Chapter Thirty For what do we live?

January 1

It was a gala day.

The penthouse bridal suite of the Rochester Hyatt Regency commanded a panoramic view of the scenery. The newly white winter city lay beneath an antique gray afternoon sky. Lizzy stood near one of the huge windows, looking out and letting her imagination mingle with the falling-tumbling snowflakes. Here, now, and everywhere, the world is always fresh, full, and promising, she reminded herself. The flakes seemed half to belong to gravity, half to caprice.

She put her warm hand against the cold window, moisture condensing around the shape of the hand. She steadied herself as she tried to control her breathing and shifted her vision so she was no longer looking out of but into the window.

Behind her, on the suite's vast white bed, naked and still breathing deeply himself, was her husband. He looked well-wed, red-faced, spent, and happy. She was so happy! Her last hour with him had belonged half to gravity and half to caprice, falling-tumbling.

Lizzy wore only Fitzwilliam’s white tuxedo shirt, which hung long and unbuttoned on her. By another shift of her vision, she could see herself in the window, her display of cleavage and the firm downward curves of her abdomen that framed her belly button leading her eyes to the meeting point of her legs.

Despite the window, the outward landscape, and the inward reflections, her consciousness nonetheless lingered primarily at the meeting point of her legs, on the heat that rippled heavy, syrupy, outward from that juncture and through all the rest of her. It felt as if her body were singing a love song, a song of heated female satisfaction as old as Eve. A garden song in Rochester winter.

"It was a wonderful day, Lizzy," Fitzwilliam said in a breathy but satisfied tone, so male, " Wonderful! And it's only gotten better."

She turned to him with a seductive smile, real through and through. "Don't be smug. I'm expecting better yet after we catch our breath…when we can take our time."

Grinning, he grabbed a pillow and folded it before resting it behind his head so he could look at her. He stared with a frank, returning hunger for a moment, and then he glanced to the side of the room where her wedding dress hung at the front of a carved, massive armoire. He seemed utterly unselfconscious about his complete nakedness, splendidly at ease with his wife, all covers off.

She could see his scars; she was now as intimate with his scars as he was with hers. Her fingers and lips had traced them.

"Seeing you at the other end of the aisle at The Good Shepherd? That is as close as I expect to come to the Beatific Vision, at least on this side of the blue."

Lizzy stalked toward the end of the bed, enjoying her view of Fitzwilliam as he considered her wedding dress.

"I told you I would love you in it and out of it," he said, turning his face toward her.

She laughed softly. "You were as good as your word."

"Mrs. Darcy, was that a honeymoon pun?"

"Mr. Darcy, were you punning on 'love'?" She smirked, eyebrows jaunty. "The second, more recent love, the out-of-it love, seemed a bit more vigorous than the first, the wedding love, the in-it love, anyway. The second seemed more flesh"―her eyes grew, then her smirk―"and less spirit."

" Ahem . I will have you know there was as much spirit as flesh here a moment ago, I promise you. And earlier, at The Good Shepherd, as much flesh as spirit. Both were utterly willing, both times. I love you and I desire you in equal, infinite measure."

He said things that made her heart swell. He was a part of the innermost life of her life.

She waited for him to look at her again. "Yes, Fitzwilliam, it was a wonderful day—a gala day. And it keeps getting better."

***

Jane was Lizzy's maid of honor; Charlie was Fitzwilliam’s best man. One bridesmaid was Karen McDougal. Her son, Ricky, was the ring-bearer, his chubby red cheeks adorable above his bowtie. The other bridesmaid was Georgiana, who had insisted on flying to the States for the event.

She and Lizzy had bonded quickly. They liked each other from the first moment, and a long evening over stiff drinks talking about George Wickham had bonded them as sisters. Fitzwilliam’s sister was not vindictive—she was sweet and gentle, retiring, despite her striking beauty—but it was clear that Wickham's end brought her a sense of closure, that knowing he was out there savoring her ruin had made reconstructing herself harder for her.

The wedding took place on New Year's Day, just over a month after Fitzwilliam’s return. Mrs. Bennet, who never quite get herself stably to believe that her daughter had been a CIA agent and her son-in-law to-be an MI-6 agent, could not understand the hurry. However, she certainly was happy enough about the business that the wedding brought the bridal shop and willing to give folks a bit of a discount. Aunt Christine went behind Mrs. Bennet and drastically deepened the discount or gave items away for free.

Lizzy’s mother did eventually remember what had happened at the back door of the shop on Black Friday, but she never had any recollection of what had happened in the van. No one ever supplied her with the full details, and she never asked. She knew the outcome, and that seemed to satisfy her.

Lizzy and her aunt grew much closer even than before. Fitzwilliam admired and respected the Gardiners, and they admired and respected him. No longer having secrets from her aunt allowed for the greater closeness she and Lizzy had both craved over the years.

Mrs. Bennet found Fitzwilliam too unbendable for her liking. Too cool. "Give me true warmth of heart, Lizzy, even with a little of that extravagance of feeling which misleads judgment, and conducts into romance…" It did no good to try telling her that Fitzwilliam was, in private, a deeply passionate man, warm and extravagant and romantic; her mother only waved her hand and refused to believe.

***

Lizzy sat down at the foot of the bed, and Fitzwilliam sat up. After glancing at his lap, she met his eyes. "If you don't want an immediate sequel, you may want to cover yourself."

He grumbled and grabbed a blanket, spreading it across his lap. "See, this is some kind of inequality! You can wear my shirt and claim to be covered, but to me, somehow you look more naked in my shirt than you look with nothing on…at least it affects me that way."

Lizzy rolled her shoulders, and Fitzwilliam’s tuxedo shirt dropped to the floor. "Is that better?"

He groaned. "No, yes…oh God, Lizzy! I want you!" The rising tent of the blanket in his lap testified to his sincerity, although she required no testimony.

"You want me ? Elizabeth Bennet ?" she teased. "You know that the woman you married, Mr. Darcy, is a fascinating but faulty creature."

"I'm not sure I can claim to be fascinating…but I can claim to be faulty." He smirked. "When she saw me in my tux this morning, your mother told me that I need to be less stiff ."

She glanced at his lap. "I'm not sure that's ever true, Fitzwilliam, but it was false this morning, and it's certainly false right now." Feeling herself becoming liquid, Lizzy reached for the blanket and more.

***

Walter Kellynch had been professionally and personally shamed by the fact that Charlotte had carelessly endangered Lizzy. He broke off their relationship and fired her summarily.

To make things up to former Agents Bennet and Darcy, Kellynch made sure that Darcy could stay in the States and expedited a visa. He also retroactively sanctioned all that Darcy had done against The Wicker Man. Bingley's request to become a Farm Instructor had been approved, and he was due to start immediately after returning to D.C. from the wedding.

Lady Catherine was able to supply a little more information about George Wickham. The story he had told Lizzy about himself and his mother was structurally true but false otherwise. He had been raised by a loving but feckless father, abandoned by his mother when very young, and watched as his father was duped and abused by a repetition of women over the years.

There was nothing Lady Catherine could reveal about Father Robyn's background. Before his time in seminary, his life was dark, unknown.

Lizzy believed Collingwood’s motivations were a question for a philosopher. She mentioned that to Fitzwilliam.

He thought a moment and then shrugged. " Maybe his evil was banal. It could be that there was little more to it than his unshakable conviction that nature intended everyone to submit to him—and an unfortunate formative encounter with an old folk horror movie."

***

It was dark outside the penthouse. The landscape was obscured except in circles of light cast by streetlights. Lizzy looked out again, now wearing one of the hotel robes. The tuxedo shirt was still on the floor. Fitzwilliam, wearing a robe, too, stood behind, his arms wrapped around her, also looking out.

"So, tomorrow we fly to Chile!" she said excitedly. They had chosen a honeymoon destination neither had visited, that had never been stained by an intelligence mission. Someplace new…someplace innocent. The most convenient flight to Chile had been the morning after the wedding―hence the wedding night in the penthouse suite.

"Yes, the Tierra Patagonia Hotel and Spa, surrounded by emerald lakes and white-capped mountain ranges. We’ll be horseback riding on the Torres del Paine around Lake Sarmiento." He squeezed her. "Just the two of us together on the pleasing edge of the world. After two weeks there, we’ll be off to London to visit Georgiana—and I’ll finally be able to show you Pemberley."

***

Lizzy had been shocked to discover that she had misunderstood Fitzwilliam back in Chicago when he told her about himself and his family…his “yes and no” about privilege. He had stressed his troubles with his father, with his father's mismanagement of money, and with his stepmother's struggle to keep his father from wasting her money.

His description had led Lizzy to believe the family was in financial trouble, but that was untrue. Although there had been some money issues, they were mostly between Fitzwilliam and his father. His stepmother had kept her husband from squandering her money and, after he died, she made wise investments to increase her fortune. She had died only a few years earlier, and her will had given Georgiana and Fitzwilliam joint ownership of her estate.

Consequently, Lizzy’s new husband definitely had money. Pemberley, the family home of his stepmother, now belonged to him and his sister. Georgiana preferred London to the country, so she spent little time there and therefore graciously ceded to Lizzy the role of mistress of the place. Lizzy was eager to see it. Pictures showed a rugged but beautiful countryside and an old, large, handsome house.

They planned to spend the spring and summer there before returning to Rochester, where Lizzy would start graduate school. Having been alerted by Fitzwilliam, Kellynch had intervened for her there and not only hastened her acceptance but convinced the English department chair that her background was worth course credit…although, of course, that background would be kept confidential. Kellynch had also talked the department chair into increasing Lizzy's yearly stipend.

Fitzwilliam applied for a management position with Xerox and had immediately been hired―he was the kind of man who interviewed well. Xerox agreed he could wait to start until autumn. As the company was located in a city in the Rochester Metropolitan Area, Webster, New York, Lizzy and Fitzwilliam intended to rent an apartment there in the fall.

***

Fitzwilliam had accompanied Lizzy to the cemetery to see the epitaph she had chosen for her father’s headstone. Although she had been otherwise preoccupied, she had never forgotten her mother’s request. It had nagged at her, especially once the business with the Wicker Man had ended.

Initially, she sought something appropriately high-minded, noble, of the sort her mother wanted, but despite searching through numerous sources, she found nothing that seemed right. Then she remembered something her father often said to her, usually quietly, conspiratorially, while making fun. She was not sure it was appropriate. It was far from high-minded, but it certainly was the man.

Her mother had begged off the trip to the cemetery, claiming to be busy at the shop and telling Lizzy that whatever she’d chosen for the epitaph would be fine. She was satisfied with the simple fact that Mr. Bennet now had one.

Fitzwilliam held Lizzy’s hand as they looked at the stone, and then he read it aloud.

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”

Lizzy stared at the stone a moment longer and then faced Fitzwilliam.

“So, his epitaph is an ironic rhetorical question,” he said softly, squeezing her hand.

She nodded, squeezing back. “It was his way of being in the world.”

***

They had been standing staring into the midnight dark through the penthouse window for a while, both quiet. The moment and the feeling between them had become involuntarily serious. Lamps glowed behind them, flanking the bed.

Lizzy leaned back against her husband’s wide chest. "I'm so grateful, Fitzwilliam, grateful we're out." She shook her head lightly at everything and nothing. "Is this just the human condition, that we can't escape the necessity for the graveyard and the prison—and for Langley and the SIS Building?"

He reflected before he answered. "I suppose so. Human agency is perilous. It’s beset with selfishness, vulnerability, and mortality. We're stuck with the graveyard, probably with the prison, too.” He paused. “And maybe, maybe there's no way to do without Langley or the SIS Building—but surely we all could do better."

He bent and kissed the lobe of her ear as if to chase her question away. "Anyway, we've done our part in the darkness. Let's leave it there. Let's live in the light."

She turned in his embrace to face him and smiled bravely at him, her chin tilted up. As he looked down at her, she saw his grave expression brighten, his eyes brimming with love for her. "You're my light, Lizzy."

"I love you, Fitzwilliam Darcy. You’re mine."

She trembled in his arms, kissing him again and again, gratitude transfigured kiss-by-kiss into needy, joyful excitement. He scooped her into his arms and carried her from the darkened window to their well-lit marriage bed, a scene of tenderness and passion.

He was a man who kept his promises.

Children.

Despite the outer darkness, Lizzy reminded herself again: Here, now, and everywhere, the world is fresh, full, and promising. Not everything worth happening already has.

THE END