.”

Elizabeth made an impotent, futile gesture to break free, but his grip tightened.

“You are and always have been to me Elizabeth .”

It fell into the silence, like an organ note echoing in an empty cathedral, suddenly swelling and filling up the space.

Elizabeth burst into tears.

She had spent all evening realizing that there had been reasons beside propriety and Darcy's formal manners that kept her from ever thinking of him by his first name, or addressing him as such but she had not much thought as to why Darcy had always addressed her so insistently as Mrs. Fitzwilliam. She had always liked the way he said her name, the particular inflections he always used when saying ‘Elizabeth,’ but had attributed her pleasure to vanity. It was a testament to her powers of pleasing that she induced so formal a man as Mr. Darcy, a man whom she had assumed disliked her intensely from the first, and had to be carefully charmed into accepting her as part of the family, into addressing her consistently by her first name. Any strangeness in tone she attributed to his struggling with his own reserve because he knew her pleasure in hearing her Christian name on his lips was worth any discomfort on his own part. But oh— what discomfort!

“How can you be so good,” she wept. “Don’t,” she said, when he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms about her shoulders, “I shall get your clothes wet.”

“If that is your only objection, that is nothing to me.”

It was at that point that the door slammed shut on them.

“It seems our sisters are about to take their revenge on Lady Catherine,” said Darcy.

“What? No !” She had put her head against his chest, trying to muffle the noise of her crying and now looked up and over at the door.

“Elizabeth,” he said, in some exasperation, still holding tightly to her, “Lady Catherine reduced you to tears. Whatever guerilla offensive our sisters and the servants have launched against her is more than deserved.”

“She did not,” Elizabeth protested. “I told you, I cry at everything these days.” But this sounded unconvincing to her own ear. She struggled a little and Darcy released her; she ran to the door and tried the handle— of course it was locked, it usually was— and pounded on it with a fist. “Kitty! Georgiana! Mrs. Reynolds! Hello! Is there anyone there?”

The only response received, a high whine of distress, was one that baffled her.

“Boatswain,” said Darcy, which clarified matters. “I must not have locked my door when I went up. Boatswain!”

Boatswain gave a loud, low, ‘roff!’ of joy. He had found his master! That Darcy was behind a door and not before him, where Boatswain might drool upon him at leisure, was a subsequent, depressing realization for the poor Newfoundland, who pawed at the door in some perplexity.

“Fetch Georgiana!”

Boatswain, though a loving dog, was not particularly intelligent. He continued to paw at the door.

“Georgiana is not likely to let us out,” Elizabeth said and tried, “Boatswain fetch—fetch help?”

“He barely knows the names of you, Georgiana, and Kitty,” said Darcy. “His own is the only one he reliably recognizes. A complex abstract concept like ‘help’ is right out. Occasionally he forgets the word ‘ball.’”

This, however, was not one of those times. Boatswain had heard people talking about balls all evening. And he had heard ‘Fetch,’ four times, which was about the average number of times it took Boatswain to realize he was supposed to be obeying any command more complicated that ‘sit’ and ‘heel.’ There was the sound of nails scrabbling on the stone floors, then the syncopated thudding of Boatswain heaving his not inconsiderable bulk full speed down the corridor.

Elizabeth slammed her fist on the door and remembered at the last minute to swear in Spanish instead of English. She turned next to the bolts of the door, which she and Darcy had been able to pull out before, but the servants had apparently been mortified that the hinges on the stillroom door were so flimsy and strengthened them when they had replaced the rods of the hinges. “No!” She hit the door with the palm of her open hand, resulting in a damp squelching noise.

“We are usually released within the hour,” said Darcy, studying her with worry. “You have not minded these confused attempts at initiative before.”

“No,” said Elizabeth, rolling up the sleeves of her borrowed coat and stripping off her gloves. She scrubbed furiously at her cheeks with her damp hands, then wiped them on the coat.

“Elizabeth,” said Darcy, “I beg you will tell me what has overset you, if it is not Lady Catherine.” Then, with shock, “Is it because you think she is right?”

“No,” said Elizabeth, trying for composure. “It— oh Darcy, I hardly know what to say or do. It is because I have been so wrong about so many things that I do not understand how to get on. I do not understand myself at present— a difficult and unhappy state of affairs for I must live with myself as long as I live. I hardly understand my past at present, which is just temporally unsound.”

Darcy quietly presented her with a fresh handkerchief. She buried her face in in it, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. Speech came pouring out. “Darcy I— what can I say? What can be said? All I know is that I have so terribly misjudged you and caused you more pain than I can easily admit, and you persist in being so damnably kind that I feel the worst kind of wretch.”

“What?” asked Darcy, in some perplexity.

Elizabeth did not know how it could be any longer avoided. She gathered her courage about her and lowered the handkerchief. It felt harder to step back and look up at his handsome face than it had to walk through Hougoumont. “I cannot escape this conversation, it seems.” Oh God, all the cool emptiness of the night sky and all the grounds of Pemberley had not seemed large enough for such a conversation; how could the stillroom be? Even full as it was with drying flowers hanging from wooden frames, filling the air with perfume, it seemed but a memory of their true scent. It seemed too confined a space. Elizabeth tried to think of a pun on the still room and distilling things into a more concentrated form, hoping a joke might relieve her feelings, but she was too distraught for even that.

Darcy looked at her without understanding.

With a brittle gaiety, too sharp-edged, sharp enough that it made her voice break and catch in odd places, Elizabeth confessed, “I am not a skilled mathematician, Darcy; I have been making the most horrific errors of addition and subtraction— all my guesses and estimates have been wildly off. The problem currently causing me grief is one of time, you see. I had it from Georgiana that the same year you gave up on Miss Elizabeth Elliot you thought you had met your soulmate, a woman who, the year following, according to Mr. Wickham, was married with children. Or with child, rather. I assumed everyone was talking about Anne Elliot Wentworth. Lady Catherine merely set my timeline straight.”

Understanding began to dawn.

Darcy said, stiltedly, when it became clear Elizabeth did not know how to go on, “I had been wondering, for some time now, if when I confessed I had long admired you, our definitions of ‘long’ were the same.”

“I thought you meant since January,” said Elizabeth. “Mary Crawford told me you had liked me since January.”

“And Mary Crawford is such an expert on my character.”

Elizabeth threw her hands up in the air. “I had no idea you meant it when you told me at Hunsford you might be my soulmate! I thought you hated me up until Jane’s wedding!”

Darcy stared at her incredulously.

“You cannot blame me,” said Elizabeth, peevish and snifflng a little, still. “The only time you did come out and say you thought we were soulmates, it was right after you listed all the reasons you thought we couldn’t be— reasons I thought you meant precluded me from being Richard’s match. After all, you began your speech saying you did not believe him when he told you he thought I was his match. And all the time we had known each other before, all you would do was argue with me and stare at me to find fault. I realize you were trying to convince yourself I was not your match, but—”

“You thought I stared at you to find fault?” Darcy asked, much astonished

“Yes! The first time you looked at me you said I was not handsome enough to tempt you into dancing.”

Darcy had entirely forgotten this, if one judged by his expression, and the baffled way in which he was now staring at her. “Elizabeth, it has been many years now since I thought you the handsomest woman of my acquaintance. I cannot recall the look or the hour when I found it to be so, any more than I can recall the instant I became convinced we were….”

Elizabeth found composure and strength enough to look him straight in the eye and say, in a voice a little low and rough from crying, but a voice that did not tremble, “We were— we might be a match.”

Darcy looked at her with a sort of helpless tenderness and corrected, “That we are a match.” He said it quietly enough that she could pretend she had not heard him, if she wished.

She found herself saying, confusedly, “But you did not think so at first.”

“I did not want to think so,” he admitted, looking ashamed.

Elizabeth managed a brittle, rather defensive laugh. “I suppose after Elizabeth Elliot, the notion of any Elizabeth made you kick out like an ass.”

She had meant it in all senses of the word and Darcy winced in acknowledgement of this. “It does not excuse how I acted to you, I admit that; nor could you have ever known my feelings when I went to speak with you at Huntsford. I assumed that you would be….”

“A fortune hunter?”

“Never that,” said Darcy, aghast, “but if our wrists matched— with all I could materially offer you— it was wrong of me, I know. I did not know you then as I do now. Those considerations are not of primary importance to you.”

“No.”

“What mattered to you— and what still matters to you— is what I ought to have understood from the first about what a true match is and ought to be. It is not, as my segment of society has it, two perfect equals in terms of any material standard. What is of critical importance are similarities of mind, taste, and feeling. I saw that in my own parents. Indeed, I was given good principles by their example, but left to follow them in pride and conceit, and a certain rigidity that cannot—that ought not to be deployed—was the result. I had not been brought up to look beyond the family circle, and when I did look to the rest of the world, to look at it thinking myself automatically better than it, by virtue of being Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley. I do not know when I began to value my system of thought so highly, or the point when I began to value received ideas more than people, in all their individual complexities, but it was a point on which I badly wanted and needed correction. Whatever pain there was in the adjustment of my ideas was a necessary one. It is the marriage of true minds one ought to pursue, one ought to look for. I did not… and….”

“And I was married,” said Elizabeth. She had listened to this with a feeling of astonishment not unmixed with a host of conflicting emotions: gratification, pity, sorrow, and something very like joy. His love, and how nobly he had concealed it, touched her deeply. How could she have caused such passion, in such a man, and never know of it?

“And you were married to someone who had known that,” said Darcy. “Richard joked to me once that when a heart breaks, it breaks open. He was someone made compassionate by disappointment. I can only hope I have followed his example in that.”

“I never meant to cause you such pain.”

“It was pain I caused myself,” said Darcy, not quite able to remain still, though every learnt habit seemed to be insisting he display his customary self-command. When speaking he paced; he went to the window nearest the door to try and open it; he absently snapped off a sprig of rosemary and caused its spicy scent to waft through the room; he looked at her as she imagined St. Sebastian might look, pinned bravely defiant to a tree, waiting for the club-blow that would finish him. “Elizabeth, I have kept this from you because it was a problem I caused myself. You can in no way be blamed for feelings you certainly never invited—and feelings which may be to you unwelcome. If I could have kept them from you forever I would have done—”

“And….” Elizabeth asked, forcing the words out, “do you think that precludes our being a match? For I confess, I am having trouble reconciling the two—especially since I only realized earlier this evening I had fallen in love with you.”

Darcy had been fussing with some piece of equipment left on a counter; he turned sharply to look at her. His look of heartfelt delight so well became him, Elizabeth could have lost her heart to him then, had it not been his already. “Elizabeth,” he said, voice shaking, though the left hand he extended to her, to lay his fingertips so lightly, so delicately against her cheek, was steady, “you love me?”

She closed her eyes, in a vain attempt to try and stave off her tears. “Terribly so, Fitzwilliam.”

“Perhaps then,” he said, with a shaking laugh, more indicative of incredulity than amusement, “I might return the lesson you taught me. There is more in heaven and earth than dreamt of in any philosophy.” He bent then to kiss her.

It was like the first breath of air after having been submerged too long; she felt as if she had at last broken through the surface of the water to fill her lungs again. Elizabeth felt ridiculous, crying and laughing at once, still dripping wet under his best evening coat, kissing and being kissed, but so relieved, so happy—

“Oh Darcy,” she said, putting her arms around his neck. “ Fitzwilliam , my love—”

“Dearest, loveliest Elizabeth ,” he said, and kissed her after every word, his voice somehow both rough and tender. He drew back and seemed to trace her features with his loving gaze and said, “I have loved you so long without hope—” Then, looking a little awkward “—and without expectation of return. Do not feel obliged because I—”

“Do you really think I would tell you I love you out of obligation?” she exclaimed, wishing to tease. “Fitzwilliam Darcy, you ridiculous man, I love you for all that you are, with all that I am— the least of which is this.” She held up her bare left wrist.

The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Somehow he managed to pull back his sleeve to reveal the ‘Elizabeth’ she was not at all surprised to see there; and following this, stumbled through a proposal quite so incoherent and so often interrupted with kisses, Elizabeth had to put her hands over his mouth and say, laughingly, “I take it, sir, now we have at last managed to get through the normal forms of courtship, you are greatly desirous of our being married?”

He kissed her fingertips until she moved them and said, “There is no greater wish in my heart.”

“Nor in mine! How marvelously convenient.”

His arms were tight about her waist, wonderfully so, the heat of his body delightful through her damp and now rather chilly gown— she knew she was probably dripping all over his knee-breeches and waistcoat but could not bring herself to care. Any moment she was not holding Darcy, at that particular point in time, was a moment wasted. Love thrilled through her with exquisite intensity.

They kissed and kissed again, in reassurance and affirmation— and affection above all. Darcy still had the habit of kissing her as if she was something precious, to be treasured and lingeringly enjoyed, but with a very little persuasion he could be provoked to the heights of passion she herself was at— and Elizabeth was rather certain they would have anticipated their vows if they had not heard Boatswain barking and the Pattinsons asking each other where on earth Mr. Darcy and Mrs. Fitzwilliam had got to.

“We had better stop,” said Elizabeth, reluctantly. She was still crying a little, but now from happiness and relief. Darcy reached for his handkerchief, realized that Elizabeth still had on his coat and that the coat was soaked through, and somewhat awkwardly and very ineffectively blotted at her wet cheek with his shirt cuff.

Elizabeth laughed away the last of her tears. “Ridiculous man!”

“Fond as I am of so unique an endearment, I hope you will call me Fitzwilliam occasionally,” he replied, smiling.

“Only if you call me Elizabeth—” then feeling conscious of what pain doing so must have given him for so many years, she put her fingers over his left wrist and stroked the bare skin there as if to smooth away an old injury.

A swift intake of breath. Darcy closed his eyes and leaned forward, unthinkingly so, or so it seemed, with a hoarse, “How easily you undo me, Elizabeth.”

They had managed to break apart and look a little less disreputable by the time the Pattinsons opened the door, and Elizabeth spoke very spiritedly of having been so startled by the servants coming in search of them, she’d fallen into the fountain— a report the servants had already passed around themselves— and confessed that she would very much like to go and dry off. She felt Darcy’s warm gaze on her back as she left to go, but turned to say over her shoulder, “I still expect to close the ball with you, by the by! I shall not let a little water get in the way of it.”

“I shall look forward to it,” he replied, and smiled.