Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It had been quite a year for the Bennet family with one daughter married and another engaged. But some things—such as the Christmas decorations on the house in Queens—stayed the same, for better or for worse.
Elizabeth and Jane cringed, but the holiday mood of the two men accompanying them was irrepressible. The faded Santa and smiling penguins greeting them brought smiles to their faces.
Almost nothing could dampen Darcy’s mood ten days before Christmas. He remembered his trip here the year before: his disdain for the house, his mortified curiosity about Elizabeth, her book, and the man she’d brought there. Now, he saw it all differently through her eyes.
He stood in the kitchen doorway and watched the family’s cookie-making ritual.
It wasn’t the largest kitchen he’d ever been in, and it certainly wasn’t the best equipped.
His kitchen had a six-burner professional range that he refused to admit intimidated him, while Barbara Kowalski-Bennet made dinner on a battered, thirty-year-old stove the family had dubbed Mrs. Doubtfire.
But he realized that the kitchen in Queens had warmth and laughter and perhaps the best-smelling Christmas cookies he’d ever known.
Elizabeth had done a little baking at their place, but it was here with Jane and her stepsisters that she seemed fully, giddily, immersed in the process.
After Charles exhibited too much enthusiasm for sampling the sugary stars, bells, and gingerbread squares, the two men were banished to a nearby brewpub.
Charles was bursting with pride, feeling completely responsible for the felicity of the newly engaged pair.
Neither half of the couple felt it necessary to burst his bubble with the true tale of this love affair, and now, ensconced in their corner booth, his second pint in hand, he laughed at Darcy’s distraction.
“Was I this bad after Jane and I got engaged?”
His friend smiled sheepishly. “You started bouncing in your seat about five seconds after you spotted Jane in the skybox. You’re about as settled and calm as I’ve seen you in the past year.”
“This makes all the difference.” Charles tapped his wedding ring. “It’s as though it tethers me to Jane. I know she loves me and is committed to me, but the ring seals the deal, you know? Gives it permanence.”
Darcy nodded. Permanence. He had a tenuous belief in it and a desperate hope for it.
He knew it was a bit irrational, and perhaps a bit girly, but he couldn’t wait for the symbolism of the wedding bands and the legal paper that would cement his bond with Elizabeth.
He was so happy to have given her his mother’s century-old diamond and ruby ring that he could afford to wait until she’d determined the date.
He hadn’t waited, however, to consult his lawyers and change his will.
Their love might be a sure and permanent thing but life was not.
He could be romantic and pragmatic when necessary.
They announced their engagement when the Bingley and Kowalski-Bennet families gathered for Thanksgiving at the Beresford apartment.
Facing dinner service for sixteen, Elizabeth was more than happy to bequeath the kitchen to Jane, who was equally content with Darcy’s offer that she cede control to Mrs. Reynolds and a crack team of caterers.
Elizabeth had been vaguely appalled by her fiancé’s suggestion, but when he admitted that most of his previous Thanksgivings had been similarly handled by the Fitzwilliams’ chef, she stopped overthinking it and withheld judgment.
At least the creamed corn wouldn’t be watery and the stuffing wouldn’t be dry, right?
In fact, not even Ted Bennet’s wit remained dry after the announcement.
After squeals, hugs, handshakes, and a brittle smile from a certain sullen redhead, he stood up, raised his glass, and with genuine emotion in his voice, wished them well before adding, “Lizzy, if you are half as happy with your husband as your sister is with hers, I will begin purchasing stock in sugar companies. Happiness always means a run on cookie and cake baking at our house.”
“One word, Ted,” Herb cried. “Plastics! Buy Tupperware!”
When he told that story to Rich over lunch a few weeks later, his cousin just stared at him, bemused.
“We used to talk baseball and swimsuit models and the price of pork bellies in Portugal, and now you discuss plastic food containers? And cookies? What have you sunk to?” Rich ran a hand through his hair, which was longer than Darcy remembered it being since they were teenagers.
“Firstly, I cannot recall any talk of swimsuit models or pork bellies. And I’ve always known more about baseball than you anyway, so don’t even start on it,” Darcy added when his cousin rolled his eyes.
“Happiness has changed you, man. Irrevocably. You’re a goner.
” Rich shook his head mournfully. “Don’t get me wrong.
I have no idea what Elizabeth sees in you, but you are one lucky man that she looked your way.
She’s fantastic.” He lifted his glass and smiled, coaxing a grin from Darcy, who also raised his glass.
“But I miss that dour wit, the soulful mantle once draped about your shoulders.”
Darcy’s eyebrows rose. “Right. As I recall, you met a lot of women playing off the ‘dark moody persona’ you often claimed was so bloody frustrating.”
“I did.” Rich sighed. “Maybe it was your accent. Best wingman ever.”
“You seem happy enough now.” Darcy took an onion ring off his cousin’s plate and stared across the table. “So…the hair. Does your lovely doctor girlfriend prescribe flowing red locks, Samson?”
Rich narrowed his eyes. “Hardly flowing, just an inch or two longer. She doesn’t like it stubbly.”
“Stubbly?” Darcy gave him a smug smile. “The beard is next, my friend. You’re a goner.”
The night before Christmas found Darcy a far happier man than in years past. His kitchen was full of festive cookie tins and Tupperware, his fireplace was strung with stockings, and his living room floor was littered with pine needles, gaily wrapped boxes, and one or two ornaments batted down by the cats.
Jane and Charles occupied the loveseat while he and his fiancée were intertwined on the sofa.
Elizabeth, curled up in his arms, leaned forward to grab the remote and click off the television.
“So, what do you think of my man Rudolph? Isn’t he the cutest reindeer of all?”
“Quite impressive for a young buck, but I rather liked the prospector: focused on the bottom line, digging out the silver and gold.”
Elizabeth elbowed him while Charles guffawed about the dullness of the Harvard Business School mind. “The dentist elf reminds me of Bill Collins—so eager, so awkwardly earnest, so out there.”
“Shhhh.” Jane clamped her hand over his mouth. “Charlotte loves him. And you love his programming skills.”
“Harumph.” Elizabeth pouted, shifting her gaze back to Darcy. “No morose musing over the Island of Misfit Toys?”
“No. Flaws are what make us distinctive and give us character. I’m rather fond of The Velveteen Rabbit and that chipped football mug you brought here with you.”
“Soccer,” Elizabeth whispered, beaming at him.
“However,” Darcy continued in a droll voice, “I do wonder about the efficiency and value ratio of Santa’s assembly line. Elves with bad teeth churning out millions of toys, a fair percentage of them misfits and unsuitable for Christmas Eve delivery.”
Charles snorted. Elizabeth and Jane rolled their eyes. Jane rose, placed the last few dishes on a tray, and headed to the kitchen. Her husband followed, bellowing, “Have a holly, jolly Christmas…!”
As she watched them disappear around the corner, Elizabeth felt her fiancé tug on her hand. She turned as he lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them one by one.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice low. “I wish Rudolph had been a childhood tradition for us. Georgie and me. She would have loved it.” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “I can imagine you and Jane curled up in your fuzzy pajamas and singing along.”
Elizabeth smiled tenderly and pulled him close.
In the past few weeks as the holiday season had begun, he’d started talking more about his family, especially Georgie.
He’d mentioned her love of giraffes and talked about her wish to go trick-or-treating in London when she was five.
Elizabeth knew the holidays were an especially difficult time for him.
He still fell quiet sometimes when he’d get caught up by a memory, but now, rather than shaking it off, he’d respond to her gentle questions.
Elizabeth tried not to think about how lonely he must have been in the years before they met and tried desperately not to dwell on the pain she’d caused him.
The past was the past; she’d told him that many times.
Three days after Christmas, the engaged couple was in London, and Elizabeth was getting her first close-up look at Darcy House.
Although Darcy’s heart was in America at Pemberley, this was the house where he grew up.
She’d been a little surprised to learn that he’d shuttered the country house, holding onto the title and the land but lending the two smaller residences to his cousins’ families.
He showed her a painting of the house, but averred he’d not been there in a decade and had rarely spent much time there as a child.
It didn’t need to be stated aloud that he had few good memories of the ruggedly beautiful estate.