Chapter Twenty-three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE WEDDINGS HAPPENED within weeks of each other.

Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth married first, but Wickham married Lydia only the next weekend. Jane finally acquiesced to marry Mr. Bingley at Lydia's wedding, and then it was only a few weeks more before they had married as well.

Caroline Bingley did not attend any of the weddings, however. It was reported that she had gone to Gretna Green with a man who was not Mr. Higgins, but was, in fact, some Spanish vizcondel. The fellow had apparently skipped out with Caroline the morning he was supposed to have appeared at dawn to fight a duel with Higgins (likely over Caroline) and now, Caroline was on her way to Spain with him to hopefully live happily ever after.

The good news was, if she still cared about ruining Mr. Darcy for revenge, she seemed to have been distracted from the task.

Elizabeth and her husband spent the first weeks after their wedding doing almost nothing except talking. They talked of everything. They spoke about books and poetry and the bible and philosophy and morality, and they probed the other's stances, taking each other's measure, wanting to know everything about the other.

Well, they talked and also did… other things.

Those sorts of things. They did happen in a bed, without their clothes, not like the way it had been in the carriage, both of them mostly covered.

And he did make her scream.

Or perhaps she simply allowed herself to scream.

She was very pleased with it, but he seemed worried, sometimes holding her in his arms and asking her all manner of questions. She had liked whatever it was he had done with his fingers or his tongue or his… that , hadn't she? He could adjust these things if she didn't like it. He could try harder. Or less hard. Or hard sometimes and other times gentle. He could do anything she wanted.

And she would laugh and shake her head at him, because he was Mr. Darcy of Pemberley and she did not understand how he could possibly be insecure.

One night, in the darkness, in the wake of one of these conversations, in which he had snorted and said jocularly that he was not even remotely insecure, it was only that she was difficult to please, she had laughed and tickled him. That night, he had stopped the tickling, gasping with laughter. He had rolled her beneath him, trapping her wrists above her head, and they had gotten distracted with kissing. Kissing each other's mouths and then each other's jaws and necks and shoulders and that had led to another bout of lovemaking.

But then, after the second time she'd burst against him—died the little death—in the silent stillness of the night, her body flush against his, he said, "I suppose I don't know if I trust it, perhaps?"

"Trust what?" she whispered.

"I want to be sure to please you is all."

"Fitzwilliam, you please me." She reached down, prepared to begin tickling him again.

"My father used to say that one shouldn't get too comfortable. He said that society was always looking for a reason to cast a man out, not to give society a reason."

This was a bit of a turn in the conversation. "I'm not society, Fitzwilliam," she whispered.

"Wives, too," he said. "Wives are always looking for a reason. My mother was gone at that point, but he said—my father—he never let her get dissatisfied."

She dragged her hand down over his chest, hearing the way his voice changed. One could be vulnerable in the darkness in a way one couldn't be in the light. "This reminds me of a conversation I had with Mr. Bingley once."

He made a noise in the back of his throat. "Oh, truly? You're thinking of him? "

She laughed. "Because he said that he would spend his whole life trying to earn the right to have me. It was flattering, I suppose, but I didn't like it."

"You didn't?"

"No, and I don't know if I care for it with you, either. I never realized until now why, but… I love you just as you are, don't you see? I don't want more from you. You don't need to impress me. I want us to be relaxed with each other, to be us. I want us to be safe with each other, not always striving to please the other."

"You don't want me to please you?"

"I want you to assume you will please me," she said. "Because you do."

He made a noise in the back of his throat. "Ah, yes. It's as I thought, when you did not see how alluring you were. When you thought worse of yourself than you ought. It's the same."

"Oh," she said. "Now, I think I understand that from your perspective."

"We are worthy of each other," he breathed. "Love cannot grow when that is not a given."

"Yes," she said. "Not to say that we should not challenge each other or grow together or walk paths to journey together. We can inspire each other, but—"

"But we must be equals," he said. "We must be enough for each other. If I keep trying to convince you that I'm not enough, you might start to believe me."

"Well, I doubt that. You do have all of this." She gestured at the darkness. "And I am mistress of it all, and that…"

"I see," he said, kissing her below her chin. "So, it's just about my wealth."

"I'm frightfully shallow in that way, husband," she said archly.

"Mmm, yes, I do see," he rejoined in much the same tone. "I suppose you simply stand at the top of the steps and overlook Pemberley and come."

She snickered.

"Oh, no, you do seem to need my fingers for that."

"Your very wealthy fingers," she said.

"Right," he said. "Glad we've cleared that up."

"Yes," she said. "Good to know where you stand, I imagine?"

He laughed into her skin, and she clutched him close.

And whatever they undertook together, Elizabeth found that her regard for her new husband only deepened.

Though they came from different backgrounds, he saw her as an equal, and she him. There was no reason for Mr. Darcy to raise himself to "earn" her and neither was there any reason for her to feel as if she must make up for some loss within herself.

No, they strove together. They would do this together. They were quite the perfect match.

She realized she must have known this, somehow, deep down, in that moment when Mr. Darcy looked into her eyes at that ball, when she had snatched back her glove from Mr. Bingley.

She had felt as if she had fallen for Mr. Darcy right then, in that instant. It had seemed quick, out of her control, the height of madness.

But, in actuality, her love had happened slowly, in steps.

First, she had witnessed his intelligence and his unique way of seeing the world. She had come to respect his mind, to respect him in that way.

Then, she had begun to interact with the idea of physical attraction at all. First, Mr. Wickham had allowed her to see that she might be attractive.

Her attraction to Mr. Wickham in return, however brief it may have been, was likely what made her realize she was not attracted to Mr. Bingley in that way.

So, then, when that moment happened at the ball, where she became mired in the quicksand that was Mr. Darcy's gaze, she had felt it like it happened in a moment. But truthfully, she had observed enough of Mr. Darcy to know what sort of man he was, and to know he was the right man for her to love. She had known this deep down, but her logical brain had resisted the inner knowing, had fought and questioned and worried, even as she was swept along by that tide that reassured her of its truth.

They had both known.

But they were both the sorts for whom that sort of internal knowing was not enough. They must feel as if they came to their conclusions in a serious and rational manner, after some thought, devoid of any emotion or intuition.

Thankfully, marrying Mr. Darcy had proved to be the most rational, level-headed thing she had ever done. Everything about him was quite wonderful. She could not have made a better match, not in any other world.

A year passed away, and she wasn't with child.

She was concerned, but he was not, saying something about an anatomy class he'd had and how he could not even understand how it ever happened at all. "You know women are only fertile for six days each month. Six!"

She had not known this.

He told her not to worry. She tried to listen.

Everything else was lovely.

They hosted Bingley and Jane often at Pemberley. The men spoke often about how they intended to go hunting together and how they would someday teach their sons to shoot together. They purchased hunting dogs for the purpose of hunting, but, in truth, they did no actual hunting. They mostly stayed up late drinking port and slept late in the mornings and threw sticks in the garden for the dogs to fetch in between scratching the animals aggressively behind the ears and talking to them in sing-songy voices.

Jane was already with child. She wasn't showing yet. She didn't speak of it because she seemed to sense that Elizabeth was sensitive to the topic, anxious in some way. Only once did Jane speak of it, and it was only to say that being anxious might interfere with the process, that Elizabeth should relax.

Yes, Elizabeth thought, I shall simply relax, now that you've told me. Oddly, just your saying I should relax makes me ever so relaxed.

In truth, being told to relax made her more anxious.

They hosted Mary, who was writing her second novel. Her first had been accepted by a publisher who was going to bring it out in the fall. Mary was overjoyed at the prospect. Elizabeth had never seen her sister quite so happy. She was practically bubbly.

They did not host Wickham and Lydia. They did not even speak of Wickham, in truth. Mr. Darcy did not like him and never would.

But Elizabeth got closer to Georgiana and she even found a bit of kinship with Anne de Bourgh on a long trip to Rosings that winter.

And then they were in London, and it was Georgiana's first season, and there were ever so many balls, and she was distracted. She wouldn't say relaxed, not at all, but she stopped thinking about babies.

And then her bleeding didn't come.

Mr. Darcy was wretched about it, pronouncing there was no reason she ever should have worried and acting quite proud of himself as if he'd really done anything all that much in the first place. Why, he'd failed to impregnate her many more times than he'd succeeded, but he acted as if he'd done some impossible feat.

Men.

Jane's baby was born months earlier, and Elizabeth wasn't so far gone that she could go and attend and be there for the first few weeks. Jane, however, was too tied up in babyhood to make the trek for Elizabeth's birth, but Mary came and so did Kitty, and neither of them were particularly helpful in the end, since Mary was busy writing and Kitty had developed a crush on the parson in Derbyshire .

But the baby came regardless, as babes are wont to do.

It was a little boy, who they named James. She lay in bed in the wake of it, and she held him tightly in her arms and whispered into the shell of his perfect tiny ear.

And she thought that everything worked out in the end, hadn't it? Even if things had seemed as though they were veering off course a number of times.

She thought about nearly marrying Mr. Bingley or the time that Jane had run off with Mr. Wickham or Mr. Collins arriving and wanting to marry a Bennet sister. It could have gone wrong, very, very wrong, many times.

But.

It hadn't.

Here in her arms was proof that everything was just exactly perfectly right.

"Well," said Mr. Darcy, "he looks just like you, which is a good thing."

"He does not. He's practically a copy of you," said Elizabeth.

Her husband tilted his head. "I suppose he does look a bit like me, in the end. I did my part, then."

She snorted. "Yes, your part has been very onerous."

"No question, your part is more involved and difficult and painful. I never said we had equal parts to do in this endeavor, did I?"

She snorted again.

"I don't deserve you?"

"You do not," she said.

"Or this perfect son you've given me."

"Definitely not."

"But at least I'm wealthy and made you mistress of all this."

"At least there is that," she said, smiling up at her husband. "I suppose you want to hold him."

"That would be tolerable." He was smiling.

"Only tolerable?"

He chuckled softly.

"Come here," she said. "James, this ridiculous man is your father. He is actually quite wonderful once he stops getting in his own way." She held the baby up to her husband. "Well, then, take your son."

He did, gingerly.

James started to wail nearly immediately.

"I don't think he likes me," said Mr. Darcy, smiling down at the baby.

"Don't be ridiculous. He's a baby. He's just crying because—"

"But I think he's the most perfect thing on earth," said her husband in a hushed voice. "I should be quite happy to hold him while he squalls for all time."

She smiled. "Rock him."

"Ah, people do that with babies." Mr. Darcy rocked. James quieted.

Her smile grew even wider. There they were, right there, the two pieces of her heart. She had never felt so in love.

Outside, it was morning, and the sun was stealing up over the horizon, touching its goden rays over the grounds of Pemberley. Outside, the birds were awake and the trees were rustling in the breeze. Outside, the world went on, enclosing them here in their home. Together.

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